i hate to say this but beer as we know it was not actully discovered and widely poduced until the Viking invasion of mainland europe after the fall fo the roman empire... Sumer was long dead by then. We are talking about a people that were involved with one of the many sackings of Jersleum(spelling)... If anything this is a fermented bevrage based on grain, a precursor to asian 6-row, apperantly... I had too look that up, i was unware that barley of anykind was found in lower asia before many european tans-planted crops were siezed during the Crusades... Sumerians predated Rome by nearly 2000 years and much of there text is still untranslated. This is a gimmick. At most this is an old fermented bevrage which was made from feed grain and a bittering agent found locally in what is currently modernday cental Iraq... Likely low ABV... youd need to look at indigious grains to those areas... apperntly this precursor to the norther asian derivitive of 6-row barley (i guess it had to come from some where), and bittering herb, my guess is its still closer to a barley wine then a beer. Because it is true that hops wasnt used widely until after the 2nd viking invasion of europe sometime around the year 900.
I would sugest a mix of eastern european 6-row malts and natral fermentation. Also research middle east bittering herbs. Turkish, and persian teas are supposed to be very bitter and i would bet you could find a couple of those to use as a hop replacment, and soure of acids to prevent bacteria.
I would bet the Sumerian people use the best form of preservative for somthing like this, they drank it. You have to remember that acohal has its own preservative properties, and if the story is true then the drink was made for a specific purpose and wasnt used simply for everyday consumption. It would have been prepared before hand specifically for the event and then all comsumed within a short ammount of time. These days it takes sevral days for beer to even be bottled and moved to the store, let alone the time it sits on the shelf. Even so beer has a shelf life of only a month or more before it is removed and returned to the brewery. Your best bet would be quick pasturization with UV or flash. You cant get authentic here there isnt enough information and definatly anchor isnt telling.
In my opinion its a gimmick... but i just found a website where a text was traslated where they detail the ingredants and taste
Sun roasted malted barley
Large kernal malted marley
Femented dry, unbittered, and still
ABV of between 3 and 3.5%
fermented natrally
precursor to barely wine
not widely made beyond mesapotamian cultars, comapred to hard cider becasue it was often used to spike fruit juice at weddings. There is a sugestion that it was sun stilled and condendsed and made into a paste, which was then used as a potant aphordisiac in fertility rituals and of course getting experianced women to bed virgin men... werid... but this bearly qualifes as beer. Give it a try anyway, if your really interested... im not sure where you would get sun roasted barley, or was large kernal means, or even houw you would mash it properly.
Cheers
