I completely missed The Session on Friday because I was distracted by the holiday as well as the book project, but it was on a similar topic to the one we had two Sessions ago: Beer in History, hosted by the Pittsburgh Beer Snob, Bill Kostkas.

At many points in history you can look back and find alcohol intertwined. A lot of times that form of alcohol is beer. Beer is something that connects us with the past, our forefathers as well as some of our ancestors. I want this topic to be a really open-ended one. So, it should be fairly easy to come up with something and participate.

Do you want to write about an important beer event with great historical significance? Famous figures that were brewers? Have you visited an establishment that has some awesome historic value? Maybe a historically-themed brewpub? I wouldn’t be surprised to even see a few posts on Prohibition. It doesn’t really matter when it comes to history!

It’s late, and I’m largely focusing on the last big push for the book, but this Session was tailor-made for this beer history I’ve been writing, so an anecdote from Bend, Oregon beer history.

During Prohibition, there appeared an article in the Bend Bulletin offering up suggestions for the use of confiscated homebrew. Central Oregonians (along with most of the rest of the population) thought so little of Prohibition that many articles of the time were blatantly tongue-in-cheek, offering the nudge-nudge wink-wink sensibility that reads like something from The Onion these days. This “suggestion” from that article is simply perfect in that regard:

The other suggestion was that the beer be sprayed on trees in the Deschutes national forest to eradicate pine beetles. Even if the beer did not kill them, it would stupefy the insects so that they would be unable to pick out the valuable trees for their destructive work, it was pointed out. A certain forest ranger volunteered to do the spraying.

I’ll just bet he did.