Mmmmm Krausen!

[screamingcities]

So... Armed with my advanced knowledge that after fermentation is done, everything clears up and you get beer... To me, fermentation is beautiful!

But I AM forced to wonder... Who in their right mind saw this liquid with generally bubbling slimy looking stuff on top and figured... I'ma wait a few weeks then drink that stuff!

Probably the same guy who saw an oyster and decided to eat it. Must have had a thing for stuff that looks kind of like snot.

 

[smakudwn]

I have often wondered this. Along the same lines as how many people had to die/get sick before they found the "Right" berries to eat!

 

[jsweet]

I gotta figure they didn't actually see it fermenting, they just found it later and were like, "Aw crap, my barley soup is ruined" or something like that. And they decided to taste it anyway, and the rest is history...

As far as finding the "right" berries to eat, that's an easy one: Most things that are poisonous are not so poisonous that if you eat one bite you are going to die. What happened is when people encountered new food, they'd try a little bite and see if it gave them a stomach ache (or made them trip balls, for that matter). If not, they'd eat a little more, and eventually you find out what's poisonous and what isn't without anybody dying.

Rats (and I believe many other omnivores) do this naturally in the wild. When presented with a food they haven't encountered before, they nibble a little bit and then wait a few hours before they chow down. Hominids probably had the same natural instincts, even before they developed the mental capacity to employ that strategy consciously.

At the risk of engaging in some unfounded evo-psych speculation, we may even see the remnants of that instinct in people who are extremely neophobic about trying new foods. But there's no real evidence for that (it's a "Just so" story), so take the thought with a grain of salt.