➡ Why Beer Changed History (But No One Wrote About It)”

How to think like Graham Hancock but with investments

It started, as most of my ideas do, with a someone asking me about Beer companies. As the day went on, a headline I couldn’t ignore with a comment that made me laugh. The Supreme Court had just decided not to reconsider gay marriage, and someone on TV said, “Right thing to do.” And I thought:

“Yeah sure, but if consummating a marriage of any kind is constitutional, then so is consuming a beer.”

Because I remembered when the Biden administration floated that “two beers a week” health idea a few years back. Two beers a week. You can’t even get through a football game on that. It made me also think of Graham Hancock, who travels the world searching for ancient truths buried in stone. Me, I look for them in foam.

Is beer a part of human nature? If it is then these companies are cheap. And as I explored more, beer and alcohol is a great barometer of a cultures freedoms another area that investor measure when deciding on what and where to invest.

So unlike Scott Adams who thinks its poison, pull out your chalice and stein and fill it with the finest meade you can find and lets stir our inner recesses.

And unlike Graham Hancock, everything I write can be fact-checked, including this: this country was founded on beer. You can look it up and I wager the new Ken Burns documentary that promises to be epic on the Revolutionary War will cover some of the founding fathers tastes (may even in the Guinness Book of Records), and feels cosmically appropriate.

Washington brewed it, Jefferson wrote about it, and the pilgrims brought barrels of it to Plymouth before they brought a constitution. Our revolution started in a tavern, not a temple.

Even the Bible agrees. The first thing Noah did after the flood wasn’t pray or build a synagogue. He planted a vineyard. After surviving the end of the world, the man said, “I need a drink.”

That’s when it hit me. Beer, wine, whiskey—they’re not just beverages. They’re barometers of freedom. When governments start counting your drinks, it’s not about health, it’s about power. When they start rationing joy, the empire’s already nervous.

It isn’t always about alcohol. It’s about proportion, freedom, and the quiet courage of having a pint without permission. History’s pattern is clear: when civilizations go dry, they don’t become holy—they become hysterical.

Before there were stock markets, there were barley markets. Before there was capital, there was fermentation.

Some anthropologists think beer came before bread. It wasn’t that early humans planted grain to eat, they planted it to drink.

You can almost picture it: one caveman turning to another saying, “You mean if we leave this mush out a few days, it makes us happy? Build a civilization!”

Beer wasn’t a luxury, it was the first economy.

Maybe Cain in fact offered beer? The Bible says Cain offered “the fruit of the ground” and Abel offered “the firstlings of his flock.” Traditionally, that’s read as: grain vs. blood, agriculture vs. animal husbandry. But if you think about it in the context of early civilization…grain + fermentation = beer.

In Sumer, workers were paid in beer. In Egypt, pyramid builders worked for a liquid wage. Imagine getting paid in five pints a day and you couldn’t even save it, you had to consume your salary. Talk about liquidity.

Health fact: beer was safer than water, nutritious enough to survive on, and social enough to keep people from killing each other. It was civilization’s dividend: you worked, you drank, you lived another day.

More than calories, beer gave people community. You didn’t need a priest or a pyramid to feel connected, you just needed a jug and someone to share it with.
Fermentation was the first act of faith that didn’t require religion. You mixed something lifeless, waited, and it transformed. That’s not chemistry, that’s hope.

And that’s why beer always outlasts empires. Because it’s the simplest expression of civilization itself—turning grain into joy.

How Beer changed the Fate of Egypt and the Destiny of Civilization

Now imagine the Pharaoh not as a stiff statue, but like a character from an Irish pub story. There’s actually old lore that the Irish might have come from Egyptian exiles (more realistic than Netflix); maybe that’s why they build monuments and loved storytelling.

Picture it. Pharaoh’s red-faced, waving around a golden mug of barley beer, laughing too loud. He’s ranting to his entourage, “I tell ya Danny Boy, I saw seven fat cows and seven skinny cows, and the skinny ones ate the fat ones! I just can’t shake it”

Everyone stares at their sandals. The magicians have no clue.

Then the cupbearer mumbles, “Uh, Your Majesty, there’s this Hebrew guy in prison who interprets dreams.” Pharaoh squints, says “Bring him in. If he’s wrong, feed him to the crocodiles.”

Enter Joseph. Calm, underfed, still polite.

Pharaoh says, “So, Joe, I hear you know about dreams? What’s with the cows? Is this about inflation or my mother-in-law?”

Joseph answers, “You’ll have seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. Save now.”

Pharaoh slams his mug, pats him on the back “That’s brilliant! I knew I liked you. Ok, you’re in charge. I’m still Pharaoh, but you handle the details”

And he hands him his ring.

Next morning bright sun, Pharaoh wakes up clutching his head. “Who did I give my ring too?

We’ve all gone through something like that, am I right?

The next Pharaoh went dry, banned laughter, fired the bards. He called beer poison and replaced dreams with quotas. That’s when Egypt dried up. The Nile still flowed, but the heart didn’t.

Aristotle said virtue sits between two extremes. Too little courage and you’re a coward, too much and you’re a man with hospital bills. Same with man’s passion of gold, guns, fine clothes, tobacco, alcohol, women, and gambling. The trick is proportion.

Beer nailed it before philosophy did.

A half pint and you’re friendly, a gallon and you’re Pharaoh. Beer lets you touch the edge of transcendence without falling in.

It’s the rehearsal for joy, civilized, portion-controlled happiness. I wrote about financial literacy works and now something even more important: the philosophy of drinking. You don’t bet the farm; you keep the balance. A portfolio, like a pint, only works if you respect the pour and the foam (profits).

A little risk, a little rest, a little beer. Enough to feel alive, not enough to ruin the party. The moment a nation forgets that ratio, goes too dry or too drunk, it stops being a republic and becomes a rehab center with taxes.

Virtue might be in the middle, but wisdom? Usually at the bottom of the second glass.

History’s War on Intoxication

Every time a ruler sobers up, an empire gets nervous. The Nazis banned drugs, rationed alcohol, and preached purity. The Soviets did the same with vodka.
Religious empires limited wine to the faithful: one mighty and influential one just outright banned it.

The US tried it thanks to our good women folk, and that created moonshine, gangsters, and bootlegging. They all called it health or holiness. What I see is control.

When the Bible says, “A new king arose who knew not Joseph,” it means a bureaucrat took over. He didn’t drink, didn’t laugh, didn’t listen. He saw the cup as weakness.

You don’t need economic data to know where that leads. A country that can’t toast is a country that’s tightening or going the route of drug use. Beer is the sanity line between order and obsession. When Pharaoh still had his pint, he could laugh and learn. When he went dry, he built pyramids instead of friendships.

Sober empires don’t last. They crack. The human spirit doesn’t thrive on restraint. Restraint is just our way of fermenting.

Why is that? Because you can run Silicon Valley on psychedelics, but you can’t run a republic.

Beer leads to questionable decisions, sure. Out-of-wedlock babies, late-night proposals, songs that shouldn’t exist.

But those “mistakes” built civilizations.

Without them, you don’t get love stories: you get dating apps by Barry Diller who had a faux marriage and only recently came out. Beer reveals things about you to the world. Words fly.

Now young people delay marriage, delay kids, delay risk. They blame inflation. I blame not having a sip. A thirsty generation is a cautious generation. Beer might make you text your ex, but it also makes you start families.

IVF is for when society forgets how to flirt. Beer made parents before science made labs and cheaper.

So maybe freedom doesn’t look like perfect discipline. Maybe it’s a Friday night when the country stops calculating and starts laughing. The republic runs best on beer and a sense of humor.

Look at Tom Brady, the GOAT. Never drank coffee during his career and you would say pure control. But remember that clip of him downing a beer on live TV faster than humanly possible? That was the most human he ever looked. The man loved beer, but now he doesn’t drink, and well — you can read the tabloids. A man can conquer the NFL, but you can’t beat your thirst.

Every generation thinks it’s inventing the future, but you can tell who’s winning by what’s in their glass. When beer flows, economies breathe. When bars are empty, spreadsheets multiply.

That’s why I watch beer stocks like other people watch GDP.

Brown-Forman, Constellation, Sam Adams, Molson Coors

Beer companies are behavioral finance with foam. Every pint is a vote of confidence in tomorrow.

A sober empire saves money but loses imagination. A drunk one burns bright then collapses. The balanced ones build cathedrals (Belgium beer).

When Pharaoh went dry, his empire cracked. When America learned to brew, it boomed.

Every renaissance starts the same way with someone saying, “Let’s grab a beer.”

So I would say to DONALD TRUMP the Golden Age won’t start until you and RFK share a pint together. It’s healthy.

And, yes, I glorified alcohol as Donald’s brother and many others fell into a tragic addiction they couldn’t get out of and I’m sorry for that and know a few myself.

But as a civilization and as an investment, alcohol has its place.

A very important place actually.

Have a great day and listend to Toby today it moved me.