It is impossible to say who brewed the first beer and when. From time immemorial, the Chinese have cooked it from rice, the American Indians from corn, the Celts and Slavs from barley, and the tribes of West and Central Africa from sorghum. And yet, according to archaeologists, the Sumerians should be considered the ancestors of brewing: they brewed a drink similar to beer, even 4 thousand years before the beginning of our era.
Ancient brewers did it simply: freshly baked bread was crumbled into water and placed in a warm place. After 2-3 days, the mixture was filtered and the drink was ready. The Sumerians used up to half of their grain reserves to make it. They drank this drink through a straw, like a cocktail, filtering out the sediment.
Medicine
Even then, the "Ministry of Health" warned about the danger of excessive use of the foamy drink: "Do not ruin yourself when you are sitting in a pub, do not lose your mind and do not forget your vows …" - reads the cuneiform dictum. Apparently, the Sumerians loved beer with a degree. But in moderate doses, they found it very beneficial. In particular, it was used as a remedy for toothache.
It is known that later, in Babylon, beer was brewed at home by women and sold in bulk. King Hammurabi (mid-18th century BC) tried to regulate this violent activity - he was the first to introduce norms for the production and consumption of beer, perpetuating them in the famous "code of laws". Babylonian law was harsh: brewers offering poor quality products could drink them to death with the brew.
They also loved to drink in Egypt. The ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for meal literally translates as "bread and beer." More recently, archaeologists who examined the bones of the Nubians who lived about 3 thousand years ago in the Nubian kingdom (a neighbor of Egypt), came to the conclusion that they contain the antibiotic tetracycline, which apparently entered the body along with beer. Analysis of ancient bones has shown that they are literally saturated with tetracycline, which indicates a constant intake of this substance over time.
Experts came to the conclusion that the grain that the Nubians used to obtain fermentable malt gruel could contain soil bacteria from the streptomycete genus that produce tetracycline. Consequently, the Nubians knew the science of controlled fermentation, and they produced the drug purposefully and probably for medicinal purposes. As for the Greeks and Romans, they preferred wine to beer. True, among the Romans, beer was given an honorable place: it was considered a sacrificial drink and was dedicated to the goddess of fertility Ceres (which is why the name of beer among the Spaniards is cerveza, from the Latin cerevisia).
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Germanic "wine"
A real cult of beer flourished among the Germanic tribes. The Roman writer and scientist Pliny the Younger reported 195 varieties of "Germanic wine". For the preparation of wort, the ancient Germans used oak bark, ash leaves and even bovine bile. The first Christian monks who settled in the Germanic forests began experimenting with more aromatic ingredients - juniper, blueberry, currant. But it wasn't until 786 that a monk figured out to use hops as an additive, which gave the beer its characteristic bitter taste. Beer turned out to be very useful for monasteries, where their inhabitants often observed fasting. Within the walls of the monasteries, the expression was born: "Beer is liquid bread." In addition, the monasteries received substantial profits from the beer trade.
In the Middle Ages in Western Europe, there was a belief that the inventor of brewing was either the king or the god Gambrinus. He was portrayed as a bearded fat man, sitting astride a barrel of beer, with a crown on his head and with a glass in his hand. There is a version that Gambrinus is not a fictional person, but a character in history, whose name comes from the name of the Brabant feudal lord Johannes Primus, who gave the Benedictine monks great privileges in brewing, and therefore exalted by popular rumor.
There were also hundreds of types of beer in Russia. Some of them, in different areas, were flavored not only with hops, but also with oak bark, and various herbs, and even ate young shoots. One of the oldest breweries, called Gambrinus, was located on Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg. The beer was brewed there exclusively from barley and hops. Barley was grown in Russia, and hops were delivered from Bavaria and Austria.
Mikhail EFIMOV