From Ancient Egypt to Roman Britain, brewers are reviving beers from the past

26 April 2024 - By Norman Miller,Features correspondent

The revival of ancient brews is a drinkable window into history (Credit: nycshooter/Getty Images)

Beer archaeologists are peering back millennia to recreate brews from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome using ancient methods and ingredients.

Some of the most interesting beers made in recent years provide a drinkable window into human history. These so-called "rebrews" of age-old ales were once savoured in places ranging from Ancient Egypt and Greece to Celtic and Viking Europe. Their drinkers liked a choice too, with 5,000-year-old Babylonian-carved stone tablets depicting recipes for nearly 20 different barley-based beers.

"Recreating ancient beers allows us to touch and taste history. It humanises our ancestors and makes us realise that we are not so different," says Travis Rupp, who combines teaching Classics and Anthropology at the University of Colorado with his past professional brewing experience at the Boulder-based producer Avery Brewing. It's a combination of skills that led him to create a line of archaic rebrews earning him the tag of The Beer Archaeologist, which is now the name of his business.

As well as being a hit with modern drinkers, these ancient rebrews have revealed the simplicity of beer-making going back millennia: start by sprouting grains (typically barley today, but grains like emmer were used in the past), then dry them and heat them in water to create sugars. After this, add yeast to start the fermentation that results in beer.

Emmer grain was a common ingredient in ancient beer making (Credit: Tasha Marks, AVM Curiosities)

One key difference between ancient and modern brewing is the use of hops. Though hop plants have grown wild in different varieties across Europe for at least 10,000 years, their first documented use in relation to beer dates back to 9th Century monks in France. Hops proved highly versatile for brewers, offering different things when added to beer at different points in the heating process: at the beginning to highlight bitterness; in the middle for optimum flavouring; at the end to boost aroma.

Though the basics of brewing are timeless, rebrews highlight ancient brewers' bold touch with flavourings in the centuries before the use of hops – and also impart useful lessons for modern-day brewers.

Starting in 2016, Rupp oversaw an acclaimed Ales of Antiquity series at Avery Brewing, which spanned both time and geography. One ancient classical world rebrew named Nestor's Cup drew on a Mycenaean-era recipe from around 1600-1100 BCE, based on barley, einkorn wheat, acorn flour, figs and elderberries. Rupp also recreated a 900-year-old South American corn beer called chicha which almost got him fired – thanks to the unconventional element of the fermenting process, which used human spit created by chewing the corn.

Travis Rupp created a line of ancient rebrews earning him the tag of The Beer Archaeologist (Credit: Sara Herkes Photography and Design LLC)

Rupp's latest creations – still in the process of ageing – are two examples of a beer called kykeon that Homer chronicled in both The Iliad and The Odyssey. So how do you recreate a beer dating back three millennia? "Extensive archaeological research, ancient Greek language surveys [mentioning drinks], and my experimentation with beers over the past 10 years," explains Rupp.

Despite all this knowledge, Rupp is happy to admit not knowing quite how a rebrew will turn out. "Once you start stripping away the highly controlled atmosphere created by modern brewing equipment, there's a great deal of uncertainty... I'm still always a bit surprised."

Another surprise is how rebrews are blowing away any prejudice that these beers are in any way primitive. When food historian Tasha Marks initiated a 2018 project entitled Pleasant Vices at London's British Museum to rebrew an Egyptian beer from the time of the Pharaohs, her British Museum blog concluded: "To look back on it now, the Egyptian method makes a fool of modern brewers."

Michaela Charles was the brewer who oversaw the eye-opening ancient Egyptian rebrew. "The most exciting thing was that the beer literally brewed itself," she said. "In a modern brewery, you take malted barley through a series of processes to make alcohol. The steps we followed created a smooth continuous path without the need for intervention and produced a delicious, finished beer with minimum effort... Many people assume the passing of time equals the accumulation of wisdom. I feel the opposite is increasingly true." 

This clay Mesopotamian writing tablet shows an example of how beer was allocated in ancient times (Credit: PHAS/Getty Images)

The British Museum project drew on evidence from breweries unearthed at the Egyptian workers' village of Amarna dating to 1350 BCE, plus ingredients and processes mentioned in a Sumerian text called The Hymn To Ninkasi (one of various ancient goddesses of beer).

While modern brewing relies almost exclusively on closed steel fermenting vessels, ancient brewers used open vessels – commonly, large ceramic pots whose open tops allowed wild airborne yeasts to enter the brewing liquid. Charles was able to turn to her ceramicist father, David White, to recreate vessels inspired by the British Museum collection.

To flavour the rebrew, Charles looked at foods used in ancient Egyptian funeral rites, such as pistachio oil. She also visited the historical food collection at the British Museum to get clues about suitable additional ingredients appropriate to ancient Egypt. She added dates, both to enrich the brew and provide extra sugars to help the yeast ferment the beer faster.

The British Museum beer project drew on evidence from Egypt in 1350 BCE (Credit: Tasha Marks, AVM Curiosities)

Another key pioneer of is Patrick McGovern, author of Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-Created and a professor at University of Pennsylvania Penn Museum, though he is commonly known to brewers simply as "Dr Pat", as well as the "Indiana Jones of Ancient Ales". In the early 1990s, McGovern oversaw the first hi-tech molecular analysis of yellow residues found in bronze drinking vessels during a 1950s excavation of an ancient Turkish tomb dating back 2,700 years – and claimed to possibly be that of the legendary King Midas.

Whomever the tomb belonged to, the drink sipped at his funeral feast turned out to be a barley beer blended with honey mead and grape wine, and possibly spices like saffron. Intrigued, McGovern teamed up with US brewer Dogfish Head in 1999 to create a highly popular rebrew christened Midas Touch.

He then collaborated further with Dogfish to create a diverse line of ancient ales culminating most recently with 2022's Tree Thieves. This was an ancient Celtic ale style known as gruit, using botanicals for flavouring to more accurately mirror the ancient brewing process before hops were used. "It was bittered with mugwort and carrot seeds," explains McGovern.

British brewers have also taken inspiration from the rebrewing trend, such as when leading UK beer expert Jane Peyton – author of the 2021 book The Philosophy of Beer – collaborated with Ilkley Brewery for a medieval gruit ale christened Doctor's Orders, thanks to using foraged botanical flavourings that brewers believed to have medicinal benefits.

These included yarrow and sage (reputedly antiseptics) plus bog myrtle and rosemary (supposed medieval mind boosters). "The brewery smelled like Sunday lunch as the ingredients were boiling, because of the aroma of rosemary and sage!" Peyton said.

Charles believes we can take valuable lessons from our beer-making predecessors. "I think working with terracotta vessels and ancient grains will be processes used in the future," she says. Rupp, meanwhile, is planning his next explorations. "I'm working on brewing with brackish water, which may have been used for beer production in Roman-occupied Britain."

Humankind's love of beer may also go back even further than we thought: in 2018, fermented grains were discovered on 13,000-year-old stone mortars in a cave on Israel's northern coast – the oldest evidence of brewing beer found so far. Sounds like something ripe for a rebrew.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240426-from-ancient-egypt-to-roman-britain-brewers-are-reviving-beers-from-the-past