The World’s Oldest Beverage
by Spence Cooper on 10/26/09 at 10:04 am
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It's delicious and incredibly old
Believe it or not, beer is almost as old as civilization itself, and can be traced to the earliest Sumerian writings in Sumer, an area in the southern region of Babylonia in present-day Iraq; site of the Sumerian civilization of city-states that flowered during the third millennium BC. The oldest proven records of brewing are about 6,000 years old.
Since fermentation is a natural process, there is speculation that the Sumerians discovered the fermentation process by chance. In any event, the earliest Sumerian writings contain references to beer in a 4,000 year-old Sumerian seal that was determined to contain a beer recipe. Originally, beer was unfiltered and consumed through reed straws to avoid grain hulls and brewing residue. Historians claim the Babylonians — rulers of Mesopotamia after they conquered the Sumerian empire — mastered the art of brewing beer once derived from the Sumerian culture; the Babylonians went on to create 20 different types of beer.
Beer from Babylon was exported and distributed as far away as Egypt and became a vital part of the Hebrew, Chinese, and Inca cultures. In Egypt, beer was distributed in limited individual portions, and used as payment in a barter system. The beer portions were allocated based on social hierarchy; workers at the bottom of the bureaucratic latter received the least amounts, with portions increasing to civil servants, then administrators and high priests — no doubt there was a flourishing black market for the brew.
Knowledge of brewing was passed on to the Greeks; the Greeks then taught the Romans to brew. Beer was popular in early Rome but wine eventually replaced beer as the alcoholic beverage of choice, with beer only being brewed in the outer areas of the Roman Empire. The Romans grew to consider beer a barbarian drink, much like the Anglo-American and European elites think of beer today.
During the Middle Ages, beer was one of the most common beverages in the northern and eastern parts of Europe where grape cultivation was difficult. In the southern portion of Europe, wine was the most common drink, but beer was still popular among the lower classes.
Hopped beer was perfected in the towns of Germany by the 13th century, and the preservation effect of hops permitted beer to be stored in barrels for large-scale export. By the fifteenth century, hops were used in Flemish beer imported to England. By the sixteenth century hops gained widespread use replacing bark, leaves, and gruit, a mix of various herbs.
With the establishment of German standards for brewers called the Reinheitsgebot of 1516 Pledge of Purity, the pledged standard decreed that only four ingredients can be used in the production of beer: water, malted barley, malted wheat and hops — yeast was added to the list after Louis Pasteur’s discovery in 1857. The modern era of brewing in the U.S. began with commercial refrigeration in 1860, automatic bottling, pasteurization, and railroad distribution.
Today’s modern breweries brew literally hundreds of different types beers, including lagers, ales, dark beers, wheat beers, stouts, bitters, Chili Beer, and Cream Ale. And most breweries continue to use traditional brewing techniques, sidestepping new technology in favor of conventional historical brewing methods to maintain and guaranty quality.
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