While chugging beer from an actual boot may not be someone’s idea of fun, drinking from a bierstiefel certainly takes your experience up by several notches. What makes drinking from the bierstiefel fun? Hence, the origin of this tradition is still a mystery. Whether those vessels held beer or not is something that’s still needs to be proven. Further archaeological evidence suggests that people of Central Europe have been making shoe-shaped vessels for centuries. While some sources claim that this bizarre tradition originated in Germany, others believe it can be routed back to England. Did the bierstiefel originate in Germany for real? The idea behind this? To instill the spirit of loyalty, even if it meant putting up with something as gross as drinking from someone’s boot. There’s another theory that traces the bierstiefel’s origin back to one of the earliest instances of ritual hazing, where soldiers would get one group member to take their shoe off (usually the one who had the muckiest boot!) and initiate a new member into the group by making him drink beer from the shoe. This led to the invention of the bierstiefel, a boot-shaped glass that’s synonymous with German beer culture.
Upon emerging as victors of battles, German soldiers were offered a strange reward: drinking beer from their general’s boot. But for the members of the 19th century German troops, this was pretty normal. Does drinking beer from a boot sound preposterous? Maybe.
0 kommentar(er)
