While I have great respect for beer, I really do think Frank Zappa was onto something:
I have a theory about beer: Consumption of it leads to pseudo-military behavior. Think about it— winos don’t march. Whisky guys don’t march, either (sometimes they write poetry, which is often more horrible though).
Beer drinkers are into things that are sort of like marching— like football.
Maybe there’s a chemical in beer that stimulates the [male] brain to do violence while moving in the same direction as other guys who smell like them [marching]— “We, as a group of MEN, will drink this refreshing liquid, after which we will get together and beat the snot out of that guy over there.”
Beer seems to produce behavioral results which are psycho-chemically different from those produced by other alcoholic beverages.
Alcohol (the part that ‘gets you drunk’) is only one ingredient. There are other things in beer, and those [herbal and/or biological] components could affect the [male] brain, creating this violent tendency.
Go ahead and laugh. One day you’re going to read about some scientist discovering that hops, in conjunction with certain strains of ‘yeast creatures,’ has a mysterious effect on some newly discovered region of the brain, making people want to kill— but only in groups. (With whiskey, you might want to murder your girlfriend—but beer makes you want to do it with our buddies watching. It’s a buddy beverage—for buddy activities.
from The Real Frank Zappa Book 230-1
It’s the Beer
Maybe there�s a chemical in beer that stimulates the [male] brain to do violence while moving in the same direction as other guys who smell like them [marching]� �We, as a group of MEN, will drink this refreshing liquid, after which we will get togeth…
After decades of careful study, I’ve got to respond with a firm ‘maybe.’
In my experience, whiskey is social, and is the violence-inducer, while beer results in ecstatic wobblyness terminating in sleep.
But that may just be me.