History of Beer

There is barely a country in the world where you couldn’t make yourself understood if you wanted a beer. The global understanding of the sounds and signs for beer reveals how deeply ingrained it is in culture and history with a place alongside fire, water, the wheel and bread. We live in a fast-paced technology-driven world but try buying a fax machine in Outer Mongolia, ordering rocket salad in a Nepalese hill station or describing the latest cocktail to a Russian farmer and see how far you get. Ordering a beer – now that is a different story, and it is one that goes back to the earliest days of civilisation.

Among the stone carvings from the 4th century BC that tell us so much about the dawn of civilised mankind, there are depictions of brewing beer proving the important and established role it played in society. The Sumerians, who lived in central Asia, are credited with being the first civilisation and by 4,000 BC they had invented a system of writing, wheeled vehicles, the plough... and, yes, beer.

Babylon Brewing
It is easy to see how beer came to life so early as its ingredients of barley, yeast and water are also the basics of bread. The fermenting process necessary to create beer may have been discovered by accident but there is little doubt that the Sumerians struck the first brewery way back in the mists of time.

They passed their knowledge onto the Babylonians who refined the process and embraced beer as a part of ceremonial as well as cultural life. Who knows, the official opening of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, could have been toasted with beer.

There is also evidence that there was a strict legislation on the sale of beer and that any transgression met with severe penalty – even death. Perhaps the Babylonians recognised the potency of some brews in the wrong hands. Beer's significance can be gauged by the fact that it crops up in every major civilisation. The Assyrians took it on and then the Egyptians followed suit. It was regarded as daily nourishment and conferred status on drinkers. When the tombs of the pharaohs were opened up at the turn of the 19th century, archaeologists discovered beer jugs and frescos depicting the entire brewing process.

It has now become an accepted part of culture and Heineken, one of the pioneering breweries from the mid-19th century is now Europe's most popular beer. Scientific analysis of remains found in central Turkey reveal that a drink incorporating honey, grain and fruit was served at the funeral of King Midas in 700 BC.

Beer found a home in a range of cultures and countries with the Aztecs, Incas, Mayans and Chinese all keen brewers. The greatest danger to the survival of beer came from, arguably, the Roman Empire, which carried reservoirs of wine around with its legions. After conquering vast swathes of the globe, they tried to convert them from grain to grape. But drinking habits were far tougher to overcome that fighting forces and the Romans reluctantly started drinking beer themselves. They did leave a linguistic legacy in that the word beer is probably derived from the Latin bibere, meaning to drink.

Drinking Skulls
Beer formed strongholds in European culture and Teutonic warlords marched into battle with warm thoughts of drinking beer from the skulls of their defeated enemies in Valhalla after a particularly brutal death. Fortunately, the clean beer glass remains slightly more popular than the freshly-polished skull!

Society of all levels took to beer and evidence of mass consumption is backed up by the fact that kings and queens used it as an easy way to raise taxes. These levies drove beer towards its first major encounter with home-brewing and small artisans’ breweries flourished. Early efforts remained basic and one of the driving forces may have been purely to overcome the poor state of drinking water that came from open sewers, infested ditches, rivers and canals. In the Middle Ages, as communities grew and the quality of shared water deteriorated, beer consumption increased.
They didn’t have detailed knowledge of bacteria and toxins but swiftly discovered that the safest way to avoid epidemics was to drink beer – during the brewing process the water is boiled killing off harmful bacteria.

Lager and Religion
Historians estimate that people drank around 400 litres per year – more than two pints every day – and that went for women, children and the elderly. Early settlers arrived in America with huge supplies of beer and their journals hit a note of panic when stocks run thin and there is urgent talk of establishing breweries alongside their fledgling communities to sustain health and humour.

Monasteries truly took brewing to new peaks, with monks experimenting and faithfully recording the results of different processes. It is largely held that Bavarian monks invented lager in the early 1800s after storing their beer in cold cellars and discovering that the result was a clearer, sharper brew. Lager is derived from the German verb largern, which means to store. In 1864, an Amsterdam brewery called The Haystack was bought by an energetic businessman called Gerard Adriaan Heineken, one of the early pioneers who refined production, enhanced taste and maintained a quality. It was his vision of precision and passion in brewing that underpins a lasting success story, that takes the form of the Heineken company and its flagship brand, Heineken beer.

Beer may not have been around at the time of the Big Bang or the Fig Leaf, depending on whether you are an Evolutionist or Creationist, but it has been with mankind since the start of civilisation.