An ice cold frosted mug filled with that sparkling malted alcoholic beverage is a hard thing to pass up. For centuries mankind has been drinking beer and along the way it has shaped countless civilizations across the globe. There's more to beer than just being a tasty beverage, so get ready to learn all about the world's third most popular drink behind only water and tea. Beer is very old and the earliest known evidence of barley beer goes all the way back to the cradle of civilization in the mountains of Iran around 3500 BC. In fact, a Sumerian tablet called "The Hymn to Ninkasi" is not only a prayer, but also a recipe for beer, it also happens to be the earliest written recipe ever discovered. By 3000 BC, German and Celtic tribes were spreading the wonders of beer across Europe. The oldest brewery that is still in operation today, located in Bavaria, can trace its roots all the way back to 768. Early beers were a hodgepodge of ingredients and may have contained honey, spices, herbs, narcotics, and other assorted substances along with some sort of starch. It wasn't until 822 that the use of hops in beer-making is first mentioned. Hops obviously made an impression on people and by 1516 the Duke of Bavaria decreed that beer must only contain water, hops and barley malt resembling modern beer. Hops have natural antimicrobial properties and besides making beer, they can also be used in making natural deodorant and may be used as a natural sleep aid. Hops tend to grow well wherever potatoes are likely to grow and while they are in the same family as marijuana, smoking hops won't get you high. Beer was also about survival. The brewing and fermentation process ensured that beer was safe to drink, but the same couldn't be said of the water. It was safer to drink beer than to drink the water so that's what the men, women, and children of the era did. That's not all, beer in those days typically wasn't filtered so contained loads of nutrients and was a staple part of the diet in the European Middle Ages. Today, beer is big business with nearly $300 billion in revenues in 2006 amounting to 35 billion gallons. The Czech love their beer, and they prove it by drinking 132 liters per capita annually to claim the top spot in the world. Meanwhile the USA consumes just 78 liters per capita while China, now the largest beer market in the world, has a paltry per capita consumption of just 32 liters.
Related Articles -
beer, beer history, origins of beer, history of beer,
|