History of beer

Beer is one of the oldest drinks made by people. Ancient writings from places like Egypt and Mesopotamia tell us that people were drinking beer thousands of years ago. One very old poem from Sumer, more than 3,900 years old, even gives instructions on how to make beer from barley bread. Scientists have found signs of beer in China too, from about 5,000 years ago, made from barley and other grains.

The making of bread and beer helped people develop new technologies and live in settled communities, changing how societies grew. In Europe, people were brewing beer as far back as 5,000 years ago. For many years, beer was made in homes, but later, monasteries began making and selling it too. During the Industrial Revolution, beer production changed from small, local workshops to large factories, and home brewing became less common.

Today, the beer industry is a huge global business. Big companies and many smaller breweries around the world make and sell beer. Every year, over 133 billion liters of beer are sold worldwide. The beer market is expected to grow even more in the coming years.

Early beers

See also: Ancient Egyptian cuisine

Long ago, people discovered that certain grains could change when mixed with water and left out. This change, called fermentation, created a new drink we now call beer. Very old pottery pieces show that beer was made around 3,500 BCE in places that are now Iran. One of the oldest known recipes for beer comes from a poem about Ninkasi, the goddess of brewing, written by people from Sumer in ancient Mesopotamia.

Archaeologists have found signs that people in China were making fermented drinks as far back as 7000 BCE, using methods similar to those in ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia. In ancient Mesopotamia, beer was an important part of daily life. Workers in the city of Uruk were sometimes paid with beer, and it appeared in stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Beer was also used in many cultures for special events and as a part of everyday meals. In ancient Egypt, beer was a regular drink for both regular people and leaders. Even when building big structures like the Great Pyramids in Giza, Egypt, workers received beer as part of their daily supplies.

Medieval Europe

Beer was one of the most common drinks during the Middle Ages. People in northern and eastern Europe drank it every day, especially where growing grapes for wine was hard. Women often made beer at home. In southern Europe, wine was more popular, but poorer people still liked beer.

Historians debate whether beer was drunk more than water in medieval times. Water was cheaper, and villages were built near rivers and wells for easy access to clean water. Some thinkers thought beer was unhealthy. In the 13th century, people began adding hops to beer in places like Bohemia. Hops helped keep beer fresh for longer distances. Before hops, beer was made with herbs called gruit, but it spoiled quickly. German towns started making beer in larger amounts, which later spread to Holland, Flanders, Brabant, and England.

Early modern Europe

In Europe, people mostly made beer at home during medieval times. By the 1300s and 1400s, beer brewing began to change from something families did to a job done by skilled workers. Taverns and monasteries started making their own beer for many people to enjoy.

In the late Middle Ages, northern Europe saw big changes in how beer was made. A big change was adding hops, which started in northern Germany around the 1200s. Hops made beer taste better and be easier to make. Other changes in Germany included using bigger containers and brewing more often. As beer became more popular, fewer places made it because it needed more money and tools. For example, in Hamburg, people drank about 300 liters of beer each year in the 1400s, but by the 1600s, that number jumped to about 700 liters.

Hops spread from Germany to places like the Netherlands and England. In the 1400s in England, beer with hops was different from ale, which didn’t have hops. Hops were first used in England around 1400 in a place called Winchester, and by 1428, people were growing hops there. At first, some people didn’t like hops. The Brewers Company of London said only water, malt, and yeast should be used to make ale.

But by the 1500s, the word “ale” meant any strong beer, and all beers had hops. This change happened around 1524, as noted by John Aubrey:

Greeke, Heresie, Turkey-cocks and Beer

Came into England all in a year.

In 1516, William IV, Duke of Bavaria, made a rule called the Reinheitsgebot (purity law). This law said beer could only be made from water, barley, and hops. Later, yeast was added after Louis Pasteur discovered it in 1857. This rule was used all over Germany after 1871 and is still famous today, even though it was changed to fit new brewing ways.

For a long time, most beers were made in a way called top-fermented. But in the 1500s, people found that storing beer in cool places made a new kind of beer called bottom-fermented. This type of beer later became more popular. To learn more about these beers, see Pilsner and Lager.

Asia

China

Ancient Chinese people made drinks with alcohol from grains that had been changed by special molds. Over time, they started using rice more often because it worked better for making these drinks. They used the leftover bits from making the rice drink as a tasty ingredient in cooking.

Today, drinks made from rice are still popular. Some people call these drinks beer because they use changed starch, but they are usually known as rice wine.

The earliest signs of beer-making in China were found about 5,000 years ago.

Other

Some cultures on Pacific islands make drinks by using their spit to change starches into sugars that can turn into alcohol. This is similar to a drink made in South America. The spit helps change the starch into sugar, and then wild yeast turns it into alcohol. Whether this counts as beer can be debated because it doesn’t use malting and sometimes uses things other than grains, like yams or taro.

In some Taiwanese tribes, they make a clear liquor by distilling these drinks. But because these tribes didn’t write things down, we don’t know exactly when they started this practice.

Asia's first brewery began in 1855 by Edward Dyer in the Himalayan Mountains in India, called Dyer Breweries. Today, it is known as Mohan Meakin.

The Industrial Revolution

Technical innovations

After big changes in steam engines in 1765, making beer became more like a factory job. New tools like the thermometer in 1760 and the hydrometer in 1770 helped brewers make beer better and faster.

Before the late 1700s, malt — the grain used in beer — was dried over fires with wood, charcoal, or straw. This gave early beers a smoky taste that many people didn’t like. Brewers kept trying to make the smoke taste less strong.

The hydrometer changed beer-making. Before this tool, brewers used just one kind of malt for each beer. But with the hydrometer, they learned that pale malt, though costlier, made more beer than cheaper malts. So brewers started using mostly pale malt and added a little coloured malt to get the right colour for darker beers.

In 1817, a new machine called the drum roaster was invented. It made very dark malts that gave porters and stouts their special flavours. This happened because a law in 1816 said brewers could only use malt and hops, so they needed a new way to colour their beers.

In 1857, a scientist named Louis Pasteur discovered how yeast works in making beer. This helped brewers stop beer from turning sour.

Bottling

In the late 1500s, people in England started making glass bottles by hand, but they were easy to break. By 1691, bottles had gotten better, and a merchant named Thomas Tryon said bottled beer stayed good longer than beer in barrels. In the late 1800s, bottles began to be made quickly in factories. In 1879, the metal screw-top cap was invented. Many brewers liked brown bottles because they kept the beer safe from sunlight. By 1945, most beer was bottled, but later in the 1900s, canned beer became more popular.

Modern beer

Many European countries have long traditions of brewing beer, going back to ancient times. Places like Belgium, Germany, Austria, Ireland, the UK (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), France, Scandinavian countries, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Spain all have their own special ways of making beer and unique styles.

In Europe, some beers contain live yeast and are not filtered or heated to stop fermentation. These beers can be trickier to handle, but many people enjoy their taste. While most beers are ready to drink after a few weeks or months, some stronger types can develop richer flavors over many years. Today, the brewing industry is a large worldwide business with many big companies and thousands of smaller ones, from local pubs to regional breweries. With better cooling, shipping, and marketing, people now have many choices of beers from around the world.

Beer in the United States

Before 1920, there were many breweries in the United States, making richer, heavier beers than people usually drink today. When nationwide Prohibition began in 1920, most of these breweries closed, though some switched to making soft drinks. After Prohibition ended, bigger companies grew stronger by buying smaller ones and focusing on making and advertising lighter beers. Today, there are many breweries again, with over 2,500 operating in the United States as of 2013, most of them small craft breweries.

Mythology

The Finnish epic Kalevala, written in the 1800s but based on much older stories, talks more about how beer was made than about how humans came to be.

Many cultures have myths about who first made beer. In Flemish tales, a king named Gambrinus is said to have invented it. Czech legends say a god named Radegast, who stood for kindness to guests, created beer.

Ninkasi was the special goddess of brewing in ancient Sumer.

In Egyptian mythology, there is a story about a powerful lioness goddess named Sekhmet. She was very fierce until she was given a lot of red-colored beer to drink. She thought it was blood, but after drinking it, she became calm and stopped being aggressive.

In Norse stories, the sea god Ægir and his wife Rán made special drinks for the gods. They used a huge pot that Thor had given them, and the cups always stayed full by magic. They had two helpers in their home.

In Nart stories, a wise mother figure named Satanaya is said to have invented beer.

Some Irish tales say a famous person named Charlie Mops was the first to make beer.

Etymology

The word beer comes from old Germanic languages. It is used in many places, like bier in German and Dutch, but not in Nordic languages. Tribes such as the Saxons brought the word to the British Isles a long time ago.

Many other languages have borrowed this word. For example, French uses bière, Italian uses birra, and Turkish uses bira. Nordic languages use öl or øl, which is related to the English word ale. Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan have words that come from a Latin word, cervisia, which has Celtic roots. Slavic languages use pivo, a word that means “drink.” The Chuvash word pora might be where the Germanic word for beer originally came from.