Beer is Proof that God loves us

Wilhelm IV of Bavaria officially decreed in the Reinheitsgebot law of 1516 that beer was restricted to the combination of hops, barley, yeast, and water. Those were then, and are now, the only legal ingredients for German beer. This is the oldest surviving law on food products today.

While the Germans have become the experts at blending these into an intoxicating and interesting beverage, beer is a product that has sated mans thirst for as long as civilization has existed. The Germans didn’t start the process. The tradition and wonder of beer far predate the German state.

The word beer itself has ancient roots. It comes from the Latin word bibere, meaning "to drink", and the root of the Spanish word cerveza originates from the Greek goddess of agriculture, Ceres.

Over 10,000 years ago, in a land bordered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers lived a people known as Sumaris. They discovered the fermentation process, and are the first known people to brew beer. A seal, engraved more than 4000 years ago, the ‘Hymn of Ninkasi’ still survives. (Ninkasi was the goddess of brewing.) The hymn is a tribute to the goddess, and is also a recipe for brewing. It consists of a pictograph of bread being baked, then crumbled into water to form a fermenting paste, then made into a drink that made people feel exhilarated. You can recognize the ancient beer making process of the Sumerians here in Russia in the production of Kvass.

One of the first recordings of human history in written form, in the language of cuneiform, the Gilgamesh Epic describes this scene. "Enkidu, a shaggy, unkempt, almost bestial primitive man, who ate grass and could milk wild animals, wanted to test his strength against Gilgamesh, the demigod-like sovereign. Taking no chances, Gilgamesh sent a whore to Enkidu to learn of his strengths and weaknesses. Enkidu enjoyed a week with her, during which she taught him of civilization:

Enkidu knew not what bread was nor how one ate it. He had also not learned to drink beer. The whore opened her mouth and spoke to Enkidu: 'Eat the bread now, O Enkidu, as it belongs to life. Drink also beer, as it is the custom of the land.' Enkidu drank seven cups of beer and his heart soared. In this condition he washed himself and became a human being. "

In history, the Babylonians followed the Sumerians, occupying much of the same area, and inheriting many of the customs and knowledge of the Sumerians. The Babylonians took beer to new heights, and we know that they brewed at least 20 different types of beer. Of these, 8 were brewed from barley, 8 from emmer, and 4 from a mixture of grains. Beer in Babylonia was unfiltered, and it was drank using a straw, to avoid the grain, which would settle to the bottom. As a matter of fact, there is a tablet 6000 years old showing people sitting around a bowl sipping beer through reed straws in a manner the Sumeri’s described 2000 years later.

Hammurabi, a Babylonian king, is credited with having decreed the oldest known collection of laws. One of these laws established a daily beer ration. This ration was dependent on the social standing of the individual. For example, a normal worker received 2 liters, civil servants 3 liters, and administrators and high priests 5 liters per day. In these ancient times beer was not sold, but exchanged for barley. At this time, beer brewing was considered women’s work, and was done at home. In fact, ancient laws stated that brewing vessels were a woman's personal property.

King Hammurabi once ordered a female saloon-keeper drowned because she accepted silver for her beer. Drowning was also the punishment for serving low quality beer. The Babylonians took their beer very seriously. They also began exporting beer to Egypt, more than 1000 km away.

Eventually, the Egyptians began brewing their own beer, and they made significant improvements in the art. They would mix dates and other fruits into the mixture to change the flavor, a custom which survives to this day with an Egyptian group called the ‘Fellahs.” Beer was so important to Egyptian society that they actually created a new hieroglyphic for ‘brewer.’

Ancient man considered beer to be a sacred thing, and many thought it contained spirits of the gods, since it transformed what was sometimes a fairly dismal existence into a veritable paradise.

Eventually, Babylonian civilization fell, and was succeeded by the Greeks, then the Romans. Plinius reported on beer being popular in the Mediterranean. It was only later that wine became popular.

The ancient Romans made wine the drink of choice among the elite. In Rome itself, wine was considered the drink of the gods. Beer could still be found, but was only brewed in the outer areas of the Roman Empire where wine was difficult to obtain. For the Romans, who almost exclusively drank wine, beer was a horrible barbarian drink. As Tacitus, who first wrote an extensive report about the ancient Germans, the Teutons put it like this: "To drink, the Teutons have a horrible brew fermented from barley or wheat, a brew which has only a very far removed similarity to wine".  Archaeological finds in Germany have dated beer brewing in that country since at least 800 bc, the early Halstatt period.

In the early, northern European societies, beer was very popular. For example, in the Finnish poetic saga Kalewala, 400 verses are devoted to beer but only 200 were needed for the creation of the earth. According to the Edda, the great Nordic epic, wine was reserved for the gods; beer belonged to mortals and mead to inhabitants of the realm of the dead.

Beer was a Godsend to ancient peoples, as it was safer to drink than the water, and as nutritious as bread, while being longer lasting. At times in the form of a porridge, beer was a healthy alternative to a somewhat dangerous fare offered at the time.

In the middle ages, monasteries began to make beer, and over time it was taken from the kitchens, where it had been the woman’s job, and became a man’s job. One of the reasons for the monasteries interest in beer was that liquid consumption didn’t constitute the breaking of a fast, and a monk or priest could, and did, consume huge quantities of beer and still remain loyal to his vows. The ration for a monk in many monasteries was 5 liters per day.

The monasteries quickly saw a chance to capitalize on beer, and they began selling beer to the local populace. As time went on, the local population would begin to brew their own beers, competing with the monasteries for business. In the 1500s, Hamburg alone had more than 600 breweries. This competition was aided by the weakening of the church, and the secularization of society brought about during the Reformation. Later, the monastery breweries came under attack by the royalty.

Monasteries were exempt from taxes, but not so the civilian brewers. They paid taxes to the state for the beer they sold, so in the early part of the 15th century, Emperor Sigismund issued a decree closing down the monastery breweries.

During this time, many different things were used as a flavoring agent for beer. “Grut” was the name used for a mixture that may include things as diverse as rosemary, tansy, Saint-John's-wort, spruce chips, pine roots, oak bark, blackthorn, wormwood, caraway seed, aniseed, bay leaves, yarrow, thorn apple, gentian, juniper berries, sweet gale, and even henbane. Today we know that the hallucinogenic Alkaloid is produced during brewing if henbane is present, so the effect of beers in these times may have varied greatly, depending on the grut.

Hops put an end to the need for grut, and it also improved the stability of beer. With the unstable reaction to beer brewed with grut, many fables surrounded beer, centering on the supernatural. If someone had a really bad experience, or even died from the beer they had drank, it would sometimes lead to witch-hunts. Many people were burned alive, after being suspected of being a brew-witch. The last known burning of a brew-witch happened in 1591.

In Russia, kvass is an obvious offshoot of beer. The process of making kvass is almost identical to the processes described 6000 years ago for making beer.

Traditional beer also exists and is becoming more popular here in Russia too.

As early as the reign of Peter the Great, the Tsars table was furnished by a Siberian beer provided from the brewery of Porphyry Vassilievich Tinkov.

In 1795, a German, Abraham Friedrich Krohn opened a brewery in St. Petersburg with the permission of Catherine II. For many years, this brewery was known as the Kalininsky Brewery, but during the communist times, it adopted the name of the Russian folk hero, Stepan Razin. By 1894, there were over 1000 registered breweries in Russia.

As all industries were affected by the communist revolution, brewing was greatly changed here in Russia also. It was devastated by the lack of supplies, and an official hostility, or at best indifference by the government. Today though, Baltika, Stepan Razin, and other Russian brands are growing in popularity. Vodka may still be the traditional drink of Russians, but beer is gaining ground every day.