THE HISTORY OF BEER

Roughly between 13,000 and 9,000 BC, people began to search for forms of food other than wild animal meat. Giving up their nomadic lifestyle, they increasingly settled in one place. They began to cultivate the land, eating its crops and raising animals. During this time, humans learned to hull, crush in their mouths and swallow the grains of wild cereals. Over time, people learnt to cultivate cereals, mow them down, separate the grains by beating them with sticks, then crush this grain between stones, then add some water, pound it and bake it on a hot stone. This is how bread was made as far back as 10000 BC.

Rock mortars in the Raqefet cave,
used for beer production in the Stone Age. →

 

← Beer receipt from Alulu - Notes purchase of 'best' beer from brewer,
ca. 2050 BC from the Sumerian city of Umma in ancient Iraq.[1]

All that is needed to make a primitive beer is bread and water - the two ingredients by which alcoholic fermentation takes place. Such a mushy drink is nutritious, although cloudy and not very good, but it already contains alcohol. It is not known whether the first people who knew how to bake bread also knew beer. Bread was used to prepare beer by the Sumerians, the first civilisation in whose cultural legacy there are documents showing beer production.

In Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence of beer is believed to be a 6,000-year-old Sumerian
tablet depicting people drinking the beverage through reed straws from a common bowl. ↓

Beer is one of the oldest beverages that humans have produced. The first chemically confirmed barley beer dates back to Iran in the 5th millennium BC and was recorded in the written history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and spread throughout the world. Since almost any grain containing certain sugars can spontaneously ferment due to the presence of wild yeasts in the air, it is possible that beer-like beverages were independently developed around the world soon after a tribe or culture domesticated cereals. Chemical tests of ancient ceramic vessels reveal that beer was produced as early as around 7,000 years ago in what is now Iran.[2] This discovery reveals one of the earliest known uses of fermentation and is the earliest evidence of brewing to date.[3]

← A 3900-year-old Sumerian poem in honour of Ninkasi, the patron saint of brewing, contains
the oldest surviving recipe for beer, describing the production of beer from barley bread.

In China, remains on pottery dating from around 5,000 years ago show that beer was brewed using barley and other grains.[4]
The invention of bread and beer is believed to be responsible for mankind's ability to develop technology and build civilisation.[5][6][7] The earliest chemically confirmed barley beer to date was discovered at Godin Tepe in the central Zagros Mountains of Iran, where fragments of a 5,400-5,000-year-old jug were found coated with beer stone, a by-product of the brewing process.[8]

 

Model of a bakery and brewery, c. 2000 BC, Thebes. →

Beer may have been known in Neolithic Europe as early as 5,000 years ago[9] and was mainly brewed locally.[10] Beer produced before the industrial revolution continued to be produced and sold locally, although in the 7th century AD beer was also produced and sold by European monasteries. During the industrial revolution, beer production shifted from craft to industrial, and local production ceased to be relevant in the late 19th century.[11]  The development of hydrometers and thermometers changed brewing, allowing the brewer to have more control over the process and greater knowledge of the results. Today, the brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant multinational companies and many thousands of smaller producers, from breweries to regional breweries.[12] More than 133 billion litres are sold annually, resulting in total global revenues of US$294.5 billion in 2006.[13]

REFERENCES:

  1. "World's oldest beer receipt? – Free Online Library". thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved 8 May 2010.
  2. "The History of Beer - when Was Beer Invented?".
  3. Homer, Trevor (2007). The Book of Origins. Penguin. ISBN 9781101041925.
  4. Wang, Jiajing; Liu, Li; Ball, Terry; Yu, Linjie; Li, Yuanqing; Xing, Fulai (23 May 2016). "Revealing a 5,000-y-old beer recipe in China". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (23): 6444–6448. doi:10.1073/pnas.1601465113. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 4988576. PMID 27217567.
  5. Mirsky, Steve (May 2007). "Ale's Well with the World". Scientific American. 296 (5): 102. Bibcode:2007SciAm.296e.102M. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0507-102. Retrieved 4 November 2007.
  6. Dornbusch, Horst (27 August 2006). "Beer: The Midwife of Civilization". Assyrian International News Agency. Retrieved 4 November 2007.
  7. Protz, Roger (2004). "The Complete Guide to World Beer". Archived from the original on 12 October 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2008. When people of the ancient world realised they could make bread and beer from grain, they stopped roaming and settled down to cultivate cereals in recognisable communities.
  8. "Barley Beer". University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Retrieved 21 June 2011.
  9. "Prehistoric brewing: the true story". Archaeo News. 22 October 2001. Retrieved 13 September 2008.
  10. "Beer-history". Dreher Breweries. Archived from the original on 9 July 2009.
  11. Cornell, Martyn (2003). Beer: The Story of the Pint. Headline. ISBN 0-7553-1165-5.
  12. "Industry Browser – Consumer Non-Cyclical – Beverages (Alcoholic) – Company List". Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved 5 November 2007.
  13. "Beer: Global Industry Guide". Research and Markets. Retrieved 5 November 2007.