The History of Beer
Ale is one
of the oldest beverages humans have produced, dating back to at least the 5th
millennium BC and recorded in the written history of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
As almost any cereal containing certain sugars can undergo spontaneous fermentation
due to wild yeasts in the air, it is possible that beer-like beverages were
independently developed throughout the world soon after a tribe or culture had
domesticated cereal. Chemical tests of ancient pottery jars reveal that beer
was produced about 7,000 years ago in what is today Iran, and is one of the
first-known biological engineering tasks to utilize the process of
fermentation. In Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence of beer is believed to be a
6,000-year-old Sumerian tablet depicting people drinking a beverage through
reed straws from a communal bowl. A 3900-year-old Sumerian poem honoring Ninkasi,
the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer recipe,
describing the production of beer from barley via bread.
No comments:
Post a Comment