Beer is Living Proof that God Loves us and Wants us to be Happy

“Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

• Benjamin Franklin Being one of the oldest produced beverages, beer has long outlasted those who enjoy it. From the bitter, hoppy taste of an IPA to the thick, luxurious, and roasted aroma of a stout, beer has a place in every adept-man’s palate. The flavors are not to be looked past as an enthusiast, for it is the artistry of brewing that paves the streets for the virtuous to walk upon. This road is opened for the everyman, but we men are not so superficial that we only take this prize at face value, rather we love beer for her content, there will be no judging a book by it’s cover here. Even the best tasting brew produces side effects, and these are the gifts that God has given us, for beer is a virtue-in-itself.
  If beer is a virtue, than which are its vices? For which purpose or criterion will we be judging this nectar and its outliers? Let us start with the excess, liquor, for example. Liquor is too strong, for it is around 35-40% alcohol content per equal portions. What man could reasonably enjoy an entire night of drinking without before getting sick and completely rash? The alcohol is much too strong to save face with the beer drinker, who could slowly sip their beer all the while watching the inhibitions of the liquored man fade away completely. Ambition to abandon regret has foiled man once again. No virtue is without both an excess and a deficiency. We’ve seen the overpowering of liquor but one must ask what could be completely void of all the qualities of our virtuous beer, let us then look to water. What more deficiency could you suggest? Lack of flavor, lack of substance, and to no end I’ve consumed glass after glass of water without any more effect than fullness and contentment. Man can live off water alone, but life doesn’t predicate freedom. I mean, there is a difference between being physically alive and intellectually alive. If we take the example of beer in example with a few of Aristotle’s ‘virtues and vices’ we’ll see proof that we’ve been given this nectar as a moral blessing. Excess is not life, for it is drowning, just as deficiency is deprivation, the key to success is moderation. Beer releases inhibitions it makes the shy more outgoing, just as it makes the shameless more grounded. There’s a level that each intoxicated person gets to where they reach a happy medium. There’s never a dull moment around when beer is involved, and this is said especially in the sphere of conversation. The sober exhibit boorishness, the parties that have cheese plates and shrimp platters on a coffee table in the living room, while the hosts run around the house trying to organize games of ‘charades’ and ‘pin the tail on the donkey’. These type of events lack excitement and conversation, something that beer brings to the party. On the grand scale, beer brings an easygoing attitude whereas liquor evokes buffoonery. The old adage of “A drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts” comes to mind as a perfect summary of the virtue beer exhibits. The extremely inebriated, not uncommon in accordance with liquor, is boastful and grandiose, in contrast, the sober can be shy and understated. The virtue beer excavates from the depths is truthfulness a middle ground of overstatement, and understatement. Beer makes the man of little stature or wit to the same level playing field as the intellect with just the right level of inebriation. Beer is the drink of lovers. An aphrodisiac, an anesthesia, it both numbs the pain of past love, and pushes us to find new, allowing us to see people for how they are, beyond sensory prejudice. We are freed in the pleasure brought out from the shadow-plagued darkness of our subconscious, into light. This seductive nectar from God is the ultimate proof of His love for us and His thirst for us to partake in the joy of life. Happiness, moral goodness, freedom; we take these on an equal plane, the culmination of these personal attributes are those that we hold close in achieving our final end. There are many reasons why we drink beer, not for the flavor, but for the alcohol, the slow release flowing into our bloodstream, the beauty in feeling worry slip from our mind, from falling in abysmal worry to a refreshing buzz where we flutter towards our end. Whatever our end might be; whether courage, uninhibited enjoyment, sex. We drink beer to celebrate our accomplishments outright, or to bring the often-masked splendor of our inner self out to display for the world the greatness of humanity. We are quenched intellectually, in times we feel parched, and we are fulfilled emotionally when we feel we’ve had to hide our true selves, and this is all thanks to God for creating the magnificence that is beer. “Thirstily he set it to his lips, and as its cool refreshment began to soothe his throat, he thanked Heaven that in a world of much evil there was still so good a thing as ale.” ― Rafael Sabatini, Fortune’s Fool