Beer & Geeks: An Ancient Tradition

Last weekend, some friends and I made the pilgrimage to the Dogfish Head Brewery and took the excellent tour. Our tourguide (shoutout to John) was funny and most informative, and for an hour we had our own episode of Modern Marvels: Microbrew. The best part of course, was tasting the beer (for free!) We had the Festina Peche, the 90 Minute IPA, the Midas Touch, and the Palo Santo, all excellent.

What has since dawned on me is that brewing beer is an especially geeky pastime. Once you get beyond the macrobrewers (although I am sure they employ their share of geeks) and their ads of manliness during football, craft brewing is a very geeky way to spend one's time.

Basically, brewing is both an art and a science, like many other geeky activities: computer coding, any kind of Role Playing Game, etc. Microbrewers, especially like Dogfish Head, tend to be experimental about their brewing, and each fresh batch is almost an experiment while the formula is being perfected. One of my favorite Dogfish brews, Midas Touch, also has a very very geeky origin:

This recipe is the actual oldest-known fermented beverage in the world! It is an ancient Turkish recipe using the original ingredients from the 2700 year old drinking vessels discovered in the tomb of King Midas. Somewhere between wine & mead; this smooth, sweet, yet dry ale will please the Chardonnay of beer drinker alike.

They got the recipe from a residue in the tomb, which was analyzed and reverse engineered by a professor at UPenn. It's sweet and delicious, with a slight sense of history. Very good when studying or reading about the ancient world on a hot summer's eve.

Much like building a computer from scratch, or home programming, homebrewing is an especially geeky way to express one's love of beer. A good friend of mine and his father homebrew on equipment not that far removed from what Dogfish Head started out as. They are basically running science experiments in the medium of beer, trying out different recipes to see how they turn out. Sometimes they turn out undercarbonated or something, but the only way to perfect it is with trying again. 

So the next time you go for a beer, indulge your inner geek and try something new!