What's it Like Brewing Ancient Beer?

Turns out, sometimes it involves chewing and spitting out corn for hours on end. And yes, people do drink the end product of that less-than-pleasant process. That's the goal anyway, but according to this article, sometimes the brewing process went less than swimmingly. But hey, beer archeology (that's a great job title, by the way, I kind of want to do that now) is a less than exact science. The brewers are working with nonexact recipes that are hundreds or thousands of years old. Not only that, the microorganisms used to ferment the beer will probably never be known. So we have to take a guess.

A couple other things stood out to me. One, I'm fairly certain I've had the Mida Touch from Dogfish Head once before. I'll have to keep a lookout for their Ancient Ale series next time I go do some serious beer shopping. It could be interesting.

Two, I like how apparently ancient civilizations liked trash each other's beer. The Romans were very harsh on Egyptian beer, and I think that's pretty funny. Even in ancient times, beer snobs still existed.