World Beer
About beer - a global view
It was actually by a fluke that beer came into existence. Water leaked into a vessel containing grain harvested from some wild crop, and the result was a fermented drink with a pleasant and intoxicating taste. The inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia discovered it and they were quick to appreciate it.
It is assumed that a fermented cereal drink similar to beer existed in Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria as early as seven thousand years before Christ.
The Sumer people in Mesopotamia brewed a fermented cereal drink called Kash. The Babylonians brewed three types of beer: dark, red, and thick. Their beer, called Shikarum, was based on fermented bread. Thanks to the financial yields generated by brewing, beer enjoyed royal protection. King Hammurabi’s Code imposed the death penalty on innkeepers who adulterated their beer.
For the Egyptians, beer was a divine drink. Brewing flourished most under the Ptolemies, when the state became the monopoly beer producer.
Ancient Celts, Teutons, and Slavic nations liked beer too. They made the drink from barley, wheat, oat, millet, and even lentils, and they flavoured it with sage, wormwood, peppermint, cinnamon and other herbs and seasonings.
According to historical sources, the ancient Teutons were avid beer drinkers, although their beer did not enjoy the best of reputations. Finns were also renowned for their partiality for beer. Their national heroic epic, Kalevala, recounting the tale of twelve heroes who founded the Finnish nation, contains more verses on the creation of beer than it does on the creation of the world.
Slavic nations did not lag behind their neighbours when it came to beer production. They were the first in Europe to flavour beer with hops. Latvians also excelled in making beer, using barley malt and hops for brewing.
In the Middle Ages, brewing developed in monasteries, in the breweries of the gentry as well as amongst ordinary people. In fact the petit bourgeois brewers gradually took over. As socio-economic relationships developed in the later Midle Ages, maltsters separated from the beer-making burghers and formed their own guilds. Therefore, from the 15th century commercial brewing was concentrated in malt houses and breweries. Municipalities also founded breweries to finance municipal expenditures out of brewery revenues.
The industrial revolution in the 19th century was characterized by in brewing terms by the transition to new bottom fermentation technology, the introduction of new machinery, and the rise of large industrial breweries with high production capacities.