Summer 4000 years ago the woman recited a hymn to the goddess Ninkasi as she worked Ninkasi it is you who water the earth-covered malt the noble dogs guard it even from the royals it is you who soak the malt in a jar and spread the cooked mash on large reed mats and holds with both hands the great sweet wart brewing it with honey and wine place the fermenting fat which makes a pleasant sound app appropriately on top of a large collector vat and pour out the filtered beer of the collector vat it is like the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates and she takes a sip this is the first known recipe for beer the drink that built civilization.
From its origins of being brewed in neolithic baskets, it rose to an industrialized beverage shipped around the world facilitating many historical events along the way from helping the British take India to the establishment of food quality laws not to mention pubs and beer halls have been the headquarters of many revolutions from the green dragon tavern of the sons of liberty to Hitler's beer hall putsch beer's story is a global one no one person or culture invented it beer was probably more discovered that created and that discovery happened all around the world independently so far back that we have no idea when it first came into being.
Beer not only predates writing it also predates pottery domesticated grain and possibly even settled villages and organized religion it's ancient to the point of being primordial first appearing in the archeological record via traces of it on a potsherd discovered in what is now Iran a potsherd that's 7000 years old so given how ancient beer is how when and why it came to require some speculation now alcohol would've been known to early humans even in hunter-gatherer societies because it occurs naturally fruit left out too long can naturally ferment and create alcohol and that fermentation happens when a single cell fungus called yeast feeds on sugars producing carbon dioxide and ethanol as waste products.
The sugars in overripe fruit attract microscopic organisms known as yeasts as the yeasts feed on the fruit sugars they produce a compound called ethanol the type of alcohol in alcoholic beverages this process is called fermentation nobody knows exactly when humans began to create fermented beverages the earliest known evidence comes from 7000 bce in china where residue in clay pots has revealed that people were making an alcoholic beverage.
First, we'll look at the ingredients the main ingredients in any beer are water-malted Garin hops and yeast hops are the flowers of the hop plant that are used for flavoring the only other uses for hops are in herbal medicine with these four ingredients you have everything you need to make beer but the combinations in processes make all the difference all of these ingredients are boiled together for set amounts of time until the final mixture is filtered and sent to fermentation mineral contents in your water source can make a huge difference to the type of beer that you brew calcium and magnesium in your water otherwise referred to as hardness affect hoe the yeast grows and metabolizes the sugar in your brew bicarbonate or hco3 in your water also affects the ph of the beer during the fermentation process if you're wanting to brew a beer.
The truth goes that at a grain store maybe a basket was left out in the rain and sprouted wild yeast then colonized the mixture or someone either accidentally or on purpose dropped bread into it then afterward someone decided to drink the resulting fermentation and found that it made them pleasantly intoxicated and presto the first keg stand metaphorically then it wasn't long until people were making beer on purpose plus there were flavor additives like honey spice and fruit and through fermentation process was a mystery there was an understanding that some prized magical pots called in records the pots that make the beer good simply produced better brew even without dropping bread in.
This was because yeast had permanently colonized cracks and imperfections in the pots but to the ancient people beer's transformation appeared magical especially since it crate consumed so it's no wonder that it was used in religious rituals and associated with a range of goddesses because beer was largely made in the household at the same time as baking bread for thousands of years brewing was primarily a women task but further north in Europe change was coming birth to the process of making and consuming beer itself and for the women who controlled production.
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