It’s well known that beer as a beverage dates very far back, although its original incarnations might be somewhat different than the lagers, ales, and stouts we’re used to quaffing today.
However, most people really don’t know how much influence beer wielded in ancient times. So we’re going to list a few interesting beer facts that come from a time long before kegerators and cushioned bar stools.
Picture by irum.
No one really knows when beer was first discovered. It was never invented but was likely discovered by accident, as any cereal-based product can potentially undergo spontaneous fermentation due to airborne natural yeasts, but records show that folks were drinking beer in China and Mesopotamia as far back as 7000 B.C. In fact, the oldest recipe ever discovered was for brewing a batch of beer, although this version of beer did not include hops and was sweetened with honey and dates, so it was much sweeter than what we’re used to throwing back today.
The origins of the beer that we are used to consuming today has its roots in the German Beer Purity Laws of 1516, which dictated that beer can only contain water, barley, and hops. However, this was not the first law that regulated beer production. Rather, the first mention of a beer law was in the Code of Hammurabi set forth by the infamously harsh Babylonian leader. By the time the Code was set forth in the 2nd Century B.C., beer had become an extremely popular beverage in Mesopotamia and in the rest of the biblical world (although the Bible doesn’t mention beer specifically). Many brewers and bar owners at the time would water down their product or use inferior grains to maximize profit, which great disgusted the ancient ruler, so he put forth a law forbidding brewers or merchants from doing this. The punishment? The offending party was to be forcibly drowned in the swill that he created, in true Hammurabi fashion. Fortunately, there were no laws against public drunkenness!
Beer over time became extremely commonplace in Egypt and then it spread onward to Greece and Rome, although in those civilization it was a distant second to wine in terms of popularity. However, in the Middle Ages beer consumption spiked upward again, especially in modern-day Germany, England, and Belgium, as it was too cold in these areas to effective grow grapes at the time.
At the time, water was by and large unsafe to drink due to the lack of sanitation, but the fermentation process effectively killed off most harmful microbes and bacteria, so it became the dominant beverage to drink during daily meals. Today, it is estimated that the average person in Northern Europe consumed 65 gallons of beer over the course of a year!
The Purity Laws and advances in brewing technology (especially during the Industrial Revolution, when the steam engine and the thermometer were invented) helped improve the quality of beer and helped establish many of the brands that we know and love today. However, there have still been some attempts to recreate the recipes and methods from ancient times. Anchor Steam Brewing in San Francisco in 1989 recreated the original Sumerian beer recipe when they released for a limited time its Ninkasi beer (Ninkasi being the Sumerian goddess of brewing). And Newcastle Brewery in conjunction with the University of Cambridge archeology department, was actually able to recreate a beer recipe originally found on the walls of the tomb of King Akhenaton.
The beer, named Tutankhamen after Ahkenaton’s more famous son, is an accurate representation of the original brew, using an ancient strand of wheat only found in the Nile Delta along with coriander seeds. But it’s not just something you can pick up at a local corner store; only 1,000 bottles were brewed, and the final price tag of a Tutankhamen comes to $520 per bottle, making it one of the most expensive beer of all time! A nice piece of history, although I’d rather pay much less for a Sam Adams. But it goes to show that beer’s popularity has truly stood the test of time, and that it remains to this day the nectar of the gods.
Have you something to add to the history of beer? Share your knowledge by leaving a comment!
“B is for Beer” by Tom Robbins !
Reinheitsgebot, the German Purity Law you reference, had less to do with “improv[ing] the quality of beer” and more to do with keeping bread affordable. By prohibiting brewers from using the grains popular in baking, the demand for those grains decreased and their price was kept low. As a result, bread was less expensive and some traditional styles of beer were lost.
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Just a few corrections and additions – the code of Hammurabi was set down in the 2nd Millenium BC, NOT the 2nd Century BC.
While beer is not specifically mentioned in the English translations of the Bible, beer is indeed mentioned several times in the original Hebrew.
The ancient Sumerian word for beer (actually, the beer in the ancient recipe) is Sikaru, which apparently made its way into Hebrew as Shikar or Shekar (Strong’s number 7941). This was mistranslated as ‘strong drink’ by early translators who had no idea what the word meant, other than the context of an alcoholic beverage.
I’ve counted four spelling errors in this article – there may be more, as I have only roughly counted. Perhaps the author was too busy sampling the subject to edit his own work?
Great article. But what about Dogfish Head Craft Brewery’s Chateau Jiahu? Supposedly from the oldest known recipe (~9000 years old). An important brew from one of the most important brewers of our time.
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cool
Today beer is the third largest preferred drink after water and tea. So cheers for its popularity……………..
happy drinking
I still can’t take drinking beer. The taste really was so aweful for me. I’d rather go for tea hot or cold.
The beer in’s cleaner than water because of 3-4% alcohol, its the 3 hours boiling that it takes to get the sugar from the malted barley.
Nice to see you back, it’s been a while. This is a great jumping off place, for some stuff we wrote about the ingredients and their history in beer, as well as the processes involved. Also, since you mentioned that Sumerian “stuff” we have the poem written for Ninkasi, which is doubles as brewing instructions. Here are a couple links.
http://thankheavenforbeer.com/category/beer-ingredients/page/3/
http://thankheavenforbeer.com/category/beer-ingredients/page/2/
http://thankheavenforbeer.com/2008/09/25/beer-gods/
CK. You’re right about the DFH brew. It is based on remains that were something like 9000 b.c., so that’s one of the oldest.
Paidi, nice corrections. I agree especially with your Hebrew assessment on the beer idea. I need to take a look at some of the Aramaic sections, too. I imagine that they both share some ancient semitic phonemes but I’m not too sure. Cross reference Ugarit stuff might help, too.
Good article, but the process of heating the water either to boiling or pasteurization temperatures killed the bacteria not fermentation (making it a safer beverage at the time).
Also a $520 beer is not among the most expensive bottles of beer – try $503,300 on ebay for an 1852 bottle of Allsops Artic Ale
Finally – CK – in refrence to your post about Dogfish – “one of the most important brewers of our time” – Pleeeeeaaaase, Sam is a cool dude and some of their beers are good, but that reference is a stretch. Let me know when they stop dosing their high gravity beers with sugar to try to break records.
George,
Alcohol also kills off and doesn’t allow the growth of harmful bacteria, so the article is correct in that respect. If you leave water that was simply boiled sitting around, you still will get bacterial infection over time. I’m not disputing the immediate outcome of boiling but the alcohol in fermentation processes does that job as well. And later on, hops also had antibacterial and antiseptic results.
I see what your saying about the bottle of beer that is $503,300 being the most expensive but I think here they are talking about beer that is still produce…not one or two of a kind.
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I know this post has been dormant for a bit, but I gotta say it and some of the comments were very interesting. Nice post!