Beer for the betterment of… pretty much all

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/04/2019 (2683 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This will probably not come as a huge surprise, but I love beer.

And when I say I love beer, what I am trying to say is that I really, really love beer.

Staring at a tall, cold glass of this delicious amber nectar has been known to move me to tears of joy. And I am pretty sure I am not the only one.

Canadians are deeply committed to beer. According to statistics I have just looked up on the internet, we Canadians drink more than 22,700,000 hectolitres of beer annually.

That’s enough to fill 900 Olympic-sized swimming pools, which is a lot of beer but, surprisingly, only places us at No. 25 in the world in terms of consumption, well behind the Czech Republic, which is No. 1 and boasts an annual per capita quaffing rate of 140 litres.

I have no plans on moving to the pilsner-intensive Czech Republic, but I am personally doing my best to help Canada inch up in the international beer-swilling rankings.

Fortunately, I do not have to break the bank to indulge my passion for life-sustaining brews.

Last Christmas, my sister, not sure what else to give me, enrolled me in the Beer of the Month Club.

What that means is, every month, a big cardboard box is delivered to me and, when I look inside, I weep with joy because the box is brimming with three huge bottles of one-of-a-kind brews from around the world, along with two quirky cans and sometimes, some cool swag such as a beer-related ball cap.

That is the kind of thoughtful, thirst-quenching gift that tends to divide readers along gender lines as follows:

Typical female reader: “Yuck! You are going to get even fatter than you are now.”

Typical male reader: “Doug, you are arguably the luckiest chubby guy on the planet.”

Initially, I will confess, I worried getting all this free beer every month might not help in my quest to shed a few pounds from a body already mistaken for a large beer fridge. But it turns out I could not have been more wrong.

Apparently — and I think most guys already knew this deep in their hearts — drinking beer is the secret to eternal youth.

That is not just my opinion.

It is also the opinion of whoever wrote the following headline on a news story I just read online: “Man, 74, who has visited more than 50,000 pubs says beer is secret to eternal youth.”

According to this story, a 74-year-old U.K. grandfather named Bruce Masters set a Guinness World Record by visiting more than 50,000 pubs — 51,695, to be precise — over the past 50 years.

Masters told the Manchester Evening News he visits a thousand pubs a year and has no plans to slow down, despite his “nagging daughters,” who think it’s time to cut back on the suds.

The pub-crawling granddad insists beer is the elixir of youth and the reason people always think he is younger than he actually is.

“When I ask people how old they think I am, they’re always about 14 years out,” he said.

“It must be the good effect of beer — the preservatives… I’m planning to be a centenarian anyway, so I can’t imagine how many pubs I’ll have visited by then — I’m hoping to never stop.”

If that is not enough positive brew news for you, allow me to share a story that clearly proves consuming beer on a daily basis is the key ingredient when it comes to losing weight.

I am referring here to Del Hall, who happens to be the director of sales at Fifty West Brewing Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has been making headlines around the world because he managed to lose weight without eating.

What Hall did was — and you are about to slap yourself on the forehead for not thinking of this first — decide to give up food for the 40 days of Lent and adopt a beer-only diet instead.

Seriously, for 40 days, the only calories he sucked back were those in cold brews, and, according to dozens of news reports, he has never felt better and lost (dramatic pause) more than 40 pounds during his beer-only fast.

“I’m feeling great!” he chirped at the end of the fast, inspired by the rituals of 18th-century Bavarian monks.

“I went from 292.5 to 248.5. I lost 44 pounds. Not a single cheat! I plan to continue to lose weight through a protocol of intermittent fasting and portion control.

“My cholesterol went down, my blood pressure went down and my blood sugar went down. All improvements… beer isn’t as bad as people think. People really vilify beer. Everything in excess is bad for you and really, the average American diet will kill you faster than craft beer will.”

You would think being the secret to eternal life and rapid weight loss would be enough to boost beer’s image, but it turns out a cold one might also be the best way to defend our planet from invading Martians.

Again, this is not just my view. It is also the view of Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a 40-year-old ex-marine and Iraq War veteran who just announced he is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. president.

After his big announcement, Moulton was asked by a reporter, who apparently knows something we don’t, what he would do if Earth was attacked by extraterrestrials.

The congressman said he would opt for diplomacy.

“What would I do with this alien? I’d give him a classic American meal,” the presidential hopeful said.

“I’d serve a beer and a burger.”

That makes perfect sense to us, because it would take far too long to build a wall between Earth and Mars, although, now that I think about it, I have enough empties in my basement to get one started.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca