Subject: Ancient Brews

From: [email-masked] (Bob Eddy)
Date: 11 Jun 93 21:17:03 GMT

I found this article recently in my local paper and thoght you might find
it interesting, too.  It's reprinted, of course, without permission.

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SUMERIANS REALLY KNEW THEIR BEER, AND NOW SO DO SOME LUCKY TASTERS
by Deborah Scoblionkov
New York Times News Service

			How did neolithic man relax after a hard day of laying the foundations
for future civilizations?
			He had a beer.
			Indeed, many scientists now believe that it was beer, not bread, that
enticed Stone Age men to give up their nomadic hunting and gathering ways
and settle down to plant grain, which ensured a constant supply of fresh
brew.
			By 3000 B.C., when the Bronze Age arrived in Mesopotamia, a part of
present-day Iraq where early traces of agriculture have been found, the
Sumerians were already proficient brewers.  Beer even had its own patron
goddess, Ninkasi, whose name literally translates as "You who fill my mouth
so full."
			By 2000 B.C., the Sumerians, who lived in the southern part of the area,
were making a wide range of beers and used many of the same techniques that
brew masters employ today.  In an effort to recreate these early brews,
Fritz Maytag, the president and brew master of the Anchor Brewing Co. in
San Francisco, began the Sumerian Beer Project in 1988.
			Recently, Maytag held the first public tasting of Ninkasi, his beer
based on a 3,800-year-old recipe.  The tasting was part of a seminar called
"Historically Drinking: Beers Past and Present" at the University Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the
events of Philadelphia's ninth annual The Book and the Cook culinary
festival.

Age-old brew

			"The Sumerian brewers were specialists, very sophisticated
professionals," Maytag said.  The recipe he used was found in a poem, "Hymn
to Ninkasi," which had been etched into clay tablets that were excavated in
Mesopotamia centuries later.  The poem was first translated into English in
1964.  As he studied the translation, Maytag realized that, stanza by
stanza, it was "very clearly a linear progression of the brewing process,"
from the preparation of the mash to the fermentation and the resulting
sweet liquid.
			Anchor has no plans to market Ninkasi beer commercially.  "Exploiting
the name of the goddess doesn't sit well with me," Maytag said.  "This is
above that."
			The beer recipe in the poem was enough to pique Maytag's curiosity.  But
when he searched scholarly literature for clues as to exactly how ancient
beer was brewed, he realized that Sumerologists and archaeologists "were
hopelessly ignorant about brewing techniques," he said.
			In 1988, he called Dr. Solomon Katz, a bioanthropologist at the
University Museum, who enthusiastically embraced the project.  Maytag had
read Katz's articles on the importance of beer as a factor in the
development of agriculture.  Given a choice between bread and beer, Katz
said, early man would have chosen beer, not only for its healthy
nutritional content but for the heady effects of its alcohol.

First, get some bappir

			In proper Sumerian fashion, Maytag baked bappir, a crisp barley bread
from which the beer would be fermented.  He added water and a mixture of
malted, raw and roasted barley to create the mash.  Hops, which give modern
beers their distinctive bitter flavor, were not known to Sumerian brewers,
who, archaeologists believe, added dates and honey as aromatics.
			The first batch of Anchor's Ninkasi beer was served to members of the
American Association of Micro-Brewers at their annual conference in 1989. 
It was poured into huge jars and sipped from straws, just as the ancients
drank it.
			In August 1992, Maytag decided to try making Ninkasi again and to
improve upon his first attempt.  He added emmer wheat, an ancient strain
that has managed to survive, to the barley bread, which he baked in a
wood-fired oven.  And he more than doubled the amount of bappir used,
bottling the brew in 100 magnums, 1.5-liter bottles the size of two
standard wine bottles.
			Maytag does not claim to have recreated ancient Sumerian beer in every
detail.  "No one knows exactly how it was done," he conceded.  But he has
accomplished what he describes as "a sincere effort to bring the art and
craft of today's brewer to bear on the mystery of how beers might have been
made over 5,000 years ago."
			At the museum tasting, where more than 1,000 beer lovers had the
opportunity to sample the cloudy brown brew, an English beer expert and
author, Michael Jackson, described the experience as "like stepping into a
time machine."  He said he was surprised that it "tasted so recognizably
like a beer," a fact that he attributed to Anchor's use of commercial
brewer's yeast.
			As for the taste of Ninkasi, it was less bubbly than present-day beer,
yet pleasantly malty.  Jackson said he detected "a distinct grainy
character, a slight sherry-like taste and the flavor of honey and dates."
			And its kick, an alcohol content of 4 percent, was apparently enough to
keep the Sumerians down on the farm.