Beer is Discovered

All cultures throughout human history - whether great civilization or native tribe - brewed some sort of fermented beverage from whatever fruits, honeys, grains, herbs or plants were available locally. Fruit wines and honey wines predate beer by tens of thousands of years in human history because the sugars in fruits and honey are easily fermentable. The sugars in grains, on the other hand, must be extracted from the grain through a process of germination and starch-conversion. Understandably, therefore, the secrets of creating an alcoholic beverage exclusively from grains were discovered much later in human history.

The domestication of grain is considered by historians to be the birth of civilization, so the established belief is that fermentation of grain must have followed civilization. However, historical evidence shows that in certain cultures the discovery of fermenting grains was what actually motivated man to "civilize" and cultivate grain in the first place. Regardless of the motivating factor in each particular culture, it is clear that the birth of civilization and the discovery of beer are closely and temporally linked.

The world's oldest written recipe appears to be for the making of beer. Recently, archeologists and craft brewers teamed up to brew a beer based on a Sumerian recipe dating back to 2,800 B.C. Historians maintain that beer was "invented" in the region known as Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) approximately 10,000 years ago. (Some say there is evidence that beer was discovered independently in South America at approximately the same time.) Because barley is a hardy grain that grows well under adverse conditions, it was widely cultivated in Mesopotamia. However, it was originally used only for bread and baking. Although they almost certainly made fermented beverages from fruits and honey, the Mesopotamians had no specific knowledge of the grain malting process before beer was discovered.

Most experts feel that beer was not intentionally invented but rather accidentally discovered. The conventional hypothesis is that someone accidentally left a basket of raw barley out in the rain where it began to germinate. Instead of wasting the partially germinated grain (which we now know as malt), the barley was allowed to dry before it was then used for baking or whatever purpose (an activity similar to the modern kilning process). Inevitably, a basket of malt or a piece of bread made from malt was once again left out in the rain where it was exposed to natural airborne yeasts. Some brave individual then luckily learned that the sweet liquid resulting from this accident was not only tasty but imparted a slightly euphoric feeling akin to experienced by drinking their fruit and honey wines. Thus, beer was discovered. This theory is based on the way beer was brewed in ancient times. Archeologists know from Sumerian drawings and writings that beer was made from half-baked barley loaves that were immersed in water then allowed to ferment naturally from airborne yeasts. The resulting liquid was the beer. Beer was brewed in this manner for thousands of years. As one can imagine, brewing beer by this method created a cloudy, grainy beverage that we would hardly recognize as anything like beer today.

Every indigenous culture throughout the world held a close spiritual kinship with their natural environment. Naturally, they viewed fermented beverages as a sacred gift from their gods and attached a deep religious significance to the brewing process. Although this attitude probably had more to do with the effects of alcohol on the drinker, the Sumerians, for example, believed that beer was invented by their goddess Ninkasi. Egyptians attribute the gift of beer to their goddess Hathor. As these two facts illustrate, brewing - seen as a domestic chore - was the domain of women for thousands of years. Egyptian men were strictly prohibited from brewing beer, and the female brewer-priestesses enjoyed a very exalted status in Egyptian society. Similar attitudes about fermented beverages were not exclusive to Mesopotamia and the Middle East. Therefore, brewing was a very important thread in the fabric of all ancient cultures, and religion continued to play an important role in the history of beer.