For the SREF Project Day, I visited the Toy Museum and the Beer Museum, both in Munich. The toy museum was very cool to see, showing the history of craftsmanship with wooden and porcelain models that would later transform to plastic minifigures and small battery-powered machines. There was a whole case of sci-fi spacecraft and robots from the 1970s, which reminded me very much of the hand-me-down toys I received from my father as a young child. American influence was a lot more relevant to German toys than I would have expected, but it makes sense as a direct result of Disney’s early days in animation.
The beer museum was also quite fascinating. We learned that the art of brewing dates back as far as the times of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. The consumption of alcohol is an evidently universal social aspect across nearly all cultures, and it frankly hasn’t evolved as much as almost anything else we’ve seen on this trip. I was surprised to learn, however, just how important the invention of motor-driven cooling systems is to brewing itself. It seems relatively obvious that refrigeration is important for the enjoyment of an ice cold beer, but I really had no idea how much the heating and cooling of elements in the process of brewing could be!
Hi Tyler!
ReplyDeleteI also was super interested in how long people have actually been brewing beer. I completely thought that it was only something that was invented during medieval times.