FBD: Down with Cleopatra

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There are records of brewing in China. Researchers found several artifacts throughout China, which they believed were used to make beer. These artifacts date back to 7,000 BC.

While the Mesopotamians made their brews with cereal and barley, the ancient Chinese made theirs with grapes, honey, and rice. Rice beer, or Lao Li, was offered to the gods and the dead.

Ancient Chinese brews tasted more like starch and grain, with a little sourness and fruity flavor profiles. Ancient brews didn’t use hops, not just in China, but also in Europe.

Because ancient brews don’t use hops, they taste different from a lot of today’s drinks.

After the Han Dynasty, huángjiu, or yellow wine, became more popular. The Chinese didn’t drink as much beer anymore until foreign trade partners introduced brewing facilities in China.

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And the monks themselves also drank beer. Monks drank beer during Lent, as they were fasting. Beer was the perfect fasting drink because it provided more calories than water. This was how beer got its name, “liquid bread.”

Monks are important for the development of beer as we know it today. They introduced regulations and even developed the use of hops in brewing.

Hops weren’t around just for flavoring. The monks discovered that hops were an important preservative which helped increase the shelf life of beer. It took some time to get the recipe right, though.

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The Reinheitsgebot states that brewers can only use three ingredients, and three ingredients only: barley, hops, and water

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Porters are a well-hopped brew. The English drank porters as early as the 14th century. It is dark in appearance thanks to the use of brown malt.

The porter got its name because it was the drink of choice with street and river porters and other laborers of the time.

The porter is the first beer that didn’t need aging in taverns. Unlike most brews, it is possible to produce porters on a large scale.

England is home to many of today’s most popular brews. The India Pale Ale (IPA) is one very popular style developed in England. IPAs were meant for delivery to the British Empire in the East.

The British Empire needed an ale that would survive the six-month journey to India, which had a warmer climate. With a few developments, the India Pale Ale was born.

IPA never really took off in India, but Americans revived it later on when microbreweries took off.

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Remember the beer goddess Ninkasi?

Because of this ancient Sumerian myth, many people attribute the invention of beer to women. And since brewing is a kitchen activity, women were the ones who made ales in ancient times.

Before the 1500s, women were the ones who made ales. “Alewife” is the name given to women brewsters. Brewing beer was a cottage industry in England, too, and so they also considered it “women’s work,” much like other household activities.

They soon replaced alewives with taverns. The church believed alewives to be evil tricksters and witches. Because of all these comparisons of alewives to witches, and the change in attitude from a family drink to a social one, less and fewer women made ale.

Taverns, run by men, soon replaced alewives.

Women still continued brewing privately in their own homes for consumption. But when beer was marketed as a “manly drink,” women stopped brewing.

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