Stone Age Man invented beer

I'll bet those cavemen didn't drink any mamby pamby light beer:barf: :D

Sarge

By the way, Guinness stout was invented accidentally when a warehouse fire in London scorched some brewing grain (check out their web site). It was, IMHO, a most happy calamity.
 
"Until now researchers have assumed the first human settlements, which appeared in the Middle East, were built around farming and growing corn for food.

But archaeologist Merryn Dinely, of Manchester University, told the paper that corn was turned into malt, the main ingredient for making beer."

Corn?? Could be wrong, I thought corn was a new-world plant. And corn (at least the modern cultivars) has a lot of fermentable sugars--no need for malting and mashing. I think something got confused or mis-translated or something.

Guess it depends on how far one is willing to stretch the meaning of beer--Spontaneously fermented palm sap for instance, beer or wine? Which is pulque?
 
ananova comes up with the best news stories...
 
Originally posted by firkin
"Until now researchers have assumed the first human settlements, which appeared in the Middle East, were built around farming and growing corn for food.

But archaeologist Merryn Dinely, of Manchester University, told the paper that corn was turned into malt, the main ingredient for making beer."

Corn?? Could be wrong, I thought corn was a new-world plant. And corn (at least the modern cultivars) has a lot of fermentable sugars--no need for malting and mashing. I think something got confused or mis-translated or something.


YOu're thinking of maize. Corn is one of those funny words - its basic meaning must be something like 'edible grain'. What it refers to is different in different countries. I think of it as meaning 'wheat', but in Ireland it means 'oats', Scotland 'barley' and USA 'maize'.

In the article I think it refers less specifically just to grains like barley, wheat, &c. - as many of these can be made into alcohol...
 
Before this it was thought that the Sumerians invented beer. It seems that the word 'alcohol' is ultimately from the Sumerian language. The 'al-' part is of course arabic (Arabs were intrepid merchants), but 'cohol'/'cohos' is supposedly Sumerian!
 
...approves! Yeasty water is easy to get, just leave water + grain lying about.

We stand on the shoulders of giants. He who does not study history is doomed to make the same mistakes, and to mistake success for invention or personal artifice...

Keith
 
I think the importance of beer (wine, &c.) is often not fully appreciated - in all seriousness :) - the flavour/intoxicating effects are 'bonuses': think how important it was (and is, some places) to have safe fluids to drink (witness the BirGorkha dysentary) as alcohol is a disinfectant and also to preserve the caloric content of harvests (grain, grapes) against spoiling by rodents, insects, &c. by transforming it into alcohol...

:)

cheers!

--Ben
 
Keith

how 'bout this for your sig line?

__|^|_|^|_|^|_|^|_|^|_|^|_|^|_|^|__

seems more like crenellation...
 
ra·tion·al·i·za·tion (răsh'ə-nə-lĭ-zā'shən)
n.
The act, process, or practice of rationalizing.
An instance of rationalizing



Kis
:rolleyes:
 
Thanks fer the castle effect, Pen. That does look like a castle.

The vikings used wooden palisades on dirt ramparts, much like the Romans on campaign, and the british Celts. the same palisades style enclosure was used by american pioneers and frontier forts. the top of a palisade looks like this:

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\\/\/\ or this : ^^^^^^^^^^^^

All that aside, the zigzag line is just for space usage.

Keith

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\/
 
Malting is not necessarry. You can have beautiful young virgins masticate the grain. Their saliva will convert the starches to fermentable sugars. Numerous primitive cultures have discovered this independently.

Ron Hood's jungle video shows this process in action. (Well maybe except the "beautiful young" part.)

Just thought I'd throw this in in case any of you are into homebrew.

;-)
 
by the natives of Hawaii to convert the root starches into sugars as well. Of course, poi is a messy, strinngy gray goop...tastes about like you think it would,,,

Keith
 
and the cacao bean that comes from Guatemala is processed by old (not young) hags who sit around all day sucking the sticky fruit surrounding the bean, thereby "cleaning" it and preparing it for sale in the market. It is then put in bags which are sold at extremely low prices and exported to all sorts of wonderful places...like the US ;)

Don't even get me started on cardamom...:p
 
RE: corn--OK, now that you mention it, I have heard of barleycorn...guess I forgot to switch to Brit-lish. Didn't know it was so promiscuously defined--like "pulse" I guess.

I knew the saliva enzymes worked for some fruits to increase fermentables, didn't know they were effective enough to process grains. That must be a LOT of chewing, considering that malting creates enzymes specifically evolved for the job of processing the grain's carbohydrates and the mashing can take an hour or more at elevated temperatures for full conversion.

Maybe the key factor was people having enough time to chew and spit all day?

There's supposed to be a variety of coffee bean that is extremely rare and expensive. The outer flesh is removed from the bean not by mechanical means but by passage through some critter like a civet. The beans are "harvested" from...You can guess. Think I'd find something else costly to purchase if I had enough dough to spend a few tens of dollars for a cup of coffee.
 
then head on over to my new "pizza" thread...:eek:
 
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