NATIONAL DAYS

National Drink Beer Day: since when is it celebrated and why?

The cereal-based fermented beverage is one of the oldest and most popular drinks around, and today is one of its days.

ANNA SZILAGYIEFE

Today, Saturday, September 28, is National Drink Beer Day, or National Beer Drinking Day, according to some. A chance to celebrate the third most popular drink on the planet after water and tea and one of the oldest alcoholic drinks around, with archaeological evidence for its fermentation dating back to 13,000 years ago in the middle east.

Celebrating National Drink Beer day is as easy as its name suggests, grab your favourite beverage, whether it’s a lager, an ale, a stout or a what beer, sit back and enjoy.

National Drink Beer Day origins and history

The actual origins of today as National Beer Day are as cloudy as a New England IPA. Some suggest that it’s because it’s the birth day of Arthur Guinness, famed Irish brewer of the beer bearing his name, but that’s not true: he was born on September 24, 1725. It’s quite close to his birthday, true, but that’s not usually a good enough reason to name a different day to celebrate.

Others point to today being in the middle of the Oktoberfest season. Oktoberfest has been celebrated in Munich since 1810 and is one of the biggest popular festivals in the world with more than six million visitors coming to Munich to enjoy the beer there. While Oktoberfest is now celebrated around the world, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that we could find that National Drink Beer Day is related to it.

Whether National Drink Beer Day is related to Oktoberfest or not, what you may find is your local bar or alehouse offering German-style beer to celebrate Oktoberfest season.

National Beer Day

Even more confusingly, there is also National Beer Day, which is celebrated on April 7 in the U.S. and marks the day the Cullen-Harrison Act came into force, which allowed beer containing up to 3.2% alcohol to be sold and started the end of prohibition.

Since when is National Drink Beer day celebrated?

As with the origin story of National Drink Beer Day, it’s not clear when it was started to be celebrated. Some places on the internet claim it dates back to the early 1900s, but we weren’t able to find a source for that.

But whenever and however it started, National Drink Beer is now in the national days calendar, so let’s raise a glass to it. Cheers!

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