History of beer

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

Making bread and beer helped people learn new skills and live in settled places, 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 workshops to large factories, and home brewing became less common.

Today, the beer industry is a big global business. Large companies and many smaller breweries around the world make and sell beer. Every year, a large amount of beer is sold worldwide, and the beer market is expected to grow more in the future.

Early beers

See also: Ancient Egyptian cuisine

Long ago, people found that grains could change when mixed with water and left out. This change, called fermentation, made 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.

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 used in many cultures for special events and as 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 are not sure if 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.

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 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. This rule was used all over Germany after 1871 and is still famous today.

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 used more rice because it worked better. They used the bits left over from making rice drinks in cooking.

Today, drinks made from rice are still popular. Some people call these drinks beer, 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 using their spit to change starches into sugars. Wild yeast then turns these sugars 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 talks about how beer was made.

Many cultures have stories 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 created beer.

Ninkasi was the goddess of brewing in ancient Sumer.

In Egyptian mythology, a goddess named Sekhmet was very fierce until she drank some red-colored beer. After drinking it, she became calm.

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.

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. 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.