Yesterday Dylan asked me what unfermented beer is called. "Wort", said I, automatically; it's pronounced to rhyme with "Bert". I said I thought it came from Old English, and possibly had a connection with the German Wort ("word"). But, not so! It's in fact from the Old English wyrt ("root"). So wort is the root of beer. This makes intuitive sense to me, as do the other words that spring from the same (ahem) root: "radical", "radix", "ramify", "rhizome".
"Ramify" is particularly resonant with the process of brewing, which is successive levels of purification and extraction. From raw grain, you produce malt by sprouting. Toasting that malt, you mash by adding hot water and letting the grain's natural enzymes convert the starches (complex) to sugars (simple). You then run hot water through the mash, which rinses out the sugars and makes a purified extract. An abstraction of malt, if you will. Boiling clarifies the wort and precipitates proteins and husk material, further purifying the solution. This is then chilled and yeast is added; the yeast, with their biochemical magic, renders sugars into alcohol: the simplest molecule, the root and reason for the whole process. Early brewers were keenly aware of the magical nature of yeast; even though they didn't understand the microbiology involved, they knew a special substance was at work, and they called it godisgood.
Purification doesn't stop there, of course; the canny brewer needs to separate the yeast from the beer by filtration, addition of precipitating chemicals, or just settling. The godisgood, having done its work, needs to disappear so that the humans can do their work -- or, in this case, their drinking.
And with that little lesson, it's time for me to brew.