For Momoreg
Momoreg, I copied and pasted this from the Egyptian thread.
It gives a little info on who was first with wine.
I hope it helps
cc
I second that, Your library must be incredible.
I was able to come up with some imformation as well, There is a great book by HPB, it's called isis unvieled. Most public libraries have it.
HPB says " Egypt pressed there own grapes and made wine, nothing remarkable in that , so far, but she brewed her own beer, and in great quinity-our egyptolgist goes on to say. The ebers manuscript proves know, beyond a dought that the egyptians used beer 2.000 years B.C Thier beer must have been strong and excellent-like everything they did (isis p.543)
Long ago i was interested in microbioligy and gained a diploma in zymurgy from a reputable british institution. The more I learned about the chemistry and bioligy of winemaking and brewing, the more I was amazed at thier history.making wine in fact is easy, even inevitable. Out a bunch of grapes in a container and, chances are, some yeast cells will settle in and you'll wind up with wine.The same for mead made with honey water.
Beer is another matter.To make beer you moisten barley (or some other grain)keep it moist until it germinates, then heat the grain to stop the germination (the result is called malt) and finally add water and yeast so the malt sugars fement. At first blush this procedure dosen't appear to be the kind of thing one would stumble on by accident(natural history p.24)
In ancient Egypt, the beer of kings was a sophisticated brew
By John Noble Wilford.
No temple friezes and certainly no billboards proclaimed it the king of beers, but it was the beer of pharohs, and of thier own workers whose labors on pyramids and statly tombs were rewarded with a generous flow of the brews that made ancient memphis or thebes famous.
Artistic depictions and written sourses attest to beer's popularity in early egypt. The elite and hoi polloi alike enjoyed beers with names likeJoy bringer, The baeutiful and heavely They drank through tubes from ceramic cups and sometimes did not know when to say when. An Egyptian papyrus of 1400 bc warned of dangers of loose talk in the taverns in witch they drank beer.
Scholors have not been sure how the egyptian brewed there beer In some temple art it appeared that beer was made by crumbling bread into water and letting it ferment by yeast from the bread. yielding a coarse liquid swimming with chatt.But a researcher at cambridge University in England has now examined beer residues and desiccated bread loaves from Egyptian tombs and found evidence of much more sophisticated brewing techniques in the second millennium B.C.
In a report published by Dr Delwen Samual in the Joural of science ( He is a research associate of archeology at Cambridge) said" The current conceptions about ancient Egptian bread and beer making should be modified" A microscopic analysis of beer residues, she said, indicated a more elabrate brewing process, Blending cooked and uncooked malt with water and producing a refined liquid free from husk.
The Microstructure of the residues Dr, Samual concluded, " Is remarkably similar to that of modern cereal foods"
In an accompanying article by, Dr Glnnis Jones, a researcher at the University of Sheffield in England, Who studies cereal- processing methodes, said the findings were," The first real scientific evidence for the ancient brewing techniques."
The study was made possible because it was a practice of ancient Egyptians to leave food and beer in thier tombs for the sustenence in the afterlife and the arid climate preserved those remains. Dr. Samual examined with optical and electron microscopes nearly 70 loaves of bread from several sites and beer residues from more than 200 pottery vessels found amoung the ruins of workers villages.
Almost all the bread was made from a wheat called emmer, sometimes flavored with coriander and fig. Both emmer and barley- not barley alone, as previoasly thought- were used for brewing. No flavorings have been detected in there residues.
An Analysis of starch granuals , in particular, showed that the Egyptian did not use lightly baked bread as the main ingredient in brewing. Instead, they seemed to use a two part process. The grains were deliberatly sprouted and heated to provide sugar and flavor. The cooking made the grain more susceptible to attack by the enzymes that convert starch into sugars. This batch was then mixed with sprouted but unheated grains in water. Yeast was added to the combination of sugar and starch in solution, and this fermented to make beer.
Eariler this year, Dr Samual and Dr barry kemp, a Cambridge Egpytologist, in collaboration with a british brewery, brewed an ale according to the recipe inferred from this recent research. The beverage was slightly cloudy with a golden hue." It does not taste like any beer I have ever had before, "Dr Samual siaid" It's very rich, very malty and has a flavor that reminds you a little of Chardonnay.
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Baruch ben Rueven / Chana
