Daily Dose of English 99
Beer
Daily Dose of English 99
Intermediate
Hey, everyone. My name is Ben, and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on BensLanguageLab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about beer. Mmm, beer. Beer. That's my Homer Simpson impression if you've ever seen The Simpsons in English. Mmm, beer. Something like that. I gotta work on it though. So beer is one of the most popular beverages in the world. It's consumed pretty much in every country all over the world with tons of different variations and types and flavors and companies and there's a lot of beer in the world. It's also one of the primary drinks of a lot of North America. and really a lot of Europe too and a lot of Asia. Although I think soju definitely wins out in many parts of Asia as more popular. But beer is also one of my favorite alcoholic beverages. I do enjoy lots of different kinds of alcoholic beverages because I'm interested in mixology and sort of just the process and history and I think it tastes really good. And it's also fun, you know. And so today, for the 99th episode, I thought it'd be fun to record about beer. And I thought of this because there is a... It's a well-known song, but it's more of like a shanty or a camp song called 99 Bottles of Beer. And you may have heard it or something similar before, but it's typically sung by children or younger people on some kind of long trip or bus ride or something like that. And it's very annoying and it goes like this. 99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer, take one down and pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall, 98 bottles of beer on the wall, 98 bottles of beer, take one down and pass it around, 97 bottles of beer on the wall, and you progressively get the number goes down and down and down until you get to zero bottles of beer on the wall, zero bottles of beer. Um, and that's it. That's the entire thing. It gets very annoying very quickly. Um, but, uh, it, it's a, it's a pretty well known thing, at least in the US. Um, and so if you, if you mentioned like the 99 bottles of beer on the wall, people know what you're talking about. It's not something that's obscure, for example. Um, and so that just inspired me to talk about beer today. And let's, I guess, just get into it. I don't, I mean, that's not really like, what am I talking about? I've done 99 of these and I'm still confused about the process of recording a podcast. Whatever. So beer is a relatively simple beverage. but there's a fair amount that goes into it to make it pretty different. It is an alcoholic beverage made from some kind of grain, typically barley, and then it includes hops, which is another plant. Hops are the plant that makes it taste a little bit bitter, and they have a very distinctive smell that smells like beer. Beer is then fermented, which is where the yeast inside of it, so this live yeast, will eat sugars and other things in the barley or the wheat sometimes or the other grains and become alcoholic. And there is a lot of different types of beer and styles and also just flavorings depending on where in the world you are and that sort of thing. And so I thought I would talk a little bit about my favorite kinds of beer. So the I guess the beer that I drink most often nowadays is the style is called a Mexican lager and they're pretty light and don't have a ton of flavor. They are. in this realm of lagers, which is a style of beer brewing. I don't know exactly what makes a lager, but there's not a ton of flavor of beer. Yes, it tastes like beer still. It's not quite as light as a light American lager, which is something like Bud Light or Miller Light, which tastes practically like water. But a Mexican lager typically has a bit of a stronger beer flavor. And it's a little bit brighter and a little bit more acidic. And it goes well with things like seafood or other, typically, I mean, works well with Mexican food, of course. And they're very common here. They're very simple. They're very easy to drink, is a way that you might think about them. There's not a ton of additional stuff going on. It's a good, I guess, beginner beer or a beer for if you're on the beach or something like that. But my favorite kind of beer is known as an IPA. Not to be confused with the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is also the IPA, but this IPA stands for India Pale Ale. And IPAs are popular in, I mean, I think primarily on the West Coast of the U.S. and in Canada, but they're enjoyed all over the world. They're not an uncommon thing, but they've become specifically popular on the West Coast of the U.S. because they are quite strong. They taste very, very strong, like beer and like hops specifically. It's very, very hoppy, somebody might describe it. And they are often quite bitter as well. A lot of people don't like IPAs at all. They think that they're a bad kind of deal. They don't like them at all. But I quite, I do really enjoy them, especially because I'm from a part of the country where there's a lot of them, a lot of really good ones. And so I have grown to enjoy them quite a lot. And if it's my option, I will choose an IPA. And the name, which is kind of interesting, which is India Pale Ale, comes from when the British used to have to sail all the way around Africa in order to get to India where they had colonized. and they would make beer in Britain, and they would sail all the way to India, and they'd find that the beer had gotten very strong. So it started as a pale ale, which is another kind of beer, just a regular, we don't call it a PA, but it's just a pale ale, which is a bit lighter and closer to a lager, but still different. It's an ale, which is, again, a little bit different, really not that much, honestly. and they would find that this beer got really, really strong. And so the flavor is stronger, the alcohol is stronger. And I'm not exactly sure of the difference in the process, but that's why they ended up having the name IPA. You can also find double IPAs, which is basically an IPA, but even stronger and bitter, more bitter and with more like big flavor. I enjoy those too, but they're not quite as good. And so, and they're not as common. IPAs you can find pretty much everywhere but a double IPA is just not as abundant, I guess you could say. But yeah, IPAs are probably my favorite. You can also find hazy, usually IPAs, so a hazy beer means that it hasn't been filtered and you filter a beer after it's done and to kind of get out little pieces and particles and things like that. And so a hazy IPA usually has a more opaque color, which means you can't really see through it. A really light beer, like a Mexican lager, you can see through. It's a little bit yellowish, goldish. And then a pale ale is a little bit darker. An ale is even darker. An IPA is usually pretty, not like brown yet, but like harder to see through. And then a hazy IPA is almost always pretty hard to see anything through. There's plenty more of these what are called light beers, but then if you go into the realm of dark beers, there's also a bunch of different things. I actually don't know what the main difference is and why dark beers are dark, but they're relatively popular, especially in certain countries or areas. If you think of something like Ireland, for example, a Guinness is, or Guinness is the most famous beer from Ireland, and Guinness is a very, very thick, dark beer. Um, some people call it sort of a milkshake of a beer because it's very, very thick. Um, and it's all right. I don't love Guinness. Um, but usually because it, probably because it comes in a can, so it's hard to find like fresh, good Guinness. But then there's a good stout. Stouts are really nice. Stouts are usually, again, pretty dense and they've got a lot of flavor. There are some really good British stouts or, um, chocolate stouts are also really good that have a very chocolatey flavor. There's also porters, which is another flavor of dark beer. I don't drink nearly as much dark beer, it's just not my favorite. I prefer light beers when I have the choice, but occasionally I'll go for a dark beer. And yeah, something that I'm really excited about, having learned Czech, or learning Czech rather, I'm learning Czech, is that I wanna go to the Czech Republic and try their beer, because they're pretty well known for their light beers, and especially in their different beer culture. because in lots of parts of the world you get a pint of beer or you drink beer in a different way. Like Mexican beers are drunk in a different way than American beers or that are drunk differently than British beers and on and on and on than German beers and that sort of thing. But Czech beers are known for the foam, specifically, which is called the head. Head is that foamy part on beer. And Czech beers, when you order a normal, just regular beer in a pub, will come with, essentially, half beer, half head. And that's a normal thing. That's what is expected. And it sticks around. And that's something that not all beers do. A lot of head will go away after it's sat for a minute. and I'm really interested to see what it's like to have that sort of thicker stronger head on a beer. You can even get a what's I think what's called a mlÃko in Czech which is a milk beer essentially which is all head. They pour the entire cup or mug full of just foam and then you drink that. which is pretty unique. A lot of people from really most of the world would be like, what is that? But they say that it's a way to have a very, it ends up being a small beer that you can drink really quickly because there's not as much carbonation, or it doesn't feel like there's as much carbonation, and you can drink it more quickly, and it's very, it quenches your thirst, you can say, so you're not thirsty afterwards. But that is all that I have for today. I thank you so very much for listening to this episode of Ben's Daily Dose of English. And let me know down in the comments if you enjoy beer and what kind. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye.
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