Maybe you don't know: Beer was created from a mistake

Few people know that this captivating "liquid gold" was created from a random mistake .

No one knows exactly when the first batch of beer was brewed. It is almost certain that beer did not appear before 10,000 BC , but by 4000 BC it had spread to the Near East , where it appeared in a Mesopotamian hieroglyphic text, the region corresponding to Iraq. Today, it shows two people using reed straws to drink beer from a large ceramic jar. Ancient beer had grains, husks and other debris floating on the surface, so a straw was needed to avoid swallowing them.

Because the earliest texts date from around 3400 BC, they cannot shed direct light on the origin of the stele. But clearly the popularity of beer is tied to the domestication of cereal crops to make beer and the learning of how to grow crops .

It emerged during a tumultuous period in human history that saw the transition from nomadic to settled lifestyles, followed by a sudden increase in social complexity, demonstrated directly through the emergence of of urban areas. Beer is a drink passed down from human prehistory and its roots are also closely tied to the origins of civilization itself.

The popularity of beer is associated with the domestication of cereal crops.

People did not invent beer, but discovered it. This discovery was inevitable as the hoarding of wild rhizomes became widespread after the last ice age ended around 10000 BC, in an area called the Fertile Crescent . This area stretches from modern Egypt, up the Mediterranean coast in the southeastern corner of Turkey, then down to the border between Iraq and Iran. It got its name because of a happy accident of geography.

When the ice age ended, the mountains in this area provided an ideal environment to raise wild sheep, goats, buffaloes, cows. and pigs; Also in some areas, it is suitable to grow wheat and wild barley close together. This meant that the Fertile Crescent often provided attractive options for nomadic bands of hunters and gatherers. They not only hunted animals and picked edible plants, but also gathered the abundant grain that grew wild in the area.

Such grains provide a reliable and exciting food source. Although they cannot be eaten raw, these nuts can be eaten when pounded or ground and then soaked in water. Initially, people probably just mixed them into soup.

Ingredients as diverse as fish, nuts and berries are mixed with water in a vat plastered with plaster or bitumen. Fire-baked stones are dropped in with a fork. Cereals contain tiny starch grains. When soaked in water, they absorb moisture and expand, allowing the starch to mix into the soup and thicken the soup completely.

People soon discovered that cereal grains have an unusual property : Unlike other foods, if stored safely and dry, they can be stored to be eaten gradually for months or even weeks. next year. When there is no other food to make soup, they can be used separately to make porridge or thin porridge. This discovery led to the development of tools and techniques for harvesting, processing, and storing grain.

This work is quite tiring, but it is a way to prevent the possibility of food shortages in the future. Throughout the Fertile Crescent, there is archaeological evidence from around 10,000 BC such as flint sickles used to harvest grain, woven baskets for storage, stone ovens for drying, cellars for storage and grinding stones for preparing food. mechanism.

Although previously hunter-gatherers were partially settled and no longer completely nomadic, that is, moving and staying from one place to another temporarily or seasonally, the ability to predict Grain storage began to encourage people to stay in one place.

An experiment performed in the 1960s showed the reason. An archaeologist uses a flint sickle to see how effectively prehistoric families could harvest wild grains, which still grow in some regions in Türkiye.

In one hour he harvested nearly a kilogram of seeds, from which it was deduced that a family working eight hours a day for three weeks would harvest enough to provide each family member with half a kilogram of seeds per day for a year. But that means they have to stay close to the wild cereal bushes so they don't miss the most suitable harvest time. And when they had collected a large amount of seeds, they could not bear to leave them unattended.

Ancient beer had grains, husks and other debris floating on the surface, which is very different from today.

The result was the birth of the first permanent settlements, such as those on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean from around 10,000 BC. Here there are simple circular huts with wooden pillars supporting the roof, the floor sinking nearly a meter. These huts often have stone fireplaces, about 3.6 to 4.6 meters in diameter. A typical village has about 50 huts, providing a place to live for a community of two or three hundred people. Although the inhabitants of these villages continued to hunt wild animals such as gazelles, deer and wild boars, the remains provide evidence that they survived on a diet of plants such as acorns and lentils. , chickpeas and grains, were still gathered in the wild at this time rather than actively cultivated.

Cereal grains were initially an unimportant food, but became more valuable when people discovered its two unusual characteristics . First, this type of seed absorbs water, so it sprouts and has a sweet taste. It is difficult to create a completely waterproof storage pit, so this feature soon became apparent when people began to store seeds.

The reason this grain has a sweet taste has now been explained: Moist grains produce the enzyme diastase , which helps convert starch into maltose or malt sugar. This process occurs in all cereal grains, but barley currently produces the most diastase enzyme, and therefore the most maltose.

In the days before there were many other sources of sugar, the sweetness of 'malted' grains must have been highly prized, initiating the development of active malting techniques, in which grains are moistened and then dried. .

The second discovery was even more important. Plain porridge left alone for a few days undergoes a mysterious transformation, making it look like it was cooked with malted grains: It foams a little and has a slight yeasty smell, due to wild yeast in the air fermenting the sugar in the plain porridge. into alcohol.

In short, plain porridge has turned into beer. Even so, beer was not exactly the first alcoholic beverage to pass through human lips.

By the time beer was discovered, alcohol from accidentally fermented fruit juice (creating wine) or water and honey (creating mead) was already occurring in small amounts in nature when people Try to stock up on fruit or honey. But fruit is only seasonal and perishable, wild honey is only available in very limited quantities, and wine or mead cannot be stored for long without a ceramic pot, which was not popular until around 7000 BC. variable.

On the other hand, beer can be made from seasonal grains, which are abundant and can be easily stored, creating satisfaction in both quality and quantity when needed. Long before the advent of pottery, beer could be brewed in baskets made of tar, leather baskets or animal stomachs, bulbous plants, large snail shells or stone vessels. Seashells were used in brewing water until the 19th century in the Amazon basin, and Sahti, a traditional beer in Finland, is still brewed in the stem of the bladder tree to this day.

Once the important discovery of making beer was made, trial and error helped improve the quality of the beer. For example, the more malted grains in the initial porridge, the longer the fermentation time and the stronger the beer.

More malt means more sugar, longer fermentation means more sugar turns into alcohol. Cooking the porridge well also helps make the beer stronger.

For thousands of years, people have discovered how to create beers with diverse alcohol levels and flavors.

The malting process converts about 15% of the starch in the barley grain into sugar, but when malted barley is mixed with water and heated, other starch-converting enzymes, which become active at high temperatures high, will turn more starch into sugar, so that the yeast has more sugar to turn into alcohol.

Ancient brewers also noted that using the same container to brew multiple times would produce a more reliable product. Later historical records in Egypt and Mesopotamia show that brewers often carried 'mixing vats' with them, a Mesopotamian legend also mentioning 'vatches that make good beer'.

Using the same mixing tank multiple times will promote successful fermentation because the yeast culture will take place in the cracks and crevices of the tank, thereby eliminating the need to rely on erratic sources of wild yeast.

Finally, add berries, honey, spices, herbs and other flavors to the porridge to create different forms of beer. Over the next few thousand years, people discovered how to create beers with a variety of alcohol levels and flavors for different occasions.