Brewhouse Musings: Pt. 1
Upon finishing work one day, and sitting down for moment to enjoy a cold one* (an Elissa, to be exact), I asked my fellow brewers, "What gender is beer?"
This goes well beyond the normal conception of beer as a "manly" drink, one that makes you irresistible to buxom women in bikinis, and magically transforms your car into something Cherry Apple Red and made by some European with a name like Ferrari, Porsche or the like. This is a question of the very nature of beer.
In German, Beer is neither masculine nor feminine, but relegated to the neuter. Das Bier ist! To the Germans, beer is so normal as to not need to be gendered, I suppose. In French and Spanish, and I suspect in most Romantic languages, Beer is feminine (La Cerveza, La Biere, etc.), perhaps because it nurtures, sustains, and brings us joy. Just a thought.
English, being the relatively stodgy language that it is, reserves its gendered nouns and pronouns for very little. Men are masculine (Him, His, etc.), Women and Ships are feminine (Her, Hers, etc.), and everything else just gets to be call "it".
The answers I received were varied. Sam thought that if it did have a gender, beer might be a her. As he said, " 'She's a fine beer' sounds a lot more descriptive than 'It is a good beer.' It just seems like a better way to talk about beer." Others couldn't get the mass marketed, beer as the drink of patriotic, football watching white male image out of their minds.
As for me, I've decided that beer transcends these narrow labels. Beer is not male, female, or neuter. Beer is not him, her or it. Beer, simply, is. And you know what? Beer is pretty good, too.
You guys have any thoughts?
*Remembering, of course, the primary Rule of Ones, to whit: A One that is not cold is hardly a One at all.