Ever wondered how Ancient beer tasted.

Every-time I pour myself a pint of home brew I find myself wondering how beer must have tasted for the egyptians, Sumerians, even Europe etc... What would happen if one of those old time brewers showed up in our time and sampled one of our beers, would they be perplexed would they love it, would they give us a pat on the back for how far the art form has been taken. I think if a doctor from the middle ages came back and saw what has happened to medicine he/she would be amazed by the advances. The fact that appendicitis no longer is a death sentence, that we can drink pure water then again I am sure they would be horrified with some diseases that have appeared. I think if mozart came back he would be appalled at modern music, even modern classical for that part (but that is another argument).

Have you ever wondered what there beer tasted like? I mean we can look at old recipes and try to replicate them, but we cannot be getting close to what there beer tasted like. I mean we use isolated brewers yeast, bread yeast I am sure is very different then the bread yeast they used. Hypothetically I am quite sure if we could taste a beer prior to the invention of bottling we would be appalled by what we tasted. Maybe I am wrong, anyways lets here some hypothetical arguments here. How do you think your taste buds would react.

They'd probably spit it out!

Our beers are cold, carbed, and over 3% abv.

I've always wanted to make whatever they were making in the Hymn to Ninkasi:
http://www.piney.com/BabNinkasi.html

hahaha that is awesome they probably would. Do you think you would spit out there batch? I am sure we would be detecting diacetyl, astringency and all kinds of infections. We would be the ubber EAC.

Even if we made the beer in that Hymn, I am sure it would not come out like theirs. Our current water profile, yeast, temp control. It would be an experiment no doubt.

I saw a brewing a program on the history channel and DFH worked on replicating a beer they found in the tomb of King Midas, like you said probably not even close to the same but the process they used was kinda cool.

Midas touch if the dfh "Egyptian beer". It's good but who knows if it's accurate.

Yeah, this is what I am saying. Though I give the guy enormous credit for even trying, my mom makes some awesome tortillas. I am from El Paso so we are right next to Juarez Mexico. She grew up in a small ranch in the middle of nowhere in Mexico, and she still cannot make the same tortilla without the flour from mexico. When my family comes from over there they bring back copious amounts of flour for this reason. The american flour is different, there is something very different from it that makes for a very different tortilla. Now this is a small issue she can still make a damn good tortilla with american flour but there is a big difference if you taste them next to each other.

We do not have any recipe for what is Midas Touch, we only know what it had and Dogfishead just tried to make the best of it. It is good and I enjoy it from time to time, but how close to the original it is I am sure it is far from it. Much less even farther than my moms american flour tortillas and mexican flour tortillas. That analogy is nit picking much less not knowing the recipe.

My constant day dreaming makes me love beer more and more.

I don't like asking what ancient beers would taste like anymore. DFH puts out a lot of them, and every time...I end up not liking it

Let's just say that I like the history part better than anything else...and so long as the "ancientness" is restricted fermented fruit beverages and beer from around the middle ages (separately)...I'll be fine.

Well if you come across a time machine let me know, I'm down to go sample beer from different time periods.

Teromous said:

I don't like asking what ancient beers would taste like anymore. DFH puts out a lot of them, and every time...I end up not liking it

Let's just say that I like the history part better than anything else...and so long as the "ancientness" is restricted fermented fruit beverages and beer from around the middle ages (separately)...I'll be fine.

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I am positive that is not how it tasted though, maybe it was worse!

I remember hearing when I lived in Belgium, how back in the day the monks had a completely different type of beer that they drank. I dont know how true it is, but I was told they didnt always even filter out the grains... Now that must have been different.

brumer0 said:

I remember hearing when I lived in Belgium, how back in the day the monks had a completely different type of beer that they drank. I dont know how true it is, but I was told they didnt always even filter out the grains... Now that must have been different.

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I do not doubt that those Belgians are crazy bastids, they are crazy magicians that go completely against the grain.

edit: fermenting with the grain in the barrels, drinking the grain with alcohol sounds nasty.

GodsStepBrother said:

I am positive that is not how it tasted though, maybe it was worse!

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Say it aint so!

GodsStepBrother said:

I do not doubt that those Belgians are crazy bastids, they are crazy magicians that go completely against the grain.

edit: fermenting with the grain in the barrels, drinking the grain with alcohol sounds nasty.

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Alcoholic cereal sounds bad to you? It sounds like breakfast!

There's something to try Teromous, report back!

Every time I brew I feel a connection to the old brewers. It's part of the fun for me.

brumer0 said:

I remember hearing when I lived in Belgium, how back in the day the monks had a completely different type of beer that they drank. I dont know how true it is, but I was told they didnt always even filter out the grains... Now that must have been different.

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Egyptians used straws to drink their beer because of the amount of grain and sediment. The straw acted as a filter.

I have a different theory on how beer came about.

The ancients actually didn't brew beer, they brewed MALT DRINK, or wort (similar to todays Malt Soda). Wort has a lot of calories and nutritions, more then beer, it's sweet (there was no "table" sugar back those days), and was easier to make then bread and required second-grade grains, the ones that started sprouting already and were no good for bread making anymore. So they were really drinking liquid bread.
Of course after a few days wort turns into beer and ancients still drunk it, but I think their primary goal was to make nutritious and sweet malt drink, the one today we call wort.

I'm currently taking a brewing history class, and everytime I sit down to read about a new time period I wonder what thier beers tasted like. Contrary to what DFH keeps trying to do, I'm getting the impression that most ancient beers were fairly simple, and we probably could recreate them fairly easily, other than the yeast. My professor believes that brett and/or lacto was prominent in most ancient fermentations, so most beers would likely express some of their flavors. In some regions, there's no evidence that anything was added to the wort to combat spoilage, so even gruit-like beers don't come around until much later.

If you want to make ancient beer, bake a few bappir loafs, let them sit for a day or two, toss them into some water in a clay pot, heat it, let it cool to room temperature, and then pitch either some bread yeast or leave it out to spontaneously ferment. When it it finished, ladle it into some jugs and start drinking it immediately from straws with some means of filtering attached the the end. Viola! Ancient zythos, fermentum, brutos, or whatever you want to call it!

The problem with DFH's approach is simple: all they are proving is that at one time, those particular liquids left a residue on that pot. They have no way of knowing whether the detected residues were at one time found together in a single beverage. It is far more likely that mead, beer, and wine were all stored in a particular vessel separately, than there being a drink that mixed those sources of sugar together at the same time. And even if you take out the "far more likely" part of my assumption, the fact remains that they can only determine that those substances were there at some point.

unionrdr said:

I gotta hook up with a farmer this year to get a couple bushels worth of dried sweet corn kernals. It'll be for a corn beer called Tizwin (pronounced Tizween) made by my Apache ancestors. It was said to resemble an English ale. I've got the process figured out for a fall brew. God knows how many centuries they made this stuff. There is also a version made in Northern Mexico that also uses roasted agave with the corn in the boil called Tiswin. Quite common in the Americas,all around the caribbean & Northern South America in slightly different forms. Interesting stuff.

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I think you are talking about Tesgüino I have tried this many times through my travels in Mexico. I have corn I got from the Tarahumara and I will be germinating it this summer. To tell you the truth, that stuff is pretty putrid! I will be germinating this up very soon. It is also very strong, they start drinking it the 2nd day of fermentation then, it starts getting to nasty so they begin to add sugar to counteract the sourness. But that just makes it more and more alcoholic.

There whole point is to get drunk though, pretty scary one time I went to a Tarahumara wedding, people almost died those indians get really really wasted on the stuff.

Airborneguy said:

The problem with DFH's approach is simple: all they are proving is that at one time, those particular liquids left a residue on that pot. They have no way of knowing whether the detected residues were at one time found together in a single beverage. It is far more likely that mead, beer, and wine were all stored in a particular vessel separately, than there being a drink that mixed those sources of sugar together at the same time. And even if you take out the "far more likely" part of my assumption, the fact remains that they can only determine that those substances were there at some point.

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Lets just assume that there was a "ancient beer" in that pot. It did have those residues. Even then I am positive, there process for brewing was very very different. I am sure it was fermented for a short time, and drank in even a shorter amount of time. There was not fermentation temp control, no cold crashing, filtering, all these things that dogfish has no doubt done to this beer.

Good point.

It's interesting what he's doing over there, but everything I read from scholars about ancient brewing just makes me hope that people aren't taking DFH's stuff to be true recreations of ancient beer. And to me personally, Midas Touch sucks anyway.

Scooby_Brew said:

I have a different theory on how beer came about.

The ancients actually didn't brew beer, they brewed MALT DRINK, or wort (similar to todays Malt Soda). Wort has a lot of calories and nutritions, more then beer, it's sweet (there was no "table" sugar back those days), and was easier to make then bread and required second-grade grains, the ones that started sprouting already and were no good for bread making anymore. So they were really drinking liquid bread.
Of course after a few days wort turns into beer and ancients still drunk it, but I think their primary goal was to make nutritious and sweet malt drink, the one today we call wort.

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The barley would have had to be malted to get any significant amount of alcohol no? Even if you made a malted beverage, for it to get some alcohol you would need to break down those starches into sugars. Unless they where sweetening it up with honey or something and that fermented out.

Airborneguy said:

Good point.

It's interesting what he's doing over there, but everything I read from scholars about ancient brewing just makes me hope that people aren't taking DFH's stuff to be true recreations of ancient beer. And to me personally, Midas Touch sucks anyway.

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I think a lot of people no doubt do, but it still must be enjoyable to actually think that is how it might have tasted hahaha. Ignorance is bliss damn it

unionrdr said:

No,I'm not. As I said,there are many different versions from North America around Central America to south America. All have a bit different name & additives. The Apache of the Southern plains (now in southern AZ) called it Tizwin,verified by a Kiowa friend on here. Kiowa,Apache,& Commanchi are all of the Athabascan people that came over here 35,000 years ago. And this is what they made. I did some research looking for it's consituents & method. Pretty simple. But yeah,it was soley designed to get drunk on,& gives a wicked hangover.
I've got two ideas in mind to maybe lessen those negative aspects that won't really change it to something else. Just a couple tweaks & see how it goes.
And I can't see how anyone can honestly say Sam's ancient recreations aren't real,when non of us were there to know any better. & he works with one of those "scholars" to recreate them. That's the point I was trying to make before. It's as close as can be had thousands of years after the fact. Micro biology doesn't lie. And the Midas touch is sort of a white muscat wine,mead,& ale combined into one drink. The one drank by Montezuma was made with Choclatl,hot peppers,spices,etc that he was said to drink by the potfull. It was also used in special cerimonial occasions. I forget the name Sam gave it.

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Very cool, hope you let me know when you do this, I will be making the Tesquino here in April. Should be pretty interesting, I am using beer yeast though and not letting it get infected. I have already tried the real deal and cannot see myself drinking more than a cup.

I have also tried Pulque, many different varieties from new versions to the oldest types I found in the middle of no where in Oaxaca.

I do not know Ancient ales must have had some qualities like these beers, just made with malt.

unionrdr said:

A And the Egyptian beer contained high amounts of tetracyclene from what was used & the process of making the beer. It was reproduced in a lab too.
Well,one side anyway...

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I've been wanting to find the recipe that they used to reproduce the tetracycline beer. It would be cool have some homemade antibiotics on hand.