If the beer you love got lost

There is no doubt that German people love their beer. So do Australians - although tastes are changing as people prefer sweet drinks to bitter. We sometimes joke of drinking alcohol for medicinal purposes. But in fact that's exactly what its initial role was.

 

Whisky (which is just distilled beer) derives its name from the Gaelic word "uisge" meaning water of life. The Latin phrase for that was "Aqua vitae", and if you dig deeper you'll see that this was always linked to healthy living. We know that thousands of years ago beer was produced as a way of cleansing drinking water. It was far safer to drink beer than from stagnant water supplies. In the medieval period monks were devoted to distilling spirits as healing remedies. Even today the most famous of these monasteries at Chartreuse, still produces one of the world best herbal spirits. www.chartreuse.fr/en/

 

But back to my second German beer mug here. The phrase on this mug can be translated (correct me if I'm wrong): "One would be better never born if the beer you love got lost."

 

Now here is a far better version that keeps the rhyme intact:

"If beer and love were forlorn, one would be better never born".

 

Thanks so much to bavarian_beercollection

Done