the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, National Beer Day is celebrated in the United States every year on April 7, marking the day that the Cullen–Harrison Act was enacted after having been signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 22, 1933. This led to the Eighteenth Amendment being repealed on December 5, 1933, with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. April 6, the day prior to National Beer Day, is known as New Beer’s Eve.
According to Smithsonian magazine and Dogfish Head’s resident ancient-fermented-beverages expert, Dr. Patrick McGovern (yes he’s a professor by day), the Egyptian pyramids wouldn’t be here without the motivational capacities of sweet, sweet suds: “It was a source of nutrition, refreshment and reward for all the hard work. It was beer for pay. You would have had a rebellion on your hands if they’d run out. The pyramids might not have been built if there hadn’t been enough beer.”
The pyramids are the only Wonder of the World that still stands today meaning the boozers must have been doing something right. Dr. McGovern also “identified the world’s oldest known barley beer … the oldest grape wine and the earliest known booze of any kind, a Neolithic grog from China’s Yellow River Valley brewed some 9,000 years ago.” Most recently, he helped Dogfish Head create Midas Touch, “a beer based on decrepit refreshments recovered from King Midas’ 700 B.C. tomb.”
