Beer! Its history, my story, and why it tastes so good!

Gabriellebirchak/ July 1, 2020/ Ancient History, Modern History, Post Classical

The year was 1972. The place, the Rocky Moun­tains, just out­side of Den­ver, Col­orado. My dad worked at Sund­strand Avi­a­tion, and his com­pa­ny was hav­ing a Fourth of July com­pa­ny cook­out. There were pota­to sack races, three-legged races, and all kinds of fun things to do for the fam­i­ly. Then came the tal­ent por­tion: for any­body that entered, they would win a six-pack of beer.

So, when the tal­ent por­tion came up, my dad knew exact­ly what to do to win that six-pack of beer that he real­ly want­ed. He looked at me and said, “Sing for me, Stinky Pants!” (Yes, Stinky Pants was what my dad called me.) Though I was only six, I knew a few songs, one of which was my dad’s favorite: In Heav­en There Is No Beer. 

This tal­ent show began my entrance into the world of enter­tain­ment. My dad put me up on the pic­nic table at per­for­mance time, and I belt­ed out his favorite song to the cheer­ing crowd. Guess who won?! I did!

But, since I was only six, my dad got the beer, and I got two dol­lars. My dad and I made quite a team that day. To this day, even though he is no longer in the world, I still con­sid­er him as part of my team. Grow­ing up, he always encour­aged me to love math­e­mat­ics, which then led to my love of his­to­ry, which then led to my love for the sub­ject of Mesopotamia, which then led me to think about beer in Mesopotamia.

Mak­ing beer is an easy process, how­ev­er mak­ing good beer is not so easy, because if it were, every­body would be mak­ing beer. As a lot of us know, the essen­tial ingre­di­ents of beer are water, bar­ley, yeast, and hops. 

Beer is not a new inven­tion. Some of our first cre­ations of this delight­ful­ly brewed grain go back as far as 10000 BCE in the region of Godin Tepe, which is now mod­ern-day Iran. At this time, agri­cul­ture was first devel­op­ing in this region. Thus, while humans were evolv­ing and going through the process of search­ing for food and shel­ter, pos­si­bly they dis­cov­ered that by let­ting fruits fer­ment with wild yeast, the out­come would have an intox­i­cat­ing effect. 

Max Nel­son, in his book The Bar­bar­ians Bev­er­age, notes that alco­holic bev­er­ages were pos­si­bly even made as ear­ly as the Neolith­ic Peri­od, which was pre-agri­cul­tur­al, mean­ing it was before 10,000 BCE.

We have evi­dence from the Shang dynasty in Chi­na where arche­ol­o­gists found tight­ly sealed ves­sels with liq­uids in them. When they extract­ed the pot­sherds, they dis­cov­ered traces of rice, hon­ey, and fruit com­pounds. These traces were evi­dence of fer­ment­ed drinks dat­ing back to 7000 BCE.

Addi­tion­al­ly, in a loca­tion called Hajji­firuz Tepe, also in Iran, arche­ol­o­gists found some of our ear­li­est pot­tery that dates from 6000 to 5000 BCE. In this pot­tery, they found trace amounts of grape juice and resin, which meant they were mak­ing wine. Then, arche­ol­o­gists also found pot­tery in Godin Tepe that dates as far back as 5,000 BCE that, in addi­tion to trace amounts of juice and resin, also had trace amounts of a pale yel­low­ish residue in the grooves, which meant they were mak­ing beer.

By 2500 BCE in the ear­ly dynas­tic peri­od, beer had five des­ig­na­tions: gold­en, dark, sweet dark, red, and strained. By the third peri­od of Ur, fer­menters clas­si­fied beer by its strength, which was ordi­nary, good, and very good. Obvi­ous­ly, good is subjective.

As with most ancient dis­cov­er­ies, some of our ear­li­est records of brew­ing come from cuneiform tablets made by an indi­vid­ual who account­ed for deliv­ery reports, month­ly accounts, esti­mates, and rations of all the ingre­di­ents that were required to brew an excel­lent beer. Leave it to the accoun­tants to walk us through his­to­ry and lead us to the beer. The par­tic­u­lar cuneiform tablet is known as the Alu­lu Beer Receipt from the city of Ur.

Dur­ing this time, they brewed beer in clay pots. The beer had no car­bon­a­tion and low alco­hol con­tent. As a result, though it may have been good, it may not have been strong. Brew­ers made this beer from bip­par, which is bar­ley bread, and baked it twice. As a result, this beer was thick, like por­ridge, and was con­sumed as a meal sup­ple­ment. Often, indi­vid­u­als would drink it through a straw, as not­ed in the fol­low­ing cylin­der print.

If account­ing is not enough evi­dence for some of our ear­li­est trans­ac­tions of beer, we also have drink­ing songs and poems that cel­e­brate this delight­ful bev­er­age. Though the songs were not near­ly as fan­tas­tic as In Heav­en There Is No Beer, they were worth remem­ber­ing, or maybe not. These hits include the Epic of Gil­gamesh from 2700 BCE, The Hymn to Ninkasi from 1800 BCE, and the Sumer­ian poem Inan­na and the God of Wis­dom that tells the sto­ry of many gods drink­ing beer togeth­er. In this sto­ry, the god of wis­dom, Enki, becomes so drunk that he gives away the sacred laws of civilization. 

By 1800 BCE, women known as the priest­esses of Ninkasi were in charge of brew­ing beer. The drink­ing of beer and alco­hol became so seri­ous that the Code of Ham­mura­bi dic­tat­ed that if a woman tend­ing the bar short mea­sured a drink for a cus­tomer, the gov­ern­ment would drown her to death. 

By the year 600 CE, dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, also known as the Dark Ages, the Brew­ers Guild adopt­ed patron saints of brew­ing. Since it was the Dark Ages, peo­ple prob­a­bly drank for the same rea­sons that we are drink­ing today. By this time, church monks had tak­en over the process of brew­ing beer, which was ide­al because these monks had time to edu­cate them­selves about how to make the per­fect brew. They could per­fect their vines and fer­men­ta­tion process­es, which, over time, result­ed in qual­i­ty beer. This supe­ri­or beer soon became a com­mod­i­ty as many used beer to buy valu­able items and pay their tax­es. Thus, beer became a valu­able cur­ren­cy of the elite. 

One hun­dred years lat­er, in 700, beer mak­ers began adding hops to the beers, along with fla­vor­ings that includ­ed mush­rooms, hon­ey, sug­ar, bay leaves, and but­ter. These hops were valu­able because they added fla­vor, sub­dued the sweet­ness of the beer, added oils, increased the shelf life of the beer, and helped to pre­vent spoiling.

Then, between the late 700s to the 1100s, the Vikings raid­ed and took over the coastal regions of Europe. They gained con­trol of areas includ­ing Scot­land, Ice­land, Green­land, and con­duct­ed trade as far as the Byzan­tine Empire. Also, with the Vikings came beer! The Viking beer con­sist­ed of nine per­cent alco­hol and was dark, sweet, and malty. Viking beer was so dense that the Vikings would strain their ale before they drank it.

In 1516, Ger­many imple­ment­ed the Beer Puri­ty Law, which is also known as Rein­heits­ge­bot (“Rine Heights Ge-Boat”). The Beer Puri­ty Law was the first Ger­man law to gov­ern food. Ger­many cre­at­ed the law because peo­ple were brew­ing their beer with mul­ti­ple ingre­di­ents, some of which acci­den­tal­ly includ­ed poi­so­nous mush­rooms. The puri­ty law stat­ed that brew­ers could only make their beer with the essen­tials, which were malt­ed bar­ley, hops, yeast, and water. These four ingre­di­ents were essen­tial for the Ger­man beers, and they were the law.

This com­bi­na­tion is ide­al. The malt­ed bar­ley adds the sweet taste of sug­ar, but when heat­ed to the point of boil­ing, it also cre­ates ethanol. The bar­ley pro­vides amino acids, which allows for healthy yeast growth.

The yeast serves as a cat­a­lyst to con­vert the sug­ar into ethanol. This ethanol is anti-bac­te­r­i­al, which gives the beer a longer shelf life.

The water helps the yeast to make car­bo­hy­drates, pro­vides a prop­er pH bal­ance, and imple­ments the prop­er cal­ci­um and mag­ne­sium levels.

How­ev­er, by 1987 the puri­ty law made it dif­fi­cult for beer imports in Ger­many. Thus, after French brew­ers com­plained about Rein­heits­ge­bot, the EU Court of Jus­tice struck down the law, which allowed for more imports.

As for the Unit­ed States, except for pro­hi­bi­tion in the 1920s, beer has been import­ed into the states since 1607.

Then in the late 1800s, as Ger­man immi­grants began to arrive on Mexico’s soil, brew­eries began to pop up in Mex­i­co. In 1925, using Germany’s con­coc­tion, a new brew­ery, Grupo Mod­e­lo, cre­at­ed a beer that, over time, would become the most import­ed beer in the Unit­ed States: the deli­cious Coro­na! In 1937, Mod­e­lo began to cre­ate and suc­cess­ful­ly mar­ket the Coro­na Extra as a qual­i­ty beverage.

By 1976, areas around the Unit­ed States, like New York and my home­town Den­ver, began to cre­ate some­thing like a black mar­ket for the Coro­na Extra. I remem­ber this well because the first time my dad tried Coro­na Extra in 1978, he LOVED it! It remind­ed him of the Ger­man beers he used to drink in his home­town Crab­tree, Penn­syl­va­nia. So, there you have it…my sto­ry of beer that just went full circle.

Until next time, carpe diem!