It's All About the Beer, Buddy
Hi there peeps! It's Beer Bud again (for the second time!) and I'm here talking about beer!
Today I have another Carlsberg next to me. And I have had a few of them. All day long. But only after my 4 hour stint at work, here in the hostel of my choice...
Ok. Like I said yesterday, I was going to go on about the history of our favourite liquid, (yes, it's beer) and it was founded.
So, from a few sites through a good ol' Google search, and this is what I got, roughly...
Beer is one of the oldest beverages humans have ever made! We have been making it since at least the fifth millennium BC and recorded in the history of the world (written) of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and was spread throughout the known world.
Almost any cereal contains certain sugars, so they can spontaneously ferment due to wild yeasts in the air, beer-like beverages were developed throughout the world soon after a part of the world had made cereal. Chemical tests of ancient pottery jars reveal that beer was produced as far back as about 7,000 years ago in Persia. This discovery reveals one of the earliest known uses of fermentation and is the earliest evidence of brewing to date. In Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence of beer is believed to be a 6,000-year-old Sumerian tablet depicting people drinking a beverage through straws from a big bowl! A 3900-year-old Sumerian poem about the goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer recipe, describing the production of beer from barley via bread (Yes there is a goddess of brewing!). In China, residue on pottery dating around 5000 years ago shows beer was brewed using barley and other grains.
Beer was being made hundreds and hundreds of years ago. And you have to wonder, if they were doing it back then, what would it have tasted like? It probably didn't taste much like ours, or maybe it did - I don't know - I wasn't there! But I reckon it would have been a lot thicker, with our filtration processes much better than they were back then of course.
Quoting a bit from Wikipedia...
"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."
Now I know (or I think I know!) that the Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest story ever written. Now if beer was written in this wonderful story, be it true or not (I honestly don't know) it means that we have been doing this for a very long while.
The oldest known brewery in the world is the Bavarian Weihenstephan, founded in 1040!
So I was looking through the oldest brewery list... and I was a little surprised to see that a couple of my favourite brews were actually on the list.
Here's the list, from the oldest to the 11th oldest:
- Weihenstephan - 1040 (Germany)
- Weltenburg Abbey - 1050 (Germany)
- Bolton - 1266 (Germany)
- Privatbrauerei Gaffel Becker & Co - 1302 (Germany)
- Augustiner-Brau - 1328 (Germany)
- Hubertus - 1454 (Austria)
- Stiegl - 1492 (Austria)
- Grolsch - 1615 (The Netherlands/Holland)
- Smithwicks - 1710 (Ireland)
- St. James' Gate/Guinness - 1759 (Ireland)
- Stepan Razin - 1795 (Russia)
So now we know why the beers in these countries are always wonderful, 'cause they've been doing it for hundreds of years! (And if you're wondering which couple are my fave's - it's Guinness and Grolsch)
I'll go through some countries and tell you which ones are the oldest in those countries:
- Australia - Cascade (Tasmania)
- England - Shepherd's Neame (Kent)
- New Zealand - apparently Hancock Brewery
- Brazil - Bohemia
- Scotland - Belhaven
- Spain - Estrella Damm
- France - Alsace - which was Fischer
- Italy - Menabrea
Just to name a few. Now what I'll be doing in the next blog addition is have a look at what we are drinking now, and interview a few locals and people that I know around the world, what's their fave amber.
Till then...
Cheers!
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