Oldest Mass-Production Brewery Discovered in Egypt

People have been drinking beer for a long time, and where there's beer, there will naturally be breweries. They kind of go together. But the brewery that was just discovered in Abydos, Egypt, sets quite a record, since it's the oldest mass-production brewery ever discovered, capable of making 22,400 liters of beer at a time. Since we don't use the metric system in this country, a more comfortable measurement would be  just under 190 barrels of beer. That's honestly not too bad, considering this is ancient Egypt we're talking about here. For reference, the Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Baltimore – a brewery of decent size, but not a regional powerhouse like Flying Dog or Troegs – has a 10,000-liter production facility, though I'm sure they have a much more efficient process and could make more in a year. Ancient beer also wasn't the most high-quality stuff in the world. Still, it's an impressive accomplishment, and it would be really cool if some enterprising brewer with plenty of money could restore the ancient brewery. I think it would be quite a tourist spot.

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.

Oldest Beer in the World Found

Sorry, Ancient Egypt, you've been outdone.

We've been making beer, wine, and various spirits for a long time. Thousands of years, in fact, or about as long as humanity has been planting crops. It was assumed that the discovery of fermentation was a byproduct of agriculture development and the baking of bread; it wasn't done purposefully, at least at first. However, a new discovery has thrown that theory into doubt.

Researchers were investigating a cave in Israel inhabited by a group of hunter-gatherers about 13,000 years ago, predating the Neolithic period, which started around 10,000 BC. They found traces of an alcoholic beverage based on wheat and barley within a collection of stone mortars carved into the floor of the cave. Using similar ingredients, the researchers recreated the drink, which was fermented and alcoholic, but was weaker than modern beer and had the consistency of gruel. Not particularly appetizing, but hey, these are some pretty primitive people we're talking about here.

What's most interesting is the appearance of intent. Not only does this find predate all previous discoveries of alcoholic beverages, the site seems to be a brewery of sorts. 13,000 years ago, we were purposefully making beer to drink. To put that into perspective, that's about 8,000 years before the previous first appearance of beer, about 5,000 years before the first appearance of wine, and 3,000 years before the first appearance of any sort of alcoholic beverage. It basically predates agriculture, which wouldn't become widespread for another thousand years. Remember, this was a nomadic tribe of hunter-gatherers, not farmers. And they were still purposefully making beer. Now that was a group of people with a proper set of priorities.