Beerometric

In the beginning

It has been proposed, by beer people of course,  that humans settled down so they could make and drink beer.  It’s a nice story. Similar arguments have been made with a focus on bread.  We can generally agree however, that it was the birth of agriculture that set the foundations for human settlement and civilization.  It is slightly more practical to establish residential permanence when your food doesn’t constantly run away.   

Around 4100 BCE a group of people who would become known as the Sumerians began settling down in the region of Mesopotamia, roughly modern-day Iraq, around the area known as the Fertile Crescent.  They subsequently established what we consider the advent of civilization.  The Sumerians harvested and replanted the seeds of various grasses found in the area, consumed the grains, and as we will see, eventually and presumably by  accident, made some beer.  

Much of this very early beer history has been pieced together from various archaeological finds such as calcium oxalate deposits, commonly known as beerstone, on pottery fragments and from  bits and pieces of written records containing recipes, or taxation policies.  To help reinforce the evidence, imagery relating to the brewing and consumption of beer have also been found and preserved. 

“It was a brave man who first ate an oyster” – Jonathan Swift

So who would think to try and transform raw grains into a tasty fermented beverage?  The origin of many foodstuffs is a hot topic for debate, but yeast is everywhere, in the air, on the apple in your kitchen, on your skin right now.  Pretty much anything with a fermentable substrate, ie. sugar, can and will ferment if exposed to yeast under the right conditions.  Anyone who has made a sourdough starter, would have witnessed that simply leaving a mixture of flour and water out on the counter will yield a bubbling goop within a day or so.  Even more rapidly if some pineapple juice were added to the mix, and we’ve all smelled the slight alcohol aroma of an overripe banana.   Grapes, when crushed under their own weight, will spontaneously ferment into wine.  Mead, from fermented honey, would follow a similar path in nature if a hive were exposed to rain. ( Honey needs to be diluted in order to undergo fermentation)  Yeast is indigenous to fruit, including  of course, grapes and the sugars within are in readily available form, so spontaneous fermentation in isolation is more probable than with cereals. With grains the sugar needs to be “unlocked”,  and so crushing and steeping would be necessary . So, as people might have grown a little tired of chewing raw grains, they would have crushed or cracked them , and soaked in a bit of hot water to make a sort of porridge, inadvertently unlocking some of the sugars within. This seems a natural progression as the steeped and crushed grain would not only taste better and be easier to consume, but also provide more bioavailable nutrition. The introduction of fruits into the concoction alongside any airborne wild yeasts would have accelerated the process. If this concoction had been left out for a period of time,  the yeasts would have taken hold and begun to convert the sugars into ethanol and carbon dioxide, as well as a host of other byproducts.  Upon rediscovering the misplaced bowl, there likely would  have been some curiosity around this strange new brew.  There is a fair amount of evidence humans, primates, and a number of other animals, are programmed to seek out ethanol as an indication of ripeness in fruits.  So  it wouldn’t be too farfetched to assume, that unlike those suspicious egg salad sandwiches in the vending machine, humans would be naturally attracted to, or at least not be completely repulsed by, this bubbling alcoholic goop.  

Based on what we know, we can safely assume that the acceptance and popularity curve of this new beverage was fairly steep.   Beer eventually became so important that the Sumerians included in their pantheon a goddess of Beer and Brewing named Ninkasi, as indicated in the poem “ Hymn to Ninkasi”, the first known “ recipe” for making beer.   When power later shifted to the Babylonians, the consumption and status of beer carried on. Around 1750 BCE, when the Code of Hammurabi, who was the ruler at that time, was written, it included at least 4 laws pertaining to beer. In the meantime, beer had also made its way down to Egypt, where brewing really took hold on a grand scale. They taxed it, exported it, and it was such a staple that workers building the pyramids were reported to have been rationed up to 5 litres per day.  The beer of the time would have been made from various grains, likely quite sludgy, and sweet. Some pictorial evidence indicates that it was drunk sort of communally from large vessels, through long straws.  

We may at this point be hoping to have found the Genesis, a single starting point from which all beer evolved, so we can then draw a neat and tidy family tree. Unfortunately, it is much more complex and of course since we weren’t there, somewhat unknown.   Evidence of various fermented beverages  have been found globally, including some findings along the Yellow river in China from around 7000 BCE.  It is also believed that beer sprouted up some form around  5000 years ago in Neolithic Europe.   As the Roman empire expanded, the Romans, who were more partial to wine by the way, were reported to have continuously encountered beer drinking peoples, especially north of the “wine line”.  The Picts, the Celts, and the Germanic tribes, all seemed to be independently making some version of beer. 

 In 78 CE, Pliny the elder mentions Hops.  Then we hear nothing about them for a while. 

Medieval Times and the Gruit Age

Not a whole lot of progress happened from around 500 to 1000 CE as far as beer was concerned.  It was consumed widely and enthusiastically but remained very much a domestic affair, almost entirely carried out by women. In England these brewers became known as “Ale-Wives”. The consensus seems to be that beer was consumed so widely as the water was dangerous to drink.  Beer was safer than water, since it was boiled, which makes me wonder why they didn’t just boil the water.    

In 529 St. Benedict of Nursia wrote the Rule of St. Benedict (Regula Sancti Benedicti), a very cleverly titled set of guidelines that set out the rules for monastic living. Within, it  stated that the monks must be self-sustaining, and as a result, amongst other activities, monasteries start brewing beer, for their own consumption. The 700s, under the rule of Charlemagne,  saw a significant rise in the establishment of new monasteries all over Europe (within the Carolingian Empire). By implementing a book of canon law, based on one he’d received from Pope Adrian,  Charlemagne enforced  the Rule of St. Benedict in all monasteries within the Empire.  

Of particular monastic brewing note , St. Gallen, a Monastery In Switzerland,  built in the 720s, had, by 829 drawn up plans for a large full scale brewery with three brewhouses. Although, It was never built.  

 In 822 the Abbot Aldhard of Corbie in France makes mention of hops being added to beer, and then again we hear nothing for a while. 
 At this point in history, a major bittering addition to beer was a mysterious mix of herbs called “Gruit”.  We don’t really know what it was entirely composed of, nor do we believe it was one set blend of ingredients, but Bog Myrtle is mentioned often enough that our confidence is high that it was a staple ingredient. The privilege to sell this Gruit was called a gruitrecht, (Gruit Right) and in 974  Emperor Otto II granted the rights to the Church of Utrecht.  Gruit was a big deal, and in fact the opulent Gruithuis in Bruges still stands and is operated as the Gruuthusemuseum. It is a grand building, and that money came from somewhere.  Following this, gruitrechts were issued by the church to various dioceses and some ruling entities. As these rights could be leased or transferred, it became common for a town to lease such rights from their respective Bishops, Dukes, etc. The first town to acquire the right was Deft, in 1274.  In 1341, The Bishop of Utrecht leased the gruitrecht to the city in exchange for a loan, which it was unable to repay, and so the rights were permanently transferred to the city.  In 1559 Amsterdam bought rights from Spain’s King Phillip II, and this was the last purchase of a gruitrecht on record.  Additionally, within the gruitrecht regions, brewers were not allowed to brew or sell beer that was not bittered with gruit.  Municipalities outside the gruitrecht areas were exempt.  Exactly what areas had or were subject to gruitrecht and its restrictions is a bit opaque and complex, and a topic for another time.

Finally, HOPS!

Around 1100 CE  things started to take shape.  Early on in the century, the Abbess Hildegard von Bringen established a convent in Rupertsberg and wrote a volume called “Liber Subtilitatum Diversarum Naturarum Creaturarum”  in  chapter 2, “physica”, she describes hops and their preservative qualities.  This time it kinda stuck, and hops slowly started to make their way into beer.  In 1156 the Augsburg Beer Law stated that beer can only be made from Water, Malt, and hops, and  similar laws followed in Nuremberg, Erfurt, Wieẞensee, and Paris. 

In the early 1200s, Bremen, a member of the Hanseatic league in Northern Germany made significant progress on hop additions and, upon recognizing their preservative qualities, started brewing and exporting more and more hopped beer.  It was contagious, and other brewing cities followed.  By the mid 1300s Hamburg had taken over as the leader in brewing and export, shipping hopped beers all over, including the Low countries (modern day Belgium and the Netherlands) which were still peppered with gruitrechts at the time.  In 1364 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV wrote the “Novus Modus Fermentandi Cerevisiam”  ( New methods for brewing beer),  permitting and encouraging the use of hops.  Brewers in Holland ( See footnote),  started brewing with hops, and in turn introduced this hopped beer to nearby Flanders and Brabant, which are  in modern day Belgium. The Flemish then brought this beer over to England in the late 1400s.  This new hopped beer was met with some resistance by the English.  In fact, at the onset of the acceptance of hopped beer in England, you either brewed Ale, which was made without hops, or beer, which was made with hops.  But not both.  Most of the hopped beer was still being brewed by Flemish immigrants, and initially consumed by the same,  but as time passed more and more locals were taking a shine to it.  By 1500 all beers in England were hopped. 

 Back in  Bavaria, in 1516 a set of brewing regulations known now  as the Reinheitsgebot (purity order)  (it wasn’t named this back then and in fact was really just a part of a much larger set of laws) was adopted into Bavarian law by Duke Wilhelm IV.  The law stated that only water, barley and hops could be used to make beer.  Yeast as the catalyst of fermentation was still unknown.  This rule set the stage for German beer styles which mostly carries through to today. Part of the motivation was to reserve wheat production exclusively for bread.  In 1548 The Duke granted special permission to Baron Hans VI of the house of Degenberg to produce wheat beer.  Further brewing restrictions then arrived in Bavaria in the form of another new rule when Duke Albrecht V, in 1553, banned summer brewing.  This ban specifically prohibited the making of beer between April 23 and Sept 29, coinciding with the Feast of St. Georg and Michaelmas. As the only legal months in which to brew were now the coldest months, this restriction effectively isolated the yeasts used in Bavaria to lager strains which would remain active at the lower temperatures.  In 1556 the same Duke banned brewing of Wheat beer by anyone except the House of Degenberg.  This went on for some time until in 1602 when Baron Hans Sigmund of the Degenbergs died heirless and the wheatbeer rights reverted back to the Ruling Wittlebachs.  Duke Maximilian I, Abrechts grandson, brought the Degenbergs former brewmaster to Munich, built a wheatbeer brewery, and subsequently required all taverns to serve wheatbeer, and of course purchase said wheatbeer from his breweries.

The new world

In 1620, a group of tired and somewhat lost pilgrims aboard a ship called the Mayflower, arrived in America.  Pretty soon after, they got thirsty and started trying to brew beer with whatever they could find including pumpkin and squash, and it was pretty clear that nothing they made could hold a candle to their beloved English beer.  The Dutch had also arrived in this new land, and in 1632 the Dutch West Indies company built the first commercial brewery on American soil, in Manhattan. 

Around the same time in Nouvelle France, now Quebec, Canada,  Louis Hébert became the first brewer on record for the region, albeit for personal consumption,  on record  was Louis Hébert.  Then in 1646 the Jesuits built a brewery, but again, solely for their own consumption. Louis Prud’homme then opened the first commercial brewery in 1650s Montreal, which didn’t last long.  It should be noted that this was “New France” so beer was a little less popular than wine, and so a lot of these efforts were, to say the least, not well received.  Then in 1667 Nouvelle France’s Intendant,  Jean Talon requested, and was granted Royal permission to erect a brewery, La Brasserie du Roi.  He left his post in 1672 and eventually the brewery was dismantled in favour of wine. 

 In 1673 Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek used his microscopes to look at microbes and accelerated the field of microbiology.  Importantly, he first witnessed yeast. At this time he didn’t realize it was a living organism and it was generally assumed to be a product of fermentation as opposed to the catalyst.  

Back in England, in the early 1700s, a dark beer was becoming very popular with labourers who were known as porters, and thus this beer became “ Porter”.  Ralph Harwood at Bell Brewery is often credited with the invention of porter, but this seems to be a rather baseless claim.  In 1710, English Parliament banned the use of hop alternatives in brewing beer.  In 1752 George Hodgson founded the Bow Brewery in London.  It was mainly a porter brewery but they started brewing pale ales as well.  At the time, England was shipping a lot of beer around to the colonies, and importantly, some of it was being shipped to India.  This beer needed to be a bit stronger and hoppier to survive the long trip, and this became the birth story of  India Pale Ale, or IPA.  Hodgson dominated this market for a while due to a relationship with the East India Company, but accounts that he invented it are false. India Pale Ale has an interesting history that deserves its own article.   

Up to now beers kept in cellars of English pubs were being poured into jugs and brought upstairs to then be poured into serving vessels.  But in 1797 Joseph Bramah invented the beer engine ( also called a hand pump and is still used to serve cask beer) which allows beer to be kept in the cellar and pumped up to the bar and into the glass. 

In 1763 after some fighting, Quebec was passed to the British, and with the change came some beer drinkers in need of quenching.  

Up to around 1700, malt was dried using methods where hot gases from whatever medium was being burned, wood, coal, or the cleaner coke, would pass through the bed of malted grain.  This resulted in uneven colour, and  smoky malt. By the 1700s most maltsters in England had solved the general issues by indirect kilning, but temperature control was still elusive and consistency and control over colour was a challenge. When the hydrometer came into play in 1770 it was discovered that the paler malts yielded much more fermentable material, and so porter brewers started preferencing a base of pale malt, but with various questionable colour additions to keep the beer dark. 

Meanwhile over in Canada, a Brit by the name of John Molson partnered with Thomas Loid who had opened a brewery in Montreal.  By 1785 Molson had taken full control.  This brewery continued to grow and grow.  Most people will recognize the name Molson. 

  In 1816 an  English  law was put into effect that restricted beer ingredients to malt and hops ( and water and yeast of course).  This was an issue for porter brewers who needed to darken their beer. In 1817 Daniel Wheeler invented the drum roaster which allowed not only indirect heating of the malt, but also control over the colour.  This opened the doors for consistent pale malt but also black malt, known as black patent malt, and this changed the face of porter. Now brewers could employ a grist consisting of mostly paler base malts which yield more fermentables, and use darker malts as colour additions, while remaining on the right side of the law.  

In 1830, England issued the Beerhouse Act, which allowed anyone, including private homes, to brew and sell beer.  All one needed was a license, which was cheap and easy to obtain.   

Back on the European continent around 1833, few young men from a few breweries made their way over to England to study English brewing techniques.  Two of these individuals were Gabriel Sedlmayr II of Spaten in Munich, and Anton Dreher of Klein-Schwechat in Vienna. Theirs is an intriguing story involving wine thief type hollow walking canes for stealing samples of beer and other such industrial espionage. The end result of the expedition was that when they eventually travelled back to their respective homes, they began employing some of this knowledge to make paler malts, and in turn, paler beers.  The malts they developed are now known as Munich Malts and Vienna Malts.  In 1837 Spaten released an amber beer called Mӓrzenbier, and in 1841 Klein-Schwechat followed with an amber beer called Lagerbier which is now known as Vienna Lager.  

The 1840s continued to be an exciting time for beer as Germans started making their way to America and employing their brewing techniques.  John Wagner who managed to transport his bottom fermenting lager yeast over from Germany, intact, is credited with brewing America’s first lager, in Philadelphia.  

At this same time India Pale Ale was starting to gain popularity in England effectively suppressing the appetite for porters. 

Over in the city of Plzen in Bohemia, the state of beer and brewing was less than ideal. The  Burghers of the city were becoming fed up with the terrible local beer and apparently one day dumped a significant quantity of it in protest.  They then decided to erect a new “citizen’s brewery”, and hired a Bavarian brewmaster by the name of Joseph Groll.  The water in Plzen is very soft, and as Groll combined his brewing methods, but with local ingredients and this soft water, along with his bottom fermenting Bavarian yeast, magic happened.  In 1842 they released the world’s first Bohemian Pilsner and the style eventually took a hold on the world.   

A few other events took place in the 1840s, the glass tax was repealed in England opening the way for more bottled beer, and over in Bavaria in 1850 the summer brewing ban was repealed, since by then most brewers were filling their lagering caves with ice anyways.  

Up to now, yeast had remained rather elusive.  As previously mentioned, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek had observed it but failed to recognize it as the catalyst for fermentation. But then, in 1858, a French Scientist by the name of Louis Pasteur published a paper of his observations that yeast was in fact the organism responsible for the conversion of sugars into ethanol and carbon dioxide. 

In 1871 Bavaria joined the German Union and the reinheitsgebot was adopted nationwide, this time including yeast.  At this point, Weissbier had  become less and less popular, and as a result, far less lucrative. In 1872 the Wittlesbachs sold the wheat beer brewing privileges to Georg Schneider I. In the same year, refrigeration techniques for lagering tanks were developed by Carl von Linde, reducing the need for ice caves. A pale lager called Helles was introduced in 1894 by Spaten and it very quickly won the popularity contest with the darker Dunkel.  

In 1883, Emile Christian Hansen, a Danish mycologist employed at the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen, isolated a single yeast cell, and propagated it into a pure single strain.  This strain was aptly named Saccharomyces Carlsbergensis,  but is now usually referred to as Saccharomyces Pastorianus in honour of Louis Pasteur, and is what we call Lager Yeast. 

In 1912 Josef Schlitz Brewing in Milwaukee started using brown bottles.  

World War 1 had some pretty negative effects on beer across Europe, including  rations and higher taxes.   But for Belgium, caught right in the middle of the battle ground, the results were beyond devastating.   Entire breweries were destroyed, and the Germans expropriated all the copper they could for munitions, including brew kettles.  

In 1918, Belgium introduced the Vendervalle Act which banned the production and sale of any alcoholic beverages with the exceptions of beer up to 5% ABV and Wine up to 15% ABV.  A year later, the ABV cap was lifted but spirits were still disallowed from being served in restaurants and bars.  The result was Belgian brewers developing higher ABV beers to satiate the spirit drinkers, for which we are ever thankful.

Back in the Americas, the end of beer began.  In 1919, Prohibition came into effect and lasted until 1933.  In 1934, fewer than 50% of the 1568 breweries reopened, and most of them were making pale lager only. Canada never had prohibition, but some pretty crazy temperance movements existed at the time which pushed some provinces to be dry and came with all kinds of conflicting rules.   Also in 1934, the beer can was invented, and Kruger Brewing in New Jersey released the first canned beer.  

By the 1960s, beer in America, and Canada, was basically just an industrial product, cans of pale flavourless fizz. In 1965 Fritz Maytag bought the Anchor Brewery in San Francisco with the intent of rebuilding it, and in 1971 they released a newly formulated Anchor Steam beer.  A few years later in 1976 Jack McAuliffe started the first real American microbrewery, called New Albion.  Then in 1978 President Jimmy Carter signed the legalization of homebrewing.  The road was now paved.  In the 1990s the craft beer revolution really started, ales came back into favour, and here we are.  

This is intended to be a general overview of the history and timeline of beer.  We plan on releasing more granular histories of individual regions and styles as stand alone articles. 

1 Holland is a region within modern day Netherlands and a former county within the Holy Roman Empire, the name is sometimes used to denote the entire of the Netherlands, but not here.