Beer & Burgers
Feb 24, 2010 08:36AM ● By Wendy SipplePhoto by Dante Fontana
- Centuries ago in England, pub visitors used a novel innovation that enabled them to get their beer served quickly. They used mugs with a whistle baked into the rim, the whistle being used to summon the barmaid. It has been suggested this practice gave birth to the phrase "wet your whistle."
- A beer lover or enthusiast is called a "cerevisaphile."
- President Theodore Roosevelt took more than 500 gallons of beer with him on an African safari.
- In 1921, Walter A. Anderson (a short-order cook) and E.W. Ingram (an insurance executive) founded White Castle in Wichita, Kansas. It is the oldest hamburger chain. They served steam-fried hamburgers, 18 per pound of fresh ground beef, cooked on a bed of chopped onions, for a nickel. Prior to that in 1916 Walt Anderson developed buns to accommodate hamburger patties. The dough he selected was heavier than ordinary bread dough, and he formed it into small, square shapes just big enough to fit his hamburgers.
- There is an Egyptian beer, called bousa, which is brewed from millet and has been a favorite drink of many for over 3,000 years. Modern Ethiopia has a version made from wheat. It has been hypothesized that this might have been the origin for the word "booze." Other spellings used are boza, bouza, and booza.
- Beer is the second most popular beverage in the world, coming in behind tea.
- The Big Mac was introduced in 1968. The price was 49 cents.
- The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock because of beer. They had planned to sail further south to a warm climate, but had run out of beer on the journey.
- Hamburgers and Cheeseburgers comprise 71% of the beef servings in commercial restaurants.
- Bavaria still defines beer as a staple food.
- The longest bar in the world is the 684 foot long New Bulldog in Rock Island, IL.
- Burgers account for nearly 50% of all sandwiches sold.
- The first brewery in America was built in Hoboken, NJ in 1642.
- Michelob was invented during a brewer’s strike in the 1930s from a recipe tossed together by the untrained workers left behind to run the brewery. It was so bad local taverns tossed their delivered barrels in the gutter until the streets ran with beer. When the strike was over, the brewery didn’t want to lose all that beer, no matter how bad, so they repackaged it and sold it as Michelob.
- The Hamburger hall of fame is located in Seymour, Wisconsin.
- Beer is a source of B-complex vitamins.
- James Beard, in 1941, had a recipe for this "exotic" California burger in his book Cook It Outdoors. When Burger King's Whoppers appeared in the 1960's on Long Island, everyone said the Whopper was a "California-style" burger (all those vegetable toppings). It seemed very exotic at the time. Before that, just about the only burger toppings we knew of were ketchup, cheese, and pickles.
- The movie The Shawshank Redemption got their period beer containers wrong. The prisoners on the roof drank beer out of bottles in the 1930s, when beer was canned until many years later.
- Liberty Cabbage was the alternative name created during World War I, used to refer to Sauerkraut, to avoid using words from the enemy’s language. A hamburger was referred to as a 'Liberty Sandwich,' and German Measles were 'Liberty Measles.'
- Pabst Beer is now called Pabst Blue Ribbon beer because it was the first beer to win a blue ribbon at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.
- In 1924, Lionel Sternberger (no pun intended with that last name) supposedly put a slice of cheese on top of a burger served at the Rite Spot Restaurant in Pasadena, CA, and called it rather officially a 'cheese hamburger.'
- Pennsylvania has had more breweries in its history than any other state.
- The biggest hamburger ever served weighed 8,266 lbs. It was cooked in 2001 at the Burger Fest in Seymour, Wisconsin. Hungry hamburger fans can visit Seymour, the "Home of the Hamburger" and site of the Hamburger Hall of Fame, paying tribute to hamburger inventor Charles Nagreen. According to local legend, Nagreen served the first burger in 1885 at the Outagamie County Fair.
- Beer Brand Countries of Origin:
1. Budweiser: USA
2. Foster’s Lager: Australia
3. Guinness: Ireland
4. Heineken: The Netherlands
5. Asahi: Japan
6. Tsingtao: China
7. Tuborg: Denmark
8. Steinlager: New Zealand
9. Corona: Mexico
10. Bitburger: Germany