History of beer

Today, the brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant[citation needed] multinational companies and many thousands of smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries.

Chemical tests of ancient pottery jars reveal that beer was produced about 3,500 BCE in what is today Iran, and was one of the first-known biological engineering tasks where the biological process of fermentation is used; the earliest chemically confirmed barley beer to date was discovered at Godin Tepe in the central Zagros Mountains of Iran, where fragments of a jug, from between 5,400 and 5,000 years ago was found to be coated with beerstone, a by-product of the brewing process.

The low oxygen would then cause the yeast to digest sugars by anaerobic respiration, which causes the release of ethanol (alcohol) and carbon dioxide as by-products and, hence, beer was born.

"... he ate until he was full, drank seven pitchers of beer, his heart grew light, his face glowed and he sang out with joy.

"[16] In February 2019, archaeologists from Mola Headland Infrastructure and experts from Highways England found evidence of first Iron Age beer dated back over 2,000 years during road works in Cambridgeshire.

[20][21][22][23] In February 2021, archaeologists found a 5,000-old beer factory in Abydos, Egypt, dating back to the reign of King Narmer, Early Dynastic Period.

Thracians were also known to consume beer made from rye, even since the 5th century BCE, as the ancient Greek logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos says.

[34] It was discovered early that reusing the same container for fermenting the mash would produce more reliable results; brewers on the move carried their tubs with them.

In 2100 BCE, the Babylonian king Hammurabi included regulations governing tavern keepers in his law code for the kingdom.

[37] In Ancient India, the Vedas and Ramayana mention a beer-like drink called sura consumed during the Vedic Period (c. 1500 – c. 500 BCE).

[48] Belgian brewers, too, venerated Arnulf of Oudenburg (aka Arnold of Soissons),[49] who is also recognized as the patron saint of hop-pickers.

[41] Charlemagne, Frankish king and ruler of the Holy Roman Empire during the 8th century, considered beer to be an important part of living, and is often thought to have trained some brewers himself.

It was consumed daily by all social classes in the northern and eastern parts of Europe where grape cultivation was difficult or impossible,[citation needed] and brewing it was considered a common household task, orchestrated by women.

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.

Previously beer had been brewed at home, but the production was now successfully replaced by medium-sized operations of about eight to ten people.

By the 14th and 15th centuries, beermaking was gradually changing from a family-oriented activity to an artisan one, with taverns and monasteries brewing their own beer for mass consumption.

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.

However, as none of the Taiwanese tribes are known to have developed systems of writing, there is no way to document how far back this practice goes, or if the technique was brought from mainland China by Han Chinese immigrants.

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

For the wood-dried malt, when it is brewed, beside that the drink is higher of colour, it doth hurt and annoy the head of him that is not used thereto, because of the smoke.

The invention of the drum roaster in 1817 by Daniel Wheeler allowed for the creation of very dark, roasted malts, contributing to the flavour of porters and stouts.

Louis Pasteur's 1857 discovery of yeast's role in fermentation led to brewers developing methods to prevent the souring of beer by undesirable microorganisms.

Beer is an especially important drink in countries such as Belgium, Germany, Austria, Ireland, the UK (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), France, the Scandinavian countries, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain and others having strong and unique brewing traditions with their own history, characteristic brewing methods, and styles of beer.

While beer is usually matured for relatively short times (a few weeks to a few months) compared to wine, some of the stronger so-called real ales have been found to develop character and flavour over the course of as much as several decades.

In some parts of the world, breweries that had begun as a family business by Germans or other European émigrés grew into large companies, often passing into hands with more concern for profits than traditions of quality, resulting in a degradation of the product.

Coutts patented his process, which involves beer flowing through sealed tanks, fermenting under pressure, and never coming into contact with the atmosphere, even when bottled.

Today, the brewing industry is a huge global business, consisting of several multinational companies, and many thousands of smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries.

Consolidation of breweries and the application of industrial quality control standards have led to the mass-production and the mass-marketing of huge quantities of light lagers.

By 1895, the largest sixteen firms had greatly increased their productive capacity and were all brewing over 250,000 barrels annually;[64] and imports have become more abundant since the mid-1980s.

In Egyptian mythology, the immense blood-lust of the fierce lioness goddess Sekhmet was only sated after she was tricked into consuming an extremely large amount of red-coloured beer (believing it to be blood): she became so drunk that she gave up slaughter altogether and became docile.