The Buckeye Blog

The request have been pouring in and yes, I was finally able to track him down. As you can tell, it’s been a long off season for the Eggman but he’s back, he’s tan and he’s ready. I give you — the Eggman as only the Eggman can tell it. (Stick with it to the end…it’s worth the trip).

The Beer Nut

With football season upon us the Eggman thought he’d share a little known story about America’s second best past-time, drinking beer. Albeit, tailgating for college football games is sacrosanct, it must be known that the roots of this tradition stem back to the explorers of the 18th Century better known as WASPs (or White Anglo Saxon Protestants). Sure, the Germans to the Egyptians can claim beer as theirs. Consider the contemporary, where even the effete Belgians whom bought Auggie Bush’s place, have some sway.

But, as serendipity would have it, none other than the scrawny, smelly, pasty, white founders of our country had such an impact on the world. My people. Can you imagine Jamestown settlers in the summer wearing woolen clothes by the 95 degree, 95 percent humidity Chesapeake? Honestly. No wonder the natives were spooked by this homeless shelter that washed ashore. Guns, diseases, and body odor. Great.

It can be argued that The Age of Exploration was a noble quest launched by man’s curiosity, the thirst for knowledge. Or, for riches with a Galleon or 100 full of Aztec or Inca gold. Or, as a religious cause to claim land in the name of God that wasn’t ours and to pillage Mezo-America’s indigenous heathens. Probably, all of the above can be neatly packaged to justify our presence and place in history. There were wanderers hundreds if not thousands of years before the before the English — the Siberians, Chinese, Polynesians, Vikings, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Dutch respectively.

We’ve all seen it before in movies, John Smith (Colin Farrell or Disney Cartoon) runs off with Pocahontas, Fletcher Christian (Marlon Brando or Mel Gibson) mutinies and launches Captain Bligh (Trevor Howard or Anthony Hopkins) off in a long boat, burns the Bounty and runs off in the jungle with a Tahitian in a grass skirt. Fletcher should have been nicknamed “Letcher.” Bligh was a truly amazing bastard looking for breadfruit, not babes. Who can blame Smith and Letcher?

The third of the classic British navy lore is where Captain Cook gets bludgeoned by Hawaiians with war clubs and they ate his heart. Raw deal… Kind of like being received as an invader instead of as a liberator. Rude wakening. At least we got pineapple out of the deal.

Curiosity, wealth nor religion played into any of these age-old stories. Everything had to do with food. British exploration’s residual, not primary benefit was expanding their mercantile pursuit with colonies’ companies.

Cook, Bligh (Cook’s previous 1st mate – go figure) and Charles Darwin’s objective was to find new sources of food. Queen Elizabeth’s Sir Francis Drake did it all. As privateer plundered Spanish gold, Drake defeated the Spanish Armada protecting the Anglican Church, circumnavigated the world, explored and claimed land. But, what is he best known for? Bringing a starchy tuber that could solve the food shortage from Peru in 1579 — named after his first mate’s native girlfriend, who was a chief’s daughter Potato.

From 1600 to 1800 Britain had not just her isles to contend with. India, China and Africa where her new acquisitions, exposing these opportunists to unfathomable levels of overpopulation and poverty. The British were becoming encumbered by the masses of their success. What was worse is that the slovenly Irish Catholics who were the Brits’ breadbasket were creating another problem as prolific breeders. Having tenant farmers that breed as much as they can eat is like my owning a liquor store… Let them eat bread fruit. No, potatoes!

After much consternation the British realized that Malthusian theory drove the deal:

Mal•thus, Thomas Robert 1766-1834.

British economist who wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), arguing that population tends to increase faster than food supply, with inevitably disastrous results, unless the increase in population is checked by moral restraints or by war, famine, and disease.

Johnathan Swift’ satire A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a satirical pamphlet written and published by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests in his essay that the Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling children born into poverty as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. The modern phrase “a modest proposal” derives from the work.

Beer to early man was survival. Since they drank the first accidental batch of fermented swill, they party like it was 10,000BC and put 2 and 2 together, “Hey, Gronk… this stuff is better than that crappy water from the Vistula… and I don’t have to hunt or farm in the morning… In fact, I don’t have to eat, I can just drink this loaf of bread and be like that lazy fat-ass yonder.” Yes, getting drunk is timeless. Why did the Pilgrims land at Plymouth? Because they ran out of beer. Look it up.

You’ve heard of secret societies? Some more open than others, a tattoo, handshake, fez, scarves, piercings, colored bandannas, markers and so on. We’re all aware that breweries are “family” businesses and its more recreational today than survival in yester year. Man needs entertainment to keep his/her spirits up as the Roman Coliseum existed – as does tailgating at football games. It also makes people look better, some times…Although we’ve all seen commercials bragging about “the finest barley and hops… to the standards of the German Order of the Mug…” But, if were that easy, wouldn’t we all be making beer?

When I shared my “Beer is food, therefore, beer is life” argument with historical references, I received some nods, headshakes, and a Bullshit!” As it turns out, although my thinking out load was detrimental to my credibility to what little reputation I have in tact, the wise man of the bar came to my rescue. Every local bar has a Norm or Cliffy as we have a “Yoda” who solves most every argument regarding such philosophical dilemmas. From regular beer advertisements, there’s an owner who cares deeply about your moderation, a slogan, and a brewmeister guy that is the Einstein of the operation that wears overalls with a ZZ-Top beard that does anything he wants at the brewery because he has the secret formula.

According to Yoda, the British, in there quest for food stumbled onto something more important than Breadfruit – the Beer Nut. Why haven’t they shared it? Because it’s too important to share with the Irish. Let them go to Boston to get carted to Richmond to fight in the Civil War. What’s worse when somebody causes a crime or when someone doesn’t stop a crime from happening? I don’t have the answer but it’s probably both. Which leads us to The Holy Grail, Hope Diamond, or Faberge Egg of food – the Beer Nut.

Yoda says, “Brewmeisters are the court jester at a brewery” like the Jumps and Shouts man for a ska band. Although the plebes at the plants revere these pseudo shaman, the owners (Anheueser Busch, Coors, Heilman’s, Yingling, et al) are nothing more than franchise owners for the Beer Nut. Barley and hops are just the salt and pepper on your eggs. Flavoring and nothing more.

The Beer Nut juice or “fragrance” is the key ingredient brought back from the mountains of Papua New Guinea – a place described in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Society where the indigenous people have 192 dialects, each different from one another to the point of being unintelligible. China would be a contemporary reference, barely being able to communicate between provinces like Canton and Szechuan.

New Guinea’s mountainous jungle has thicker canopies than that of Borneo or Sumatra where World War Two soldiers intermittently come out of the thick as an 85-year-old Japanese soldier did this year. And earlier this year a treasure trove of new species was found in New guinea. Sort of a sweaty Shangri La.

The plant itself has only 9 to 12 “nuts” which resemble an avocado pit in coloration yet has the shape and size of a mango. They grow five feet off the ground like a bananas yet take two years like asparagus to reach maturation. The fruit has no pit and when the juice of “fragrance” is hand-squeezed in a rolling motion from the skin into vats and portioned into pints where the concentrate can produce over an ounce to 1,000 gallons of beer. The bottom of the husk is planted vertically and shallow like a coconut for a much of the rainforest’s water and light which cannot be duplicated above the Tropic of Capricorn.

Yoda says that the indigenous people are of normal build and aren’t freakish like Pygmies or Oompa Loompas and have been taught English as their second language. They are in essence, Beer Masons that protect and grow the Nut as Juan Valdez does his coffee or the Medellin Cartel does their “stuff.” So the next time you bring a frosty malt beverage to your mouth before, during and after a football game raise your glass to the smarmy British and the people that guard the food that gives you life.