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Beer is a universal and ancient beverage, probably the most ancient ever made by man. It is so popular that it is the most sold alcoholic drink. We don’t know with precision when it was brew for the first time. Its discovery would be due to a combination of circumstances: a crop of barley for bread devastated by the rain would have germinated. Exposed to sunlight and then contaminated by the yeast naturally present in the air: beer was born.
The first concrete traces of beer date back 4000 years before Christ. Mesopotamia is the cradle of beer. Receipts written in the form of hieroglyphics and of pictograms were left by the primitive civilizations of the Mediterranean - Sumerian - Egyptian basin. These civilizations then venerated Ninkasi, Sumerian goddess of beer.
The Egyptians produced a beverage almost identical, but bettered on technical level. As for them, the Chinese made the "t'ien tsiou", a green beer not entirely fermented and poor in alcohol and the "tsiou" a finished beer stronger in alcohol. As for the Greeks and the Romans, they associated barley wine to the barbarians, since for them civilized people drank wine! The Gallic people considered beer as a holy drink with which they associated deities such as Ceres, goddess of harvest and Sucellus, god of barley beer.
Monks from Germany, Austria, Belgium and France will also start with the making of beer. They even were in the vanguard of the use of hop as an herb. In the Xth century, conurbation will favour the expansion of the breweries and make the profession of Master-Brewer profitable.
Besides, the brewers organize corporate bodies contributing in this way to the respect of the profession. In the same way, to ensure the quality of the product, Bavaria established in 1516 the Beer Purity Law that is still enforced today. A thing worth noting is that women will practise the profession of brewer until the end of the middle Ages. The use of hop only spread from the XVth century and quickly got ahead of the other bitter plants (gentian, coriander, wormwood, sage or lavender) that flavoured beer at the time.
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