The History of Beer

Mmmmmm... beer. Favourite drink of celebrities such as Homer Simpson and Crocodile Dundee. But beer hasn’t just been a recent invention.

Oldest reliable records indicate that the Sumerians discovered the fermentation process by chance approximately 6,000 years ago. Ninkasi, the goddess of brewing is depicted on ancient seals, and the “hymm to Ninkasi” is indeed a recipe for making beer. As a result the Sumerians are assumed to be the first civilised culture to brew beer, their gift from the gods. Records also show that the master brewers were women!

After the Sumerian empire collapsed the Babylonians became the rulers of Mesopotamia in approximately 2,000 BC. As they had derived their culture from the Sumerians they eagerly embraced the art of brewing beer, reportedly knowing how to brew 20 different types of beer.

The Babylonians were the first known beer exporters, distributing their brews as far away as Egypt. And in a similar way that we today have an advisory limit for alcohol intake, the Babylonian king, Hammurabi, decreed a law establishing a daily beer ration. Typical workers received 2 litres of beer a day, rising to 5 litres a day for high priests. Interesing to imagine how lucid their ceremonies were at the end of a beer soaked day.

The Egyptians valued beer so highly they became brewers themselves, and its importance was recorded by their creation of a hieroglyph for “brewer”.

Isis, the nature goddess, was Egypt's patroness of beer brewing.

Moving forward in time Greeks took to brewing, and the Greek goddess of agriculture, Ceres, is where cerveza the Spanish word for beer was derived from. The Greeks then passed on their brewing knowledge to teach the Romans how to brew.

The Romans took on the whole beer culture very readily, continuing to brew beer until they discovered wine and beer was henceforth for the lower classes or “barbarians”, or imbibed only where wine was difficult to obtain.

Germany can claim their earliest proof of brewing as 800 BC, having found a beer amphora dating to this time. The Germans of that era regarded beer as containing a spirit or god because it possessed the spirit of the drinker. They considered intoxication divine, and its mood altering properties supernatural.

Beer really came into its own with the advent of the Christian era, largely through the influence of monasteries which brewed beer. Monks are often cited as the pioneers of the hotel business having built the first breweries to provide shelter, food and drink to pilgrims and other travellers.

Three Christian saints are listed as patrons of brewing; Saint Augustine of Hippo, author of the confessions; Saint Luke the Evangelist; and Saint Nicholas of Myra, better known as Santa Claus (now we know why Santa has such rosy cheeks).

Moving rapidly forward to the Middle Ages, with beer being safer to drink than water its popularity increased further, even children were expected to drink beer. Beer was still generally brewed by women as it was regarded as “food-drink” and with it being the women’s responsibility to provide food for the men, it was the ale-wives who would brew.

Records indicate that European style beer first arrived in America with Christopher Columbus. On his last voyage to America in 1502, Columbus found the natives of Central America making a brew of maize, that resembled English beer. As he had already picked up the first cocoa beans on this trip also, Columbus is credited with introducing two staples to America, chocolate and beer. Records also indicate that the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, instead of further south as planned, partly because they ran out of beer.

Beer continued its popularity across the world, and none more so than the United States, which boasted thousands of breweries. In 1920 Prohibition saw the majority of these breweries go out of business. Bootleg beer was usually a watered down version of the heavier beers that had been traditionally made in the US prior to the Prohibition Era, and was the beginning of the trend, still ongoing today, of the American preference for lighter beers.

Canada was not exempt from Prohibition and saw it first arrive in 1900 in PEI, with Alberta following in 1916.

Prohibition ended in the US in 1933 and in the 1920’s in Canada with Alberta repealing the prohibition law in 1924. Since that time the growth of breweries and micro-breweries in North America and the world has increased to become the huge global business that it is today.