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How Beer Brewed 5,000 Years Ago In China Tastes Today (thestreet.com)
schwit1 quotes The South China Morning Post: Stanford University students have recreated a Chinese beer using a recipe that dates back 5,000 years. The beer "looked like porridge and tasted sweeter and fruitier than the clear, bitter beers of today," said Li Liu, a professor in Chinese archaeology, was quoted by the university as saying. Last spring, Liu and her team of researchers were carrying out excavation work at the Mijiaya site in Shaanxi province and found two pits containing remnants of pottery used to make beer, including funnels, pots and amphorae. The pits dated to between 3400BC and 2900BC, in the late Yangshao era. They found a yellowish residue on the remains of the items, including traces of yam, lily root and barley...Liu taught her students to recreate the recipe as part of her archaeology course.
One student following a second ancient beer recipe created a beverage that "smelled like funky cheese."
One student following a second ancient beer recipe created a beverage that "smelled like funky cheese."
Beer in ancient times was often a way of preserving calories (due to the alcohol) and a means of sustenance, as opposed to today when it is primarily a way to get goofy at NASCAR events.
I have made a lot of beer, and every batch smelled like funky cheese or worse for the first few days or even weeks. That is normal. And as the alcohol is developing, you can drink it and get a buzz. I guess that the ancient chineese, and egyptians, and sumerians, and all other beer drinking civilizations found like me that it pays to be patient.
Paai
I thought this was the most interesting thing from the whole article:
The research team was surprised to find barley in the ancient Chinese beer as barley had not become a staple crop for another 3,000 years.
Think about someone making beer but the ingredients not really catching on in a big way for three thousand years!
Or maybe the estimate of when barley because a staple crop is way off.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Shouldn't you be a food chemist to 'recreate' a recipe from a 5000-year old sample?
The odds that the absurd methods they used to recreate the recipe have anything to do with how beer tasted 5000 years ago is exactly the same as the odds that anything else in a history book about people 5000 is remotely realistic. Exactly Zero.
It isn't noted in anything I can find, but its almost certain that they determined the ingredients via proteomics and chromatography. The vegetable matter used in the process would have left proteins that would have been identifiable. The vessel used would give a good clue as to the purpose of putting those things in the vessel. Nothing is 100 percent sure, But Occam's razor will give you a good idea that a liquid holding vessel that contained the products that were determined by their protein signatures was probably used for making an alcoholic beverage.
Here's a site with a very short example http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com... So let's all relax and have a beer!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
' The beer "looked like porridge and tasted sweeter and fruitier than the clear, bitter beers of today," '
Do you know how many types of beers there are today? Just go to any local microbrewery (well, maybe not in Germany- beer purity laws and all) and you will find 3-10 very different beers that are completely different from the next microbrewery.
So, someone 5000 years from now finds a beer recipe from some "ancient" brewery and concludes all our beer tastes like PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon).
(OK, a little beer porridge might be fun to try)
It was the fatal consequence of blinding awesomeness: blinded arrogance. China was the wealthiest, most advanced civilization in the world for over a thousand years; at certain point it becomes natural to look at something like that as a birthright. And when that happens you stop looking forward and outward and start looking inward and backward.
When the epitaph of the United States is written, this is what it will say: "America: Killed by landing on the Moon." After that Americans simply can't believe anyone else in the world can do anything better than we can. We must have the best cell phone networks, the best healthcare system, and, even though we despise it, the best education system. We'd never look at what countries that are beating us in education are doing. If they're beating us they must be cheating; the system must be rigged.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Already Done.
Let's travel back in time again for another Dogfish Head Ancient Ale (Midas Touch was our first foray and Theobroma our most recent). Our destination is 9,000 years ago, in Northern China! Preserved pottery jars found in the Neolithic villiage of Jiahu, in Henan province, have revealed that a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey and fruit was being produced that long ago, right around the same time that barley beer and grape wine were beginning to be made in the Middle East!
Fast forward to 2005. Molecular archaeologist Dr. Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology calls on Dogfish Head to re-create another ancient beverage, and Chateau Jiahu is born.
In keeping with historic evidence, Dogfish brewers use brown rice syrup, orange blossom honey, muscat grape, barley malt and hawthorn berry. The wort is fermented for about a month with sake yeast until the beer is ready for packaging.
To be fair, China's decline predated Mao by several generations. You can't blame Mao for the Opium Wars.
To be fair, China's decline predated the Opium Wars by a few centuries as well. You can't blame Opium for the Manchu conquest.
China has over 5,000 years of history.. Your country?
The PRC is less than 70 years old. The Republic of China (surviving in Taiwan) little more than a century.
In contrast, England goes back to the Norman conquest in 1066.
European history is of a similar age to Chinese. Of course, the Middle East was first.