In my amateur learning about Egypt, “beer” seems misleading. It’s definitely a fermented grain beverage thing, but more like bread + liquid that doesn’t make you sick.
Reproductions are kinda nasty and very low ABV from what I’ve heard and read. But a ton of calories and no amoebas. Perfect for a hard day’s pyramid building.
The Hymn to Ninkasi[0] provides a recipe for Sumerian beer. Instead of milling grain and steeping it, they baked bappir bread, crumbled it, and steeped that. The final product still had chunks of bread in it, so they drank it through straws. Instead of the modern practice of using hops, they used honey (or date juice?) and unspecified aromatics to flavor it. Fritz Maytag suggests that Miguel Civil mistranslates the Sumerian word ĝestin here as "wine," when "grapes" makes more sense from a microbiological perspective, the white fuzzy yeast found on the outside of grapes inoculating the brew for fermentation[1]. While it probably was an acquired taste foreign to our modern day paletes, the hymn suggests they enjoyed the taste.
That’s awesome and the references are great. Thank you for that. I’ve really been working on learning early history the past few years, especially from “the East”, where I had no real formal education.
The straw part is brilliant. I image that kind of like traditional Yerba Mate.
It’s kind of interesting that the fruit peel as a yeast source and aromatics are used in different Belgian brewing today. Modern beer only uses a few strains but these open vat brewing facilities can end up developing their own.
But it was interesting to me that all the earliest writing about trading and inventory of beer was not so much about cultures that prioritized getting smashed, but that beer was a utilitarian dietary staple.
And I guess for the most part, all alcoholic beverages have been “acquired tastes.” I’ve tried some meads with honey. I wouldn’t pick them out of today’s selection, but they’re not bad.
I really would be curious to try this. I also wonder if it’s the same as Egyptian beer. More hesitant on the Mongolian airag, but I’d probably give that a shot out of adventurism. The more commoner ones fascinate me more than the fancy elite beverages.
Reproductions are kinda nasty and very low ABV from what I’ve heard and read. But a ton of calories and no amoebas. Perfect for a hard day’s pyramid building.