Contents
Beer can safely be called the most ancient alcoholic beverage. It was cooked by all peoples on all continents. It is known that when the conquistadors first landed on the shores of South America, the Indians treated them to a local analogue of beer – Chucha. A kind of banana beer was brewed by the primitive tribes of Africa. And Europe and Asia were ahead of the whole planet in terms of the number of varieties. True, what our distant ancestors called beer, neither in taste nor in appearance was similar to the drink that we are used to. But the more interesting it will be to trace its history from antiquity to the present day.
Scientists associate the origin of beer with the cradle of mankind – Mesopotamia. It was here that during excavations, archaeologists found Sumerian clay tablets dated to the 3th millennium BC depicting brewers leaning over a vat. The Sumerians even had a goddess of beer, Ninkasi Svetlostruynaya, to whom poems were dedicated. Sumerian beer cannot be called intoxicated in the full sense of the word: it was brewed without hops, from barley and spelt, adding fragrant herbs for flavor. The fortress was 4-XNUMX%.
The successors of the Sumerians, the ancient Babylonians, improved the beer recipe: they began to brew it not from barley flour, but from malt. Moreover, the struggle for the quality of the drink was serious. According to the laws of King Hammurabi, who ruled in the XNUMXnd millennium BC, an innkeeper who inflated the price of beer should have been drowned. If he diluted the drink with water, they gave him spoiled beer until he died in terrible agony. The innkeeper was also subject to the death penalty, in whose establishment the visitors started talking about politics.
The ancient Egyptians created their own recipes: in addition to barley, they began to brew wheat beer, the invention of which was attributed to the supreme deity Osiris. Brewers were held in high esteem in Egypt, and the Egyptian hieroglyph for “lunch” consisted of two characters: “bread” and “beer.”
Braga Odina
In the far northern region, the harsh Vikings also brewed beer. Instead of hops, they added pine and spruce needles to the composition. The resulting drink contained vitamins B and C, which supported the strength of the warriors on long campaigns. Skalds called their beer Odin’s Braga.
Both friendly feasts and ritual feasts among the Vikings were accompanied by big booze. The ability to drink a lot (and even better – to outdrink a neighbor) was valued on a par with military prowess.
One of the ancient sagas tells of the insanity that befell King Sigurd. The skald considered a bad mood and the inability of the king to maintain a cheerful conversation during a drinking bout as a sign of madness. It is to the Vikings that we owe the tradition of pouring an extraordinary glass to a late guest. Only in them the role of glasses was performed by huge tury horns.
Gloomy german genius
The Roman historian Tacitus was sincerely horrified by the swill that the ancient Germans drank. Local brewers were really big entertainers: either they would add bear bile to the drink, or a couple of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Who would have thought that the result of these barbaric experiments in two thousand years would be the famous German beer, one of the best in the world!
With the adoption of Christianity in Germany and neighboring Flanders, the monks took up brewing in earnest. The case was put on a grand scale. There are even cases of burning “beer witches” – women who allegedly spoiled the monastery’s beer. Until now, the best varieties of Dutch beer are those whose recipes appeared in the monasteries.
Gradually, ordinary citizens also appreciated the benefits of brewing. In the Middle Ages, guilds of brewers appeared in the cities. In Hamburg alone, by the end of the 600th century, there were about XNUMX breweries. German brewers considered the mythical Flemish king Gambrinus to be their patron.
The prototype of this character was an illustrious reveler – the Duke of Brabant, Jan the First (Primus). This is a brave warrior who won many victories in wars and tournaments. But he especially liked beer.
One day, the Brewers’ Guild of Brussels decided to choose a foreman. A barrel of beer was placed on the city square, and the honest people were told that the foreman would be the one who would take this barrel to the edge of the square. The first city strongmen could not lift the weight and, ashamed, retreated. And then his lordship, the Duke opened the tap and drank the whole barrel, and then easily transferred it to the agreed place. For this feat, the brewers’ guild unanimously proclaimed him their foreman. However, as the legend says, during the celebration of this event, all the participants got so drunk that they could no longer correctly pronounce the name of the new foreman, and therefore they called him Gambrinus.
Duke Jan Primus died in 1294 at the next tournament. He was 33 years old, it was his 76th tournament. But the glory of the great beer lover has not faded over the centuries. One of the best Czech beers is named after him.
A real gentleman’s drink
Beer has always been loved in good old England: before the Norman conquest and after. Back in the XNUMXth century, one of the kings of Kent had to issue a decree against rampant drunkenness. But the foamy drink continued to be drunk in castles, and in abbeys, and in the huts of the villans. In those days, ale had a sweetish taste: honey and a little heather were added to it. Only since the XNUMXth century did the British fully appreciate the noble bitterness of hops.
The English king Henry VIII drank a gallon (about 4,5 liters) of beer at breakfast. The courtiers did not lag behind him. And his daughter, Elizabeth I, going around the property, first of all found out if the beer was brewed in the city she intended to visit. If the beer was not tasty, then the queen’s favorite drink was brought from London.
In the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries, the profession of beer taster appeared in England. This man was wearing leather pants. Before tasting the drink, he poured a little on the bench, sat down in a puddle and began to slowly savor it. After a certain time, he got up. If the pants stuck to the bench, then the beer was of poor quality, with added sugar.
In the XNUMXth century, the British began to bottle beer. And by the XNUMXth century, its production was mechanized as much as possible, brewing became a profitable export item.
The history of beer in Russia and in Russia
The princely feasts took place exactly as Pushkin described them in the immortal lines from Ruslan and Lyudmila. Only the beer that flowed like a river at such feasts was honey. There were no apiaries then, and the profession of a beekeeper – a person who extracted wild honey – was difficult and dangerous. Therefore, ordinary people often had to be content with beer without honey. To improve its taste, hops were added to it.
Domestic scientists believe that it was Kievan Rus that taught Europe how to brew beer with hops.
Beer was almost a strategic commodity. The annals recorded cases when peasants paid dues with honey, hops and malt.
Russian tsars also loved beer. Peter I did a lot to popularize it, who ordered the introduction of beer into the diet of soldiers as the best remedy for scurvy (this statement is true for live beer). The emperor himself loved a drink brewed according to a Dutch recipe. Empress Elizabeth I, on the contrary, preferred English varieties: ale and porter. Until the end of the XNUMXth century, beer for the Russian tsars was brewed at court breweries.
In 1795, during the reign of Catherine II, A.F. Kron built the Alexander Nevsky plant in St. Petersburg, and P. Cazalet, around the same time, created the Kalinkinsky brewery. In 1848, these factories merged, and in 1923 the combined production was named after Stepan Razin. In 1875, the Moscow Trekhgorny Brewery was built, now the Badaevsky Brewery. Since 1881, the Samara brewery, owned by A. von Vakano, began to produce Venskoye beer. In the XNUMXth century, it was renamed Zhigulevskoye. At the end of the XNUMXth century, brewing companies began to develop rapidly in Russia: Baltika, as well as the Klinsky, Maikopsky, Ochakovsky factories.
However, the appearance of beer packaged in convenient plastic and glass containers will not replace real lovers of a live drink. Nowadays, all over the world there is a “return to the roots”: small private breweries are becoming increasingly popular, whose products are made according to ancient, time-tested recipes and are distinguished by an amazing, incomparable taste.
