"As almost any cereal containing certain sugars can undergo
spontaneous fermentation due to wild yeasts in the air, it is possible
that beer-like beverages were independently developed throughout the
world soon after a tribe or culture had domesticated cereal. Chemical
tests of ancient pottery jars reveal that beer was produced about
7,000 years ago in what is today Iran, and was one of the first-known
biological engineering tasks where the biological process of
fermentation is used.

In Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence of beer is believed to be a 4,000-
year-old Sumerian tablet depicting people drinking a beverage through
reed straws from a communal bowl.[citation needed], A 3900-year-old
Sumerian poem honoring Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing,
contains the oldest surviving beer recipe, describing the production
of beer from barley via bread.

" Ninkasi, you are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,
You are the one who waters the malt set on the ground...

You are the one who holds with both hands the great sweet wort...

Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the filtered beer of the
collector vat,
It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.
"

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."

One of confirmed written evidences of ancient beer production in
Armenia can be obtained from Xenophon: in his work Anabasis (V century
B.C.) when he was in one of ancient Armenia villages he wrote (Book 4,
V) [2].

" There were stores within of wheat and barley and vegetables, and
wine made from barley in great big bowls; the grains of barley malt
lay floating in the beverage up to the lip of the vessel, and reeds
lay in them, some longer, some shorter, without joints; when you were
thirsty you must take one of these into your mouth, and suck. The
beverage without admixture of water was very strong, and of a
delicious flavour to certain palates, but the taste must be acquired.
"

Beer became vital to all the grain-growing civilizations of classical
Western antiquity, including Egypt -- so much so that in 1868 James
Death put forward a theory in The Beer of the Bible that the manna
from heaven that God gave the Israelites was a bread-based, porridge-
like beer called wusa. Knowledge of brewing was passed on to the
Greeks. Plato wrote that "He was a wise man who invented
beer."[citation needed]

The Greeks then taught the Romans to brew. The Romans called their
brew cerevisia, from Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, and vis, Latin
for "strength."

Beer was important to early Romans, but during the Roman Republic wine
displaced beer as the preferred alcoholic beverage. Beer became a
beverage considered fit only for barbarians; Tacitus wrote
disparagingly of the beer brewed by the Germanic peoples of his day.

Thracians were also known to consume beer made from rye, even since
the 5th century BC, as Hellanicus of Lesbos says in operas. Their name
for beer was brutos, or brytos.

[edit] Medieval Europe
Beer was one of the most common drinks during the Middle Ages. It was
consumed daily by all social classes in the northern and eastern parts
of Europe where grape cultivation was difficult or impossible. Though
wine of varying qualities was the most common drink in the south, beer
was still popular among the lower classes. Since the purity of water
could seldom be guaranteed, alcoholic drinks were a popular choice,
having been boiled as part of the brewing process. Beer also provided
a considerable amount of the daily calories in the northern regions.
In England and the Low Countries, the per capita consumption was
275-300 liters (60-66 gallons) a year by the Late Middle Ages, and
beer was downed with every meal. Though probably one of the most
popular drinks in Europe, beer was disdained by science as being
unhealthy, mostly because ancient Greek and more contemporary Arab
physicians had little or no experience with the drink. 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.[3] "

The use of hops in beer was written of in 822 by a Carolingian Abbot.
Again in 1067 by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen: "If one intends to make
beer from oats, it is prepared with hops." Flavoring beer with hops
was known at least since the 9th century, but was only gradually
adopted because of difficulties in establishing the right proportions
of ingredients. Before that gruit, a mix of various herbs, had been
used, but did not have the same conserving properties as hops. Beer
flavored without it was often drunk soon after preparation and could
not be exported. The only other alternative was to increase the
alcohol content, which was rather expensive. Hopped beer was perfected
in the towns of Germany by the 13th century, and the longer lasting
beer, combined with standardized barrel sizes, allowed for large-scale
export. The German towns also pioneered a new scale of operation and a
level of professionalization. Previously beer had been brewed at home,
but the production was now successfully replaced by medium-sized
operations of about eight to ten people. This type of production
spread to Holland in the 14th century and later to Flanders, Brabant
and reached England by the late 15th century.[4]

Laws to enforce the use of hops in beer were introduced in England in
the 14th century, and later similar laws were introduced in other
countries. In England, these laws lead to peasant uprisings, since it
was considered to spoil the taste, but these uprisings were brutally
put down.[5]

[edit] Early modern Europe

A 16th century breweryIn Europe, beer largely remained a homemaker's
activity, made in the home in medieval times. The oldest still
operating commercial brewery is the Weihenstephan (Bavaria) abbey
brewery, which obtained the brewing rights from the nearby town of
Freising. By the 14th and 15th centuries, beermaking was gradually
changing from a family-oriented activity to an artisan one, with pubs
and monasteries brewing their own beer for mass consumption.

In 15th century England, an unhopped beer would have been known as an
ale, while the use of hops would make it a beer. Hopped beer was
imported to England from the Netherlands as early as 1400 in
Winchester, and hops were being planted on the island by 1428. The
popularity of hops was at first mixed -- the Brewers Company of London
went so far as to state "no hops, herbs, or other like thing be put
into any ale or liquore wherof ale shall be made -- but only liquor
(water), malt, and yeast." However, by the 16th century, "ale" had
come to refer to any strong beer, and all ales and beers were hopped.

Achel trappist beer (Belgium) with glassIn 1516, William IV, Duke of
Bavaria, adopted the Reinheitsgebot (purity law), perhaps the oldest
food regulation still in use through the 20th Century (the
Reinheitsgebot passed formally from German law in 1987). The Gebot
ordered that the ingredients of beer be restricted to water, barley,
and hops, with yeast added after Louis Pasteur's discovery in 1857.
The Bavarian law was applied throughout Germany as part of the 1871
German unification as the German Empire under Otto von Bismarck, and
has since been updated to reflect modern trends in beer brewing. To
this day, the Gebot is considered a mark of purity in beers, although
this is controversial.

Most beers until relatively recent times were what are now called
ales. Lagers were discovered by accident in the 16th century after
beer was stored in cool caverns for long periods; they have since
largely outpaced ales in terms of volume.

[edit] Asia
There is pre-historic evidence that shows brewing began around 5,400
BC in Sumer (southern Iraq). Some recent archaeological finds also
show that Chinese villagers were brewing alcoholic drinks as far back
as 7000 BC. However, these pre-historic brewing efforts were on a
small, or individual, scale - not on the scale of a modern day
brewery. Asia's first brewery was incorporated in 1855 (although it
was established earlier) by Edward Dyer at Kasauli in the Himalayan
Mountains in India under the name Dyer Breweries. The company still
exists and is known as Mohan Meakin, today comprising a large group of
companies across many industries.

[edit] The Industrial Revolution

The Caledonian Brewery, founded in 1869, Edinburgh, ScotlandFollowing
significant improvements in the efficiency of the steam engine in
1765, industrialization of beer became a reality. Further innovations
in the brewing process came about with the introduction of the
thermometer in 1760 and hydrometer in 1770, which allowed brewers to
increase efficiency and attenuation.

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

In general, none of these early malts would have been well shielded
from the smoke involved in the kilning process, and consequently,
early beers would have had a smoky component to their flavors;
evidence indicates that maltsters and brewers constantly tried to
minimize the smokiness of the finished beer.

Writers of the period describe the distinctive taste derived from wood-
smoked malts, and the almost universal revulsion it engendered. The
smoked beers and ales of the West Country were famous for being
undrinkable - locals and the desperate excepted. This is from
"Directions for Brewing Malt Liquors" (1700):

"In most parts of the West, their malt is so stenched with the Smoak
of the Wood, with which 'tis dryed, that no Stranger can endure it,
though the inhabitants, who are familiarized to it, can swallow it as
the Hollanders do their thick Black Beer Brewed with Buck Wheat."

So, a bit of an acquired taste, then. Here's an even earlier reference
to such malt by William Harrison, in his "Description of England",
1577:

"In some places it [malt] is dried at leisure with wood alone, or
straw alone, in other with wood and straw together, but, of all, the
straw-dried is the most excellent. 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.
Such also as use both indifferently do bark, cleave, and dry their
wood in an oven, thereby to remove all moisture that should procure
the fume..."

Not exactly an unequivocal endorsement. Here's what "London and
Country Brewer" (1736) has to say:

"Brown Malts are dryed with Straw, Wood and Fern, etc. The straw-dryed
is the best, but the wood sort has a most unnatural Taste, that few
can bear with, but the necessitous, and those that are accustomed to
its strong smoaky tang; yet it is much used in some of the Western
Parts of England, and many thousand Quarters of this malt has been
formerly used in London for brewing the Butt-keeoing-beers with, and
that because it sold for two shillings per Quarter cheaper than Straw-
dryed Malt, nor was this Quality of the Wood-dryed Malt much regarded
by some of its Brewers, for that its ill Taste is lost in nine or
twelve Months, by the Age of the Beer, and the strength of the great
Quantity of Hops that were used in its preservation."

a hydrometer, used to measure the specific gravity of liquidsWood-
dried malt had a horrible taste, but some London brewers did once use
it because it was cheap and after long aging in a heavily-hopped beer
you didn't notice the vile smokiness any more.

However, the straw-dried brown malt preferred in London was the least
affected. That was the very reason it was valued above the wood-dried
variety. In "Town and Country Brewery Book" (approx. 1830, p.47),
there is a chapter about what can go wrong during malting. Smoking
malt was seen as a serious mistake:

"The third error consists in the drying of malt. They are apt to be
tainted by the smoke, through the carelessness, covetousness, or
unskilfulness of the maker. Every care ought to be taken to guard
against this accident as one of the most prejudicial that can befall
malt drinks."

The hydrometer transformed how beer was brewed. Before its
introduction beers were brewed from a single malt: brown beers from
brown malt, amber beers from amber malt, pale beers from pale malt.
Using the hydrometer, brewers could calculate the yield from different
malts. They observed that pale malt, though more expensive, yielded
far more fermentable material than cheaper malts. For example, brown
malt (used for Porter) gave 54 pounds of extract per quarter, whilst
pale malt gave 80 pounds. Once this was known, brewers switched to
using mostly pale malt for all beers supplemented with a small
quantity of highly-coloured malt to achieve the correct colour for
darker beers.

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. Its development was prompted by a
British law of 1816 forbidding the use of any ingredients other than
malt and hops. Porter brewers, employing a predominantly pale malt
grist, urgently needed a legal colourant. Wheeler's patent malt was
the solution.

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

[edit] Modern beer

Bottling beer in a modern facility, 1945, AustraliaPrior to
Prohibition, there were thousands of breweries in the United States,
mostly brewing heavier beers than modern US beer drinkers are used to.
Beginning in 1920, most of these breweries went out of business,
although some converted to soft drinks and other businesses.
Bootlegged beer was often watered down to increase profits, beginning
a trend, still on-going today, of the American palate preferring
weaker beers. 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. Smaller
breweries, including microbreweries or craft brewers and imports have
become more abundant since the mid 80's. By 1997 there were more
breweries operating in the United States than in all of Germany.[6] As
of 2007, there was 1390 regional craft breweries, microbreweries and
brewpubs in the United States.[7]

Many European nations have unbroken brewing traditions dating back to
the earliest historical records. Beer is an especially important drink
in countries such as Belgium, Germany, Ireland , and the UK, with
nations such as France, the Scandinavian countries, the Czech
Republic, and others having strong and unique brewing traditions with
their own history, characteristic brewing methods, and styles of beer.

Unlike in many parts of the world, there is a significant market in
Europe (the UK in particular) for beer containing live yeast. These
unfiltered, unpasteurised brews are awkward to look after compared to
the commonly sold dead beers: live beer quality can suffer with poor
care, but many people prefer the taste of a good live beer to a dead
one. 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.

In 1953, New Zealander Morton W. Coutts developed the technique of
continuous fermentation. 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. His
process is used by Guinness. Marston's Brewery in Burton on Trent, on
the other hand, still uses open wooden Burton Union sets for
fermentation in order to maintain the quality and flavour of its
beers, while Belgium's lambic brewers go so far as to expose their
brews to outside air in order to pick up the natural wild yeasts which
ferment the wort. Traditional brewing techniques protect the beer from
oxidation by maintaining a carbon dioxide blanket over the wort as it
ferments into beer.

Modern breweries now brew many different types of beer, ranging from
ancient styles such as the spontaneously-fermented lambics of Belgium;
the lagers, dark beers, wheat beers and more of Germany; the UK's
stouts, milds, pale ales, bitters, golden ale and new modern American
creations such as Chili Beer, Cream Ale, and Double India Pale Ales
which may have abv over 20%%.[8] Traditional brewing techniques are
still very widely used for the sake of maintaining the quality of the
final product which suffers if brewed using the more efficient
industrial processes which have been developed in modern times.

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. Advances in
refrigeration, international and transcontinental shipping, marketing
and commerce have resulted in an international marketplace, where the
consumer has literally hundreds of choices between various styles of
local, regional, national and foreign beers.

[edit] Mythology

Gambrinus - king of beerThe Finnish epic Kalevala, collected in
written form in the 19th century but based on oral traditions many
centuries old, devotes more lines to the origin of beer and brewing
than it does to the origin of mankind.

The mythical Flemish king Gambrinus (from Jan Primus (John I)), is
sometimes credited with the invention of beer.

According to Czech legend, deity Radegast, god of mutuality, invented
beer.

Ninkasi was the patron goddess of brewing in ancient Sumer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer