A short history of beer ...

Adapted from LegendsOfBeer.com

It’s well known that beer as a beverage dates back thousands of years, although its original appearance and taste were probably very different to the lagers and ales we’re used to today.

However, most people really don’t know how much influence beer wielded in ancient times. So I'm going to list a few interesting beer facts that come from a time long before cushioned bar stools.

No one really knows when beer was first brewed. It wasn't invented but most likely discovered by accident. All cereal-based products can undergo spontaneous fermentation due to airborne natural yeasts, but records show that people were drinking beer in China and Mesopotamia as far back as 7000 BCE. 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 today's varieties.

The type of beer that we consume today probably 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.

The first mention of a beer law was in the Code of Hammurabi, the infamous Babylonian leader. By the time the Code was impressed in clay in the 2nd Century BCE, beer had become an extremely popular beverage in Mesopotamia and in the rest of the Middle East.


Above: BEER MAKING INSTRUCTIONS, URUK, 3100 BCE

Many brewers and bar owners at the time would water down their product or use inferior grains to maximize profit. This angered Hammurabi, so he devised 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.

Over time, beer became extremely commonplace in Egypt and then it spread to Greece and Rome, although in those civilizations it was a distant second to wine in terms of popularity. However, in the Middle Ages beer consumption spiked upward again, especially in Germany, Britain, and Belgium where it was too cold to grow grapes.

At that time, water was generally unsafe to drink due to a lack of sanitation, but the fermentation process effectively killed most harmful microbes and bacteria, so it became the dominant beverage to drink with daily meals. It is estimated that the average person in Northern Europe consumed at least 65 gallons of beer over the course of a year! It was drunk with breakfast, lunch and the evening meal.

The Purity Laws and advances in brewing technology (especially during the Industrial Revolution, when the steam engine and the thermometer were invented) helped to improve the quality of beer and establish many of the brands that we know and love today.

However, there have been some attempts to recreate recipes and methods from ancient times. In 1989, Anchor Steam Brewing in San Francisco recreated the original Sumerian beer recipe when they released its Ninkasi beer (Ninkasi being the Sumerian goddess of brewing) for a limited time.

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 - a Egyptian Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty who died around 1336 BCE.


The beer - named Tutankhamen after Ahkenaton’s more famous son - is an accurate representation of the original brew which used 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 beers of all time!

A nice piece of history, although personally I’d rather pay much less for a good pint of Kilkenny's or Theakston's draught bitter :)