Part 5 of The Story of Beer, our journey through the people, ingredients, discoveries, and traditions that put beer in our glass. Why is beer called beer? We use the word so casually that we rarely stop to wonder where it came from. Beer. Four letters. Thousands of years of linguistic confusion. Ale Came First In early English and Scandinavian languages, the common word for a malt based fermented drink was related to the word we now know as ale. The word beer followed a different path. Old English used the word bēor, while related words appeared in Germanic languages,… Read More »