Useless Beer Fact of the Day!

I remember doing the “Useless Beer Fact of the Day” when I first started the blog. I realized the other day I haven’t done one of these in a long time and that makes me sad. Sad face! So it’s time to turn those frowns upside down with FatCat’s patented Useless Beer Fact of the Day!!!

King Gambrinus is an icon in the beer world and adorns many modern breweries’ labels. Some have even gone as far as to refer to King Gambrinus as the patron saint of beer. With this much clout in today’s beer world, King Gambrinus must have been a real dude worthy of all this praise right? Turns out, not exactly. There are a few potential sources for the basis of this character. John the Fearless is one suspect who is believed to be the inventor of hopped malt beer. Another possibility being a cup-bearer in the court of Charlemagne named Gambrinus. A cup-bearer isn’t worthy of the current Gambrinus name so we’ll ignore it. The other candidate is Duke John I of Brabant who was called Jan Primus. Jan Primus was eventually corrupted into today’s name Gambrinus.

In any of those scenarios it turns out Gambrinus was neither a king nor a saint. Go figure.



Cheers!

 
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambrinus