Beer is an alcoholic drink made from fermented starch. This starch is normally made from a blend of malted barley, malted wheat, hops, and other common grains. At an average of 4-6% alcohol, beer is a common drink to have with friends, at meals, or at the end of a day, since it will take you a few of them to get drunk.
Making beer is called "brewing" and the fancy stuff is sometimes aged in wood barrels. There is a HUGE difference between the classy beer and cheap beer, so we have a lot to cover.
Varieties of beer
Pale Ale: Pale ale is a beer which uses a top-fermenting yeast and predominantly pale malt. It is one of the world's major beer styles.Stout: Stout and porter are dark beers made using roasted malts or roast barley, and typically brewed with slow fermenting yeast. Mild: Mild ale has a predominantly malty palate. It is usually dark coloured.Wheat: Wheat beer is brewed with a large proportion of wheat although it often also contains a significant proportion of malted barley. Wheat beers are usually top-fermented (in Germany they have to be by law).Lager: Lager is the English name for cool fermenting beers of Central European origin. Pale lagers are the most commonly consumed beers in the world. Lambic: Lambic, a beer of Belgium, is naturally fermented using wild yeasts, rather than cultivated. Many of these are not strains of brewer's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and may have significant differences in aroma and sourness.
Important Vocab to know
Malt: Germinated cereal grains that are the main ingredient of the beer. These give the beer its main flavor and color, and can vary depending on the variety of malt used. The "maltier" the beer is the SWEETER it is. Hops: These spice the beer, add to the smell of it, and give it a bitterness. The more "hoppy" a beer is, the more bitter. Head: This is the foam on top of a beer. Beers that have rested in a bottle or can don't have this unless you then pour it into a glass. Draft or "on tap": This is when the beer comes, you guessed it, out of a tap (like, a soda fountain for beer) rather than being shipped in cans or bottled. This is often considered a better way to drink beer. Keg: Beer in a big barrel with a tap. You can buy a whole keg for a big party. (A keg stand is when you do a handstand why drinking directly from the tap of a keg. This is stupid and it will fuck you up.)
How do you drink beer
There are a ton of ways to drink beer, and it all depends on how classy your character wants to be. Beer drinking can vary from...fine German imports, served on tap into chilled glasses, drunk over a fine dinner with friends...to red-cup beer-keg-stand barf-in-the-pool cheap. You've seen the parties.
It can be sipped, drunk, chugged, any number of things. As a rule, hoppy beers tend to be more bitter and, at least in my opinion, harder to chug.
The BEST way to drink beer, if you don't want to get sick anyway, is to drinking plenty of water. Like, one cup between every two bottles or so. Also, eating peanuts and other salty foods will help.
Which beer do you pick?
In my experience, beer preference is just about brand loyalty. Most people will just hate any beer they try at first. Maybe overall you'll find malty beers less terrible than hoppy beers, or you'll hate darker beers less than pale ones, but you're never going to pick up your first beer and go "Oh yum!"
Generally a person will pick a kind of beer and just drink it, and each time that kind will be a little less terrible until you really rather like it. That sounds unhealthy but, hey.
What's it like to be drunk on beer
This depends a lot on how you are drinking it. Some basics though:
How drunk you get will depend on how much food you've eaten recently, your weight, your metabolism, and how quickly you are drinking. Generally, 2 bottles of beer will give you a nice buzz. 4 will get you pretty drunk. 6 and you are incredibly drunk. Beyond that, watch out for potentially barfing everywhere (especially if you've been smoking cigarettes while drinking. That will make the barfing worse.) Also alcohol poisoning can be a concern with any kind of over-drinking. This can KILL a person, so keep that in mind.
There's always talk about what "kind" of drunk people are. Remember, drinking will often lower inhibitions, so thoughts and actions that people would normally reign in can sometimes...slip out. There are angry drunks, sleepy drunks, horny drunks, cuddly drunks, happy drunks, bitter drunks, sad drunks. Whatever. Consider what aspects of your character they actively try to keep in check when they are sober, take away those inhibitors and, well ,there ya go.
Also: Beer is filling. It's basically liquid bread. You will start to feel full after you drink a few.
How much does beer cost and where do you get it
Beer is one of the cheapest and easiest to get drinks around. Cost will vary by quality and import.
At a store, your choices are normally going to be a 6 pack of bottles or a 12 pack of cans. These are normally about 7-15 dollars, depending on brand.
In a bar, you're probably going to get a pint for about $4, but this will vary by brand as well. (Remember, imported beers will cost on average a dollar or 2 more)
A "pony keg" is about 7.5 galleons (¼ a barrel) and will cost about $100.
A keg is 15.5 galleons (½ a barrel) and will cost about $200. Those HUGE out of control parties you see on TV? Yeah, those are "keggers" because there will be a keg there.
Notable/Popular brands of beer
Bud lite/Koors Lite/Miller/Lone Star: This is shitty cheap American beer. You will drink it in college, and some people will develop stockholm syndrome for it and never leave, but damn. It is always thin and pale and a tastes kind of like room temperature piss even when it's super cold.
Guinness: This is a dark beer from the UK. Good head, lots of flavor. It's pretty heavy on the pallet, but nice.
Duos Equis: Imported beer from Mexico. Lighter, almost fruity. Best with a lime squeezed into it.
Shiner: Ok, Shiner is just my favorite beer. It's brewed in Texas, isn't super hoppy, and pretty sweet. I really like it.
Remember, different kinds of beer and popular in different areas of the world. Don't be afraid to google this!
Found on http://writing-gecko.tumblr.com/