The Early History of Beer

The history of beer has much to do with chance or some might say its discovery was a happy accident that has pleasing crowds for millennia. We can thank some early Sumarians, in Mesopotamia, for leaving their bread out in the rain? Add a little post rain warm weather and some wild yeast and low and behold you have fermentation and the earliest beer. Mesopotamia would later become the Babylonian empire, but despite the change in culture, beer continued to be the “divine drink”. The Babylonians even perfected the art of making beer, coming up as many as 20 different recipes for making different styles of beer.

The earliest beers were so loved that, it has even been argued that the discovery of beer and later wine even convinced humans to give up their rugged nomadic ways in flavour of a more cultured agricultural existence.

Beer was even consumed in the Roman Empire, despite wine’s title as the drink of the gods. In outlying regions to the north where growing grapes proved a challenge beer was the drink of the populous. Perhaps, the popularity of beer in these barbarian outposts was an early indication of beer’s marketability as a rugged man’s drink.

The English thirst for wine during the Middle Ages and their insatiable hunger for French wine and specifically their favourite Claret – a light red wine from Bordeaux would see that country rise to the ranks of the most important wine producing nation. Of course, during the Middle Ages Britain and France were often at war and new nations, such as Portugal, would rise to become the preferred trading partner of England, begetting new wine powers and new styles of wine such as Port.