A brief history of beer

Prehistory

Beer has never been invented! When we go back in time searching the original beer, we don't find it. We probably will guess how beer developed: a mixture of barley and water Archeologists say that the firts grown cereal has been barley, easy to grow, and barley gave its contribute in transofming those nomads in permanent as thwy built the first villages. Year after year agriculture developed and the crops started to produce a surplus to stock. People had to find a secret place to stock barley from worms and roditors. Necessity is the mother of all inventions, and so women discovered an original way of stocking the grains- they steeped the grains in vessels full of water, and so the wild

yeasts could start a spontaneus fermentation: beer starts to develop. After drinking this “slop”, the primitive men felt strengthened and, most of all, happier: hardness of life appears more bearable, and in this fact they saw a miracle.

The Sumerians

The first proof of beer existence comes from a clay writing table, that was written during the sumerian pre-dynastical age (ca 3700 b.C.), the famous “blu monument”, describing the offerigns for the godness Nin-Harra: kids, honey and beer. Reading the cuneiform types, we know that “beer houses” were run by women, that baley beer was called “sikaru” (liquid bread) while spelt beer was called “kurunnu”, and that other kinds of beer were brewed by mixing sikaru and curunnu. We should remember al least the “niud” sweetened with date sugar and the “bi-du”, the most ordinary of all beers used to give workers their salary (3 liters a day!). The first law regulating production and sale of beer it's, doubtless, the Code of Hammourabi (1728-1686 b.C.) that comdamned to death people who didn't respect the brewing laws and who opened a beer tap-room without permit.

The Egyptians

Egyptians ascrided to Osiris, protector of the deads, the invenction of beer and, beign beer and death so stricly related, the rich used to build a microbrewery inside their graves. The Faraons were due, as a tribute from the cities, the lands and the provinces, thousands of beer jars and, as for the Sumerians, the minumim salary was in beer (two jars a day). Beer was also sinonimous of life, and its curative properties became popular: the “papyrus of Ebers” describes 600 medical prescriptions based on beer in order to ease human sufferings.

In the schools, the students learned how to brew before learning writing and reading. Beer had not to be sell for gold or silver, but only in changhe of a fixed amount of barley: trangressors were thrown into the river. Egyptians called beer “zythum”, and their “cousins”, the Greeks, called it “zythos”: nowadays, we use the greek root to call all the elements of fermentation, such as "zymotechnia" (1762), "zymotic" (1855), ecc. We imagine that kind of beer as a sweet, quite thick and low-alcohol drink.

Women's saliva

Women discover that beer ferments quicker if they chew the grains, in fact an enzyme called “ptialina” (contained in saliva) transforms starch in sugars good for fermentation. Nowadays, in some regions of South America, women thet chew the grains and spit into a vessel repeat the oldest brewing ritual known. Feminine sign on beer lasts untill the Middle-Age. German laws say that only the housekeeper can hold the brewing items (often part of her marriage settlement). In Great Britain the famous “ale wives” prepares the noble drink, and the job of selling beer is dominated by women.

The Gauls

Gaults improved brewing in three ways : they used hot stones for cooking the beer, invented wooden casks for stocking beer (about eight months) and they invented a macig potion by blending wheat beer and mead. They used to give their beer a better flavour by using aniseeds, wormwood and fennel, while the Druids used to prepare a magic potion with curative powers by using thieri segret ingredient: sage.

Middle Age During the Middle Agethe Church and the nobles held the power of brewing and selling beer. When the demand exceeded the offer, they accorded to privates the licence to brew beer. Soon brewers started to form a sort of trade-union, and beer became one of the main economic forces. On the year 1376 in Hamburg, something like 457 different

"gruyt"

Crusaders also contibuted to the usage of spices, imported from the Middle East: spices doubtless produce a superior quality beer. The mixture of the different spices, called “gruyt” form an ancient saxon word, can include a huge number of different spices: amber, raspberries, pepper, fenner, henbane, lavender, aniseed, saffron, cinnamon, gentian-root and cloves.
Many Episcopal cities set, like a monopoly, a “gruyt right”: something like a tax that constrain the brewers to buy an amount of gruyt in proportion with the cereals they used. With the unarrestable rise of the hop (13th century), gruyt felt into oblivium. However, the usage of spices didn't disappear at all and nowadays many brewer from Belgium, Scotland and Sweden contribute to keep this tradition alive. This tradition is now growing with the growth of the beer brewed for a long sipping, opposed to the session beers.

Hops

The usage of hops is very old, but the usage of hops while the wort is boiling take birth during the 13th century. A big contribution comes form the researches of the famous botanic Sister Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), form St. Rupert Abbey in Germany. Sister Hildegard focuses on the properties of hops in stopping the corruption of beer, and in giving beer a longer life. The usage of hops conquers at firts Bohemia, and than expands in Germany and in the Netherlands (the center of the international commerce). Only the “traditionalist to the utmost” Englishmen try to resist to hops, largely used by the Flemish immigrants: English people accepted hops only during the 16th century. In the year 1516 the famous Reinheitsgebot (Purity law)

borns: this law, nowadays into force, obliges the brewer to use only water, malted barley and hops (and yeast, of course). A curiosity: few people know that William the 4th of Bavaria issued this law (intended to be temporary) to avoid, just for that year, the usage of wheat (that suffered a bad crop) for brewing purposes. At the end of the Middle Age the art of brewing was firmly held by the Church and by the middle calss, forming powerful unions. In order to be allowed to brew, one had to prove to be honest, not to be illegitimate child and not to be an adulterer. The brewer who was found to dilute beer with water was comndamed to death.

Monks

Industrial Revolution

have exact information about every phase of the brewing process: before, brewers used to pitch yeast into the wort when he could put a hand into the cooled wort, or when he could see his reflected image. Industrial and scientific revolution take place during the 19th century, and they totally upset the world of beer in two ways: mechanization permit to raise the volume of beer brewed, and gave the brewer a complete control of the batch, in every moment in a scientific way. The first steam engine in brewing is due to James Watt, who used his machine to brew a porter, in London in 1785. Daniel Wheeler patented a machine to toast malt, in 1817, and opened the way to the distinction between light and dark malts. Jean-

Glass bottle

During the 18th century a real glass industry begins to take place. The complete of the glass bottle completes during the period 1880-1885, with the invention of the mechanic glass machine (which occour at the same time with the discovering of the bottom fermentation). Drinkers could now see the nectar thet were drinking and they started to have a preference for light and golden beers, the aspect of which is magnified by the transparency of the glass.

The discorvery of yeast

Leuwenhoeck in 1680 discovered brewer's yeast, but he coudn't explain its nature nor how yeast works; in 1739 Cagniard-Latour says that fermentation is due to a yeast cell. His theory, based unpon an invisible cell, is hardly contrasted by the scientists of those times, but the year after Anton Dreher and Gabriel Sedlmayer discorvered that yeast is the secret of the glory of the beers from Bavaria. This yeast, exported in Bohemia, gives the brewers from Plzen the chance to brew a new and astonishing kind of beer, in 1842. Pilsner Urquell (original spring) becomes the reference mark of many and many beers, that inspires to its golden brightness in order to satisfy a growing demand. The works by Pasteur upon fermentation, in 1876, explain exactly how yeast works and how bacteria can ruin the beer's taste. The results of his researches lead many breweries to set up a laboratory, and in 1883 Emil Hansen, from the Danish brewery Carlsbers, develops a technique thet isolate a single yeast cell: this allows the brewers to have a complete control over the beers they brew.

The 20th century

From beer-food to beer-drink

The means of transport let the beer travel further and further, but they also develop a mass-marketing. Market researches tell the breweries that “the less a beer is bitter, the mere it sells”. These studies helps the industries: if 75% of beer drinkers dislike bitter beers, the brewery lowers the bitterness level of of its beers, with taking no care of the rest 25% of its drinkers. In a later phase, the brewery may affirm in advertising that its beers are better because less bitter: this is a partial information, because the drinker people may identify bitterness as a fault. We assist to a levelling

Beer for taste

At the beginng of the '80s, we assist to a “reinassance” of the tasting beer. It's an original fact, with no links with the past: before industrialization there was no beer culture. The pubblication of books about tasing in new, the beer gastronomy is new, beer shops are new and the first museum of beer are just about twenty years old. The elements of this reinassance are many: turism, passionates' interest, the marketing of the small and medium breweries, the formation of beer lovers group and, last but not least, the philosophy of “small is beautiful”.

Appendix: beer in Italy

We due to Etruscans the import of barley, the main ingredient in beer, in Italy. Soon, in the ancient Rome and in the whole roman empire people started to drink beer, even if it was considered a “pagan and plebician” drink, while wine was considered to be “divine and noble”. In 87 a.C. Tacitus writes about the German's beer calling it “vinus corruptus”, rotten wine! His father-in-law, Agricola, had a different thought and brought with him tre brewmasters from Glevum (Gloucester) in order to open in Rome his private brewery. Augustus set the doctors free from taxes because Musa, his own doctor, cured Augustus' liver illness by using “cervisia”.
Beer became one of the victim of the barbaric invasions, as they destroyed the breweries in the cities. During the Middle Age, few examples of brewing related to monastic life are proved. Between 529 and 543, manuscripts say that while San Benedetto from Norcia was in Montecassino Abbey, in Latium, beer was brewed there: this is maybe the first abbey in the world to brew. In 600, San Colombano, an Irish monk, built the Abbey of Bobbio, near Piacenza, and between 612 and 613 produced some miracles with beer. After the Middle Age there is no beer reinassance in Italy, because of the climate and of the religious domination. In fact the catholics see wine as a holy drink, blessed during the Last Supper, while beer was considered to be a simbol of the paganism of the people from Northern Europe.
Beer returns in our country in a tragin historic period, brought by the infamous lansquenets who sacked Rome in 1527. Historian Massimo Alberini reports that one of thier comandants, Giorgio con Frundesberg, used to be followed, even on the battlefields, by a horse bearing two casks of beer. Even during the Risorgimento revolutions, beer was the drink of the Austrian oppressors, while Italian people used to drink wine. But times was ready for beer to reach, even in Italy, the popularity that this fresh, thirst-quenching and socialiasing drink merits. The first craft breweries start their activity durign the second half of the 19th century.
The first Italian brewery is Spluga, from Chiavenna, that started brewing in 1840, followed by the breweries owned by some businessmen from Austria, like Wurher, Dreher, Paskowsky, Metzger, Caratch, Won Wunster. Soon after, some Italians such as Peroni or Menabrea, opened thier own breweries. After the two World War, and after the rise of taxation, the big multinationals started to buy the small breweries, like in the rest of the world.
The consumption of beer in Italy in 1999 rised to the record of circa 15,555 million hectoliters. The internal production rised to circa 12,137 million hectoliters. Import (3,841 million hectoliters) and export (0,423 millions hectoliters) also rised. The per capite consumption is about 27 liters.
These numbers only describe the quantity of beer drunk. If we consider quality, reality is different and everyone who wants to start a brewing reinassance similar to the one the Americans had knows it.

Thanks to Nicola Zanella for the translation