My sister and her spouse often have a beer on their deck late
in the afternoon before they start preparing dinner. In a way, it’s a throwback
to the time that my parents would have cheese, crackers, and beer (usually Hamm’s)
on the table outside in the backyard in the afternoon during the summer months.
Sharon and I often have cheese and crackers when I get home
from school, but I normally have a glass of wine instead of a beer. I still
like beer, but I normally have one at dinner time if it pairs well with whatever
we are having for dinner that night.
We had roughly 30 people in attendance at our 50th wedding
anniversary part two weeks ago, and most of them brought beer. As a result, we
had a LOT of beer left over. My favorite beer, though, was a Paulaner
Hefe-Weizen, which was first brewed in Munich in 1634, roughly 80 years after
the 1516 German purity law was passed.
1634 was a long time ago, but humans have been consuming beer
for a MUCH longer period of time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer
Beer is one of the oldest drinks
humans have produced. The first chemically confirmed barley beer dates back to
the 5th millennium BC in modern-day Iran, and was recorded in the written history of ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia and spread throughout the world.
As almost any cereal containing certain sugars can
undergo spontaneous fermentation due to wild yeasts in the
air, it is possible that beer-like drinks were independently developed
throughout the world soon after a tribe or culture had domesticated cereal.
Chemical tests of ancient pottery jars reveal that beer was produced as far
back as about 7,000 years ago in what is today Iran. This
discovery reveals one of the earliest known uses of fermentation and is the
earliest evidence of brewing to date.
Author Thomas Sinclair says in his
book, "Beer, Bread, and the Seeds of Change: Agriculture's Imprint on
World History" that the discovery of beer may have been an accidental
find. The precurser to beer was soaking grains in water and making a porridge
or gruel, as grain were chewy and hard to digest alone. Ancient peoples would
heat the gruel and leave it throughout the days until it was gone. A benefit to
heating the gruel would be to sanitize the water and the temperature required
to denature grain proteins would also denature disease microbes. Leaving the gruel
to sit would change it. Fermentation would occur and they noticed the change in
taste and effect. Yeasts would settle on the mixture and rapidly consume the
oxygen in the mixture. The low oxygen was a significant consequence of allowing
the yeast to digest sugars by anerobic respiration. The yeast would release
ethenol (alcohol) and carbon dioxide as by-products and, hence, beer was born.
In Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence
of beer is believed to be a 6,000-year-old Sumerian tablet depicting people
consuming a drink through reed straws from a communal bowl. A 3,900-year-old Sumerian poem
honouring Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing,
contains the oldest surviving beer recipe, describing the production of beer from
bread made from barley.
In China, residue on pottery dating
from around 5,000 years ago shows beer was brewed using barley and other
grains.
The invention of bread and beer has
been argued to be responsible for humanity's ability to develop technology and
build civilization. The earliest chemically confirmed barley beer to date
was discovered at Godin Tepe in
the central Zagros Mountains of
Iran, where fragments of a jug, from between 5,400 and 5,000 years ago was
found to be coated with beerstone, a by-product
of the brewing process. Beer may have been known in Neolithic Europe as far back as 5,000
years ago, and
was mainly brewed on a domestic scale.
Beer produced before the Industrial Revolution continued
to be made and sold on a domestic scale, although by the 7th century AD beer was
also being produced and sold by European monasteries. During the Industrial Revolution,
the production of beer moved from artisanal manufacture to industrial manufacture, and domestic
manufacture ceased to be significant by the end of the 19th century. The
development of hydrometers and thermometers changed brewing by allowing
the brewer more control of the process, and greater knowledge of the results.
Today, the brewing industry is a
global business, consisting of several dominant multinational
companies and many thousands of smaller producers ranging
from brewpubs to regional breweries.[13] More than 133 billion
liters (35 billion gallons) are sold per year—producing total global
revenues of $294.5 billion (£147.7 billion) in 2006.
If you are looking for a way to wind down at
the end of the day, you may want to forgo your afternoon latte and go for a
beer instead.
After all, you deserve a break today.
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