Historically hops, yeast, malted barley, and water have all played the greatest and most important role in society. For almost 8000 years these ingredients have been mixed and have been appreciated by all classes of society in almost all civilizations.
The old cliche ³accident is the mother of invention² is a phrase that definitely holds true in the world of beer. The discovery was made way back when the Mediterranean region was the seat of civilization and barley flourished as a dietary staple. The climate of the Mediterranean was perfect for the cultivation of barley, and was used as the primary ingredient in breads, cakes, and other common food products. A farmer during this period discovered that if barley become wet, germinates, and eventually dried, the resulting barley would be sweeter and would not be as perishable as the original state of the barley.
There is not any first hand knowledge on how beer was discovered, but we can imagine the incident step by step. When the farmer discovered that his barley crop was wet, in order for him to salvage the crop, he probably spread it out to dry in the sun. Chances are that germination had already begun, and the grain had therefore malted and developed a much sweeter taste. The sweet result of what the farmer considered a disaster is now modern-day malted barley. This malted barley gave a sweeter taste to breads, cakes, or anything which had previously been prepared with unmalted barley. After a while when barley malt became a common ingredient it is thought that a loaf or bowl of this malt was accidentally left in the rain. When wet, the dissolved starches and sugars in the malted barley became susceptible to wild yeast, which started spontaneous fermentation (5). The discoverer of this new mix probably tasted it and realized how good it was. Unbeknownst to this ancient farmer, he had brewed the first beer ever.
Sumerian clay tablets dating from 6000 B.C. contain the first ever written recipes for beer. The tablets also detail specific religious rituals that one had to perform before he could consume the beverage. The Sumerians also left the first record of bureaucratic interference when their governments taxed and put tariffs on beer distribution.
Some anthropologists say that ancient strains of grain were not really good for making bread. Early wheat made heavy, pasty dough. Flour made from barley made crumbly, lousy bread. It was determined that humankind¹s first agricultural activity was growing barley. Forty percent of the grain harvest in Sumeria was converted to ale.
The laws pertaining to beer in ancient times were very strict. The Code of Hammurrabi in Babylon proved to be more harsh than our laws today. Establishments that sold beer receive special mention in those laws, codified in 1800 B.C. Owners of beer parlors who overcharged customers were sentenced to death by drowning. Those who failed to notify authorities of criminal elements in their establishments were also executed (1). Many of the beer makers and bartenders in the ancient world were women who sold ale under the supervision of the goddess Ninkasi, ³the lady who fills the mouth.² These Babylonians brewed at least sixteen styles of beer with wheat and malted barley.
Egyptians paid their workers with jugs of beer, and Ramses II was said to have consecrated over half a million jugs of it to the gods. In the Nile region beer was flavored with lavender, date, cedar, nutmeg, sugar, and probably hops.
The bible¹s references to unleavened bread suggest that the isolation and deliberate use of yeast was known at the time of Moses. A professor even wrote that beer is mentioned in the book of Exodus as one of the unknown leavens, and when Moses told Jews to avoid leavened bread during Passover in Exodus 12, he also meant that they should avoid beer. King David of the Jews was a brewer, and in early days of Christianity the Jews carried on the art of brewing and often introduced it to many other cultures.
The classical Greeks and Romans learned the art of brewing from the Egyptians. The word beer comes from the Latin ³bibere² meaning simply ³to drink.² The Latin word for beer is ³cerevisia,² a composite of ³Ceres,² the goddess of agriculture, and ³vis,² Latin for ³strength.²
Beer was carried by many barbarian tribes in Western and Northern Europe, and by the nineteenth century, hops was cultivated for brewing purposes in France and Germany. Even though hops give beer is refreshing properties it was neglected by many countries for centuries. Instead beers were flavored with woodruff, juniper, or grenadine, and can still be found in some European beers today.
In the Renaissance period brewing was mostly done by kings and monks. Home brew was the drink of mostly lower classes. It wasn¹t uncommon for children to drink beer on a daily basis. The fermentation process was very useful to destroy many malignant microorganisms in the distinctly undrinkable waters of most villages (7).
As the reformation came around, the church spent more time on religious matters than on brewing. At this time commercial brewers started to pick up the slack and were licensed under kings, queens, dukes, and earls. During this time queen Elizabeth I had a brew so strong that none of her servants could handle it, even though they received two gallons per day.
The New World exploration began and Elizabeth oversaw that no ship left port without a large cargo of beer. Beer provided a clean supply of water, some food value, and a good protection against scurvy, the lack of Vitamin C. Another extraordinary example of beer¹s influence on history is the case of the Pilgrims. They had first proposed to sail to Virginia but were forced to land at Cape Cod instead because they were running low on beer. When the Pilgrims arrived they saw the the Indians too had discovered their own beer made of maize, rather than barley. The Indians had learned the art of brewing from their Aztec and Mayan neighbors.
Beer was being brewed by Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam as early as 1612. Harvard College ran a brewhouse on campus in 1674, and the Harvard¹s first president was ousted because he failed to supply enough beer and food rations (5). Beer was valued so high in the Colonial economy that Harvard students were allowed to pay school tuition in wheat and malted barley. Students were rationed two pints of beer a day until the end of the 1700s when they stopped brewing.
Many of the Statesmen had a love for beer. William Penn had a malt house and a brewery on his estate in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Samuel Adams had the same set-up in Massachusetts. Benjamin Franklin kept very accurate records of his household expenses which allowed orders of twenty gallons of beer per month. George Washington developed his own recipes for the beer and made thirty gallons of beer at a time. Thomas Jefferson built his own brewery at Monticello in 1813 and maintained it until his death in 1826. His beer was considered by many to be some of the best in the young country.
In the 1800s a boom of breweries swept across the nation. In 1810 there were 132 breweries in the United States. By 1850 there were 431 breweries, and by 1860 there were 1,269 breweries. New York and Pennsylvania dominated the industry, brewing eighty-five percent of the country¹s beer.
During the mid-1800s, millions of immigrants were pouring into the United States from Europe. Many of these new Americans bringing along their art and science of brewing lager beer.
Lager is made with a different kind of yeast than ale. They ferment at the bottom of the barrel and have a drier, cleaner finish than ales. Lagers provide a clearer brew that is less prone to sour in the days before refrigerators. But lagers needed to be stored for weeks, or even months, in cold caves where low temperatures helped mature the beer.
The mid-nineteenth century brought the discovery of the refrigerator, allowing lagers to be made virtually everywhere. Louis Pasteur¹s studies of yeast cultures and fermentation help brewers brew lagers on more of a scientific level in the united States. He discovered the efficiency of heating liquids after they were packed in a bottle in order to prevent microbial contamination (5). The process, called pasteurization, was discovered by Louis because he was trying to preserve beer- not, as most believe, milk.
The lager-brewing breakthrough, coupled with a new wave of German immigration, produced a golden age of brewing in America. Between 1870 and 1919 American brewers rivaled their European counterparts in both quality and quantity of beer products. By 1890 there were seventy-four breweries clustered in Philadelphia alone, seventy-seven in New York City, and thirty-eight in Brooklyn. This was not just an East Coast phenomenon either. Chicago had forty-one breweries, Cincinnati, twenty-four, Buffalo, twenty, and St. Louis, twenty-nine. Milwaukee was an important brewing center in the upper Midwest, and San Francisco, with twenty-six breweries, was the brewing capitol of the Pacific Coast. This explosion of breweries gave beer drinkers a wide variety of beers to choose from.
On July 1, 1919 the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution went into effect. Know as prohibition, the law forbade the manufacture or sale of any beverage with more than one-half percent alcohol.
Throughout the days of Prohibition, some breweries managed to stay in business selling soda water, ice cream, and malt beverages. Others took advantage of gangsters and corruptible police officials to keep production going. Many breweries survived prohibition by selling malt syrup, which works quite nicely for home brew. Flavor, taste, and appeal do matter, but with thousands of breweries shutting their doors, quantity, rather than quality, became what really mattered.
When Prohibition was repealed by the 19th Amendment in 1932, the entire face of the brewing industry had forever changed.
The beer can was introduced in 1935, America entered a new era of brewing. The can was lightweight, no deposit, no return container that could be shipped anywhere. Radio, and later television, meant national advertising on a scale unheard of before. Beer became a national product instead of a local one. By 1940 there were over six hundred breweries nationwide. By 1980 that number had dwindled to forty.
The beer renaissance got its start in 1978 in the United States Congress. That is when the lawmakers legalized beer making at home. When Prohibition ended in 1933, Congress intended to legalize the home brewing of both wine and beer. Homemade wine was legalized, but the stenographer¹s omission left the words ³and/or beer² out of the Federal register (1). Home brewing of beer was technically illegal forty-seven years after Prohibition ended. Jimmy Carter erased that glitch with the stroke of his pen in February 1979. Now it is legal for every adult in a household to brew one hundred gallons of beer a year. Today the the American Homebrewers Association counts twenty-seven thousand members, and their numbers are growing drastically.
Now the microbrewery industry is in its second decade, and the number of breweries in America has jumped from eighty to almost five hundred in less than 10 years. The microbreweries are doing great and are here to stay. In 1992 sales for microbreweries have increased more than 44 percent. In 1993 the story was quite the same when sales increased yet another 40 percent.
Recently Becks beer has done some brewing experiments aboard the space shuttle to study zero gravity brewing. So you can bet that by the time we take our vacation to the moon we will have a beer waiting for us there.
Beer has been through a lot in its over 8000 years on this earth, and by the looks of the beer market it may continue to be one of the oldest beverages in the world.
