beer stick

beer stick (plural beer sticks)

1. A short, spicy, cured meat sausage.
   • 1994, America's Favorite Wild Game Recipes, page 118:

     To dry beer sticks in conventional oven, add 1 teaspoon liquid smoke flavoring to meat mixture.

   • 2009, Loren Bartels, Twice The Luck: A Diary Of A Minnesota Moose Hunt, page 78:

     We load a few more supplies that will be beneficial for processing: large heavy plastic bags, twisties, and my seasonings for making sausage, brats, polish, and beer sticks.

   • 2010, Amy Jo Ehman, Prairie Feast: A Writer's Journey Home for Dinner, page 182:

     Locally made ham sausage, koubasa, farmers' sausage, garlic coil, bison smokies, venison bratwurst and beer sticks; Spanish chorizo, Lebanese lamb kebabs, French merguez and Balkan cévapčići.

   • 2012, Liz Williams, Five Foot and Fearless:

     I also had beer sticks (mini salami sausages generally more at home on a bar leaner next to a beer-swilling male), which I had never taken before but which I thought would be a nice change from all the sweet snacks I usually ate, muesli bars, electrolyte-replacement drinks, bananas and chocolate.

   • 2022, Wendell G. Johnson, Katharina Barbe, Modern Germany:

     Landjäger, made of pork and beef, resemble beer sticks sold at American deli counters and are eaten in dried form.

2. A beer flight.
   • 1988, Southerly: The Magazine of the Australian English Association, page 206:

     There were a few regulars amongst them who came every day for lunch (a meat pie with tomato and barbeque sauce, a hamburger, two vanilla slices and a beer stick was a typical order) .

   • 2013, Samantha Cook, Claire Saunders, The Rough Guide to Kent, Sussex and Surrey:

     A beer stick (£10) gets you six 1/3-pint glasses of different draft beers; great for a group.

   • 2020, Keith Brooke, Genetopia:

     Lorin cracked another beer stick and passed it around. It tasted smoky and acrid and it was like the first beer Flint had ever drunk.

3. A device for tapping into a keg of beer.
   • 1951, J.R. Roberts, Lincoln's Revenge:

     Baron got behind the bar, moved to the sole beer stick, and drew Clint a mug.

   • 1987, Sebastian Barry, The Engine of Owl-light, page 180:

     […] behind the beer-sticks and the bottles, and even the cans of Budweiser and Ströhs may have had a swipe of the rag.

   • 2000, Denis Hamill, Fork in the Road, page 420:

     Under the grime, Colin could make out the familiar images of Davey Grogan's grandfather and great-grandfather, proud men dressed in white aprons and bow ties, posing behind the beer stick and with horse-drawn beer delivery wagons.

   • 2010, Gary Cahill, “Corner of River and Rain”, in Best Genre Short Stories Anthology #2, page 11:

     Through the glass front doors -- tables and booths on the left, the worn wooden long bar on the right, and behind the beer sticks, blessedly, Stella, our friend and sensible respite from all that "Hi! How're you doin'" "You bet!" "Oh, sure!" barkeep word slop that's the ruination of decent tavern talk almost everywhere.

   • 2014, Tampa Church of God, Read True Missionaries Experiences: The Hero of Hill House and Witch Doctor's Holiday:

     "I can" replied Otinga, taking his beer stick from its holder and putting into the beer, "if you can get me the proper things to make the medicine..."

4. A stick that has been impregnated with wild yeasts, used by Vikings to aid the fermentation of beer.
   • 2017, Pete Brown, Miracle Brew: Hops, Barley, Water, Yeast and the Nature of Beer, page 196:

     […] beer stick, almost a magic wand in ancient brewing, that survives today in the production of African sorghum beer and kvass in parts of Scandinavia.

   • 2021, Paul Deines, HowExpert Guide to Craft Beer, page 20:

     So even well into the Medieval era, fermentation was a mystical process. Vikings, for example, kept a "beer stick” that would kickstart fermentation by exposing wort to its accumulated yeast microbes.

5. A thin straightedge used to cut the top of the foam of a glass of beer.
   • 1973, Alan Richard Bond, Kinetics of the Hydrolysis of Diphenyldichlorosilane, page 20:

     The bands at 580 cm², (PhSiCl₂) and at 510 cm², (Ph_2Si(OH)₂) were measured using a "beer stick", a log ruler, by placing infinity on I₀ and measuring the peaks by the baseline technique.

   • 2021, Donald Henderson Clarke, Lady Ann:

     He wiped off the foam with a beer stick which resembled a white ruler, and set the goblet down in front of Tom.