Who invented the Beer?

Question

Why is Beer so cool and people like it so much? I think if we knew who invented it we would teach about him in school.

Answer 1

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 was one of the first-known biological engineering tasks where the biological process of fermentation is used.

In Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence of beer is believed to be a 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet depicting people drinking a beverage through reed straws from a communal bowl.[citation needed], 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.

“ Ninkasi, you are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven,

Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,

You are the one who waters the malt set on the ground...

You are the one who holds with both hands the great sweet wort...

Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the filtered beer of the collector vat,

It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.

”

Beer is also mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which the 'wild man' Enkidu is given beer to drink. "...he ate until he was full, drank seven pitchers of beer, his heart grew light, his face glowed and he sang out with joy."

One of confirmed written evidences of ancient beer production in Armenia can be obtained from Xenophon: in his work Anabasis (V century B.C.) when he was in one of ancient Armenia villages he wrote (Book 4, V) [2].

“ There were stores within of wheat and barley and vegetables, and wine made from barley in great big bowls; the grains of barley malt lay floating in the beverage up to the lip of the vessel, and reeds lay in them, some longer, some shorter, without joints; when you were thirsty you must take one of these into your mouth, and suck. The beverage without admixture of water was very strong, and of a delicious flavour to certain palates, but the taste must be acquired.

”



A funerary model of a bakery and brewery, dating to the Eleventh dynasty of Egypt, circa 2009–1998 BC. Made of painted and gessoed wood, originally from Thebes.Beer became vital to all the grain-growing civilizations of Eurasian and North African antiquity, including Egypt — so much so that in 1868 James Death put forward a theory in The Beer of the Bible that the manna from heaven that God gave the Israelites was a bread-based, porridge-like beer called wusa. Knowledge of brewing was passed on to the Greeks. The Greeks then taught the Romans to brew. The Romans called their brew cerevisia, from Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, and vis, Latin for "strength."

Beer was very important to early Romans, but during the Roman Republic wine displaced beer as the preferred alcoholic beverage. Beer became a beverage considered fit only for barbarians; Tacitus wrote disparagingly of the beer brewed by the Germanic peoples of his day.

Thracians were also known to consume beer made from rye, even since the 5th century BC, as Hellanicus of Lesbos says in operas. Their name for beer was brutos, or brytos.

[edit] Medieval Europe

Beer was one of the most common drinks during the Middle Ages. It was consumed daily by all social classes in the northern and eastern parts of Europe where grape cultivation was difficult or impossible. Though wine of varying qualities was the most common drink in the south, beer was still popular among the lower classes. Since the purity of water could seldom be guaranteed, alcoholic drinks were a popular choice, having been boiled as part of the brewing process. Beer also provided a considerable amount of the daily calories in the northern regions. In England and the Low Countries, the per capita consumption was 275-300 liters (60-66 gallons) a year by the Late Middle Ages, and beer was downed with every meal. Though probably one of the most popular drinks in Europe, beer was disdained by science as being unhealthy, mostly because ancient Greek and more contemporary Arab physicians had little or no experience with the drink. In 1256, the Aldobrandino of Siena described the nature of beer in the following way:

“ But from whichever it is made, whether from oats, barley or wheat, it harms the head and the stomach, it causes bad breath and ruins the teeth, it fills the stomach with bad fumes, and as a result anyone who drinks it along with wine becomes drunk quickly; but it does have the property of facilitating urination and makes one's flesh white and smooth.[3] ”

The use of hops in beer was written of in 822 by a Carolingian Abbot. Again in 1067 by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen: "If one intends to make beer from oats, it is prepared with hops." Flavoring beer with hops was known at least since the 9th century, but was only gradually adopted because of difficulties in establishing the right proportions of ingredients. Before that gruit, a mix of various herbs, had been used, but did not have the same conserving properties as hops. Beer flavored without it was often drunk soon after preparation and could not be exported. The only other alternative was to increase the alcohol content, which was rather expensive. Hopped beer was perfected in the towns of Germany by the 13th century, and the longer lasting beer, combined with standardized barrel sizes, allowed for large-scale export. The German towns also pioneered a new scale of operation and a level of professionalization. Previously beer had been brewed at home, but the production was now successfully replaced by medium-sized operations of about eight to ten people. This type of production spread to Holland in the 14th century and later to Flanders, Brabant and reached England by the late 15th century.[4]

Laws to enforce the use of hops in beer were introduced in England in the 14th century, and later similar laws were introduced in other countries. In England, these laws lead to peasant uprisings, since it was considered to spoil the taste, but these uprisings were brutally put down.[5]

[edit] Early modern Europe



A 16th century breweryIn Europe, beer largely remained a homemaker's activity, made in the home in medieval times. The oldest still operating commercial brewery is the Weihenstephan (Bavaria) abbey brewery, which obtained the brewing rights from the nearby town of Freising in 1040. By the 14th and 15th centuries, beermaking was gradually changing from a family-oriented activity to an artisan one, with pubs and monasteries brewing their own beer for mass consumption.

In 15th century England, an unhopped beer would have been known as an ale, while the use of hops would make it a beer. Hopped beer was imported to England from the Netherlands as early as 1400 in Winchester, and hops were being planted on the island by 1428. The popularity of hops was at first mixed — the Brewers Company of London went so far as to state "no hops, herbs, or other like thing be put into any ale or liquore wherof ale shall be made — but only liquor (water), malt, and yeast." However, by the 16th century, "ale" had come to refer to any strong beer, and all ales and beers were hopped.



Achel trappist beer (Belgium) with glassIn 1516, William IV, Duke of Bavaria, adopted the Reinheitsgebot (purity law), perhaps the oldest food regulation still in use through the 20th Century (the Reinheitsgebot passed formally from German law in 1987). The Gebot ordered that the ingredients of beer be restricted to water, barley, and hops; yeast was added to the list after Louis Pasteur's discovery in 1857. The Bavarian law was applied throughout Germany as part of the 1871 German unification as the German Empire under Otto von Bismarck, and has since been updated to reflect modern trends in beer brewing. To this day, the Gebot is considered a mark of purity in beers, although this is controversial.

Most beers until relatively recent times were top-fermented. Bottom-fermented beers were discovered by accident in the 16th century after beer was stored in cool caverns for long periods; they have since largely outpaced top-fermented beers in terms of volume.

[edit] Asia

There is pre-historic evidence that shows brewing began around 5,400 BC in Sumer (southern Iraq). Some recent archaeological finds also show that Chinese villagers were brewing alcoholic drinks as far back as 7000 BC. However, these pre-historic brewing efforts were on a small, or individual, scale - not on the scale of a modern day brewery. Asia's first brewery was incorporated in 1855 (although it was established earlier) by Edward Dyer at Kasauli in the Himalayan Mountains in India under the name Dyer Breweries. The company still exists and is known as Mohan Meakin, today comprising a large group of companies across many industries.

[edit] The Industrial Revolution



The Caledonian Brewery, founded in 1869, Edinburgh, ScotlandFollowing significant improvements in the efficiency of the steam engine in 1765, industrialization of beer became a reality. Further innovations in the brewing process came about with the introduction of the thermometer in 1760 and hydrometer in 1770, which allowed brewers to increase efficiency and attenuation.

Prior to the late 18th century, malt was primarily dried over fires made from wood, charcoal, or straw, and after 1600, from coke.

In general, none of these early malts would have been well shielded from the smoke involved in the kilning process, and consequently, early beers would have had a smoky component to their flavors; evidence indicates that maltsters and brewers constantly tried to minimize the smokiness of the finished beer.

Writers of the period describe the distinctive taste derived from wood-s

Answer 2

1) By Mom - Cutting and pasting is plagiarism...and annoying. Plus you got it wrong.

2) Nobody knows exactly who, but what we do know is that about 8,000 years ago alcohol started appearing simultaneously in the Middle East in what is today Iran and China. The earlist chemical evidence is from roughly 3,500 BC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer#Histor...

It is widely believed that grains were harvested, got wet (possibly rained on) and wild yeast caused spontaneous fermentation. In theory, the first beers were similar to Lambics when you think about it.

Anyway, the discovery of beer prompted early main to stop moving about, settle down and cultivate grains for bread and beer. Beer is the founder of modern civilization when you think about it.

I'm getting off subject again...beer today is extremely different from beer then. The basic idea is the same, but instead of hops various herbs, grasses and even evergreen needles were used to bitter the beer. There was no such thing as cold/frost brewing, you had ales. Full of fruity, nutty flavors and aromatics. The closest we have today would be a lambic or a Gruit.

Lambic:

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style/50

Gruit:

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style/70

As an interesting point Dogfish Head Brewery makes a beer based on chemical testing done on pottery found in China, Chateau Jiahu.

http://dogfish.com/brewings/Occasional_R...

3) Beer is wonderful, both in history and in flavor. If you move away from mass produced lagers and into the world of craft brewed beers, you'll find that beer has tremendous complexity of flavor.

4) There isn't one specific person to teach about, but even if there was...don't you think that uptight parental and religious groups would throw a stinking fit? Could you imagine it? It would be worse than the creationism argument.

Answer 3

There is no way to know exactly when beer was invented, or by whom. There is possibly evidence however of beer drinking found on a 4,000 year old tablet.

Answer 4

Egypt