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"Liu, together with doctoral candidate Jiajing Wang and a group of other experts, discovered the 5,000-year-old beer recipe by studying the residue on the inner
by DonaldFisk 9y ago
"Liu, together with doctoral candidate Jiajing Wang and a group of other experts, discovered the 5,000-year-old beer recipe by studying the residue on the inner walls of pottery vessels found in an excavated site in northeast China. "
So the recipe was arrived at by reverse-engineering residues in pottery vessels, and not written down 5000 years ago. In contrast, the Hymn to Ninkasi, which contains an ale recipe, was written down in Sumerian on clay tablets 4000 years ago. Translation at http://www.piney.com/BabNinkasi.html http://www.piney.com/BabNinkasi.html
"The students first covered their grain with water and let it sprout, in a process called malting. After the grain sprouted, the students crushed the seeds and put them in water again. The container with the mixture was then placed in the oven and heated to 65 degrees Celsius (149 F) for an hour, in a process called mashing. Afterward, the students sealed the container with plastic and let it stand at room temperature for about a week to ferment."
The heat would have killed off any yeast in the wort, and sealing the container would have prevented any yeast getting in after the wort cooled, so this cannot be correct. The correct process is to boil the wort, let it cool down, and leave it outside (or open the windows) to allow wild yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and other microorganisms to blow in and inoculate the wort. This process is called spontaneous fermentation, and is still used in Belgium to produce Lambic. Spontaneous fermentation causes bacteria (Lactobacillus and Acetobacter species) to also settle in the wort, eventually turning the beer sour. In other beer styles, yeast is deliberately added after the wort cools.
"The ancient Chinese beer looked more like porridge and likely tasted sweeter and fruitier than the clear, bitter beers of today."
It's an ale rather than a beer. To be a beer, it would have had to contain hops, which give beer its bitterness and act as a preservative. Unless drunk very quickly, like Lambic it would have also gone sour.
- slezakattack 9y ago+1 I'm curious how different it would taste if the containers weren't sealed during fermentation. It would be informative to see what their gravity readings were to understand how much fermentation took place during the experiment.
- peterwwillis 9y agoThat's according to the 15th-century strict definition by the English that "ale" include no hops or other additives. This probably had to do with an early interpretation of hops as bad for you, since it made people tired or sleepy. Modern definitions make "beer" a general category that includes both ale and lager, and allow for either ales or lagers to include hops or not, just like they can be either top- or bottom-fermenting (though they usually stick to their respective category's defaults) The fact is that different yeasts growing at different temperatures for different amounts of time with different additives could have resulted in vastly different beers, and while we have an idea what a more likely production method could be, it doesn't discount the idea that brewers could have experimented for hundreds of years and developed different styles. So we really don't know for sure what ancient beer tasted like.
- dnh44 9y agoAccording to CAMRA, who is the authority in the UK, ale is a beer and can also contain hops. http://www.camra.org.uk/about-real-ale http://www.camra.org.uk/about-real-ale Also for anyone who likes beer and is visiting the UK, I would recommend having a look at their good beer guide to find the best pubs for beer, or perhaps try to go to one of their sponsored beer festivals.
- dgfgfdagasdfgfa 9y ago> It's an ale rather than a beer. To be a beer, it would have had to contain hops, which give beer its bitterness and act as a preservative. Unless drunk very quickly, like Lambic it would have also gone sour. It's highly unlikely the Sumerian concotion would even pass for a beverage, let alone a beer vs ale. More like a soupy, alcoholic bread. It would have been filled with still-substantial grains; you would have drank it with a straw.
- ramblerman 9y agoYou mean like the first picture in the article...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bane 9y agoIt probably would have looked a bit like the contemporary Oshikundu drink from Namibia. http://preservenamibia.org/drinks/oshikundu/ http://preservenamibia.org/drinks/oshikundu/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshikundu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshikundu
- lojack 9y agoThe video made no mention of sealing it, so its possible the article was incorrect. It's unlikely an original recipe involved sealing the vessel after heating.
- DonaldFisk 9y agoThe crucial steps are malting the grain and inoculating the wort with yeast. Only after the wort is inoculated can fermentation begin, after which the vessel can be sealed.
- yladiz 9y agoThey may have just let it use yeast from the air.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- DonaldFisk 9y agoYes, that's spontaneous fermentation, which is still used for Lambic.
- drumttocs8 9y agoYou don't think ale is a type of beer?
- DonaldFisk 9y agoAle is a top-fermented malt drink. Beer is a fermented malt drink with hops. Lager is bottom-fermented beer (whether or not it's actually lagered). Nowadays, almost all ale has hops added and so is beer.
- bane 9y agoAncient beers and other grain beers (rice, millet and so on) and non-grain beers (corn, cassava, fruit, so on) will blow your mind. Hops are a flavoring for beer. Beer is the drink that results from the fermentation of wort (starchy water) without distillation. There are many many (millions) of ways to derive a wort. Hops weren't even found in beer until the 9th century. Beer has existed longer before hops were introduced than since.
- DonaldFisk 9y agoSo we agree on the facts, but disagree on the precise meaning of words. Other than recreating ancient brews, it's moot anyway as all ale sold nowadays contains hops. I occasionally brew in very small batches. I've brewed ales without hops, including one which was loosely based on an Ancient Egyptian recipe. Recipes here: http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/Ale%20Recipes.html http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/Ale%20Recipes.html