Beer in Ethiopia

• Between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, various humans stopped their nomadic life and settled down to farm. It’s believed that grain was the first domesticated crop.

• The oldest records of brewing are about 6,000 years old and it was the Sumerians how were practicing it.  Sumeria lay between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers It is believed that the Sumerians discovered the fermentation process by chance. 

• No one knows for sure how this occurred, but the guess is that a piece of bread or grain became wet and in time, it began to ferment and inebriating pulp resulted. 

• It could be said that baked bread was a convenient method of storing and transporting a resource for making beer.  The Sumerians were able to repeat this process and are assumed to be the first to brew beer.

• An ancient text, Gilgamesh Epic, written in the 3rd millennium B.C., teaches us that not only bread but also beer was very important.

• After the Sumerian empire warped, the Babylonians became the rulers of Mesopotamia. Their culture was derived from that of the Sumerians, and as a result of this, they also mastered the skill of brewing beer.

• In the olden times beer was unfiltered. The “drinking straws” were used to keep away the brewing residue.  Babylon was exporting and distributing as far away as Egypt. 

• The Egyptians uphold the tradition of beer brewing. Besides, they used unbaked bread dough for making beer and added dates to the brew to perk up the taste. The significance of beer brewing in ancient Egypt can be noticed from the fact that the scribes created an extra hieroglyph for “brewer”.

• Although beer origins in Mesopotamia, fermented beverages of some sort or another were made in a variety of forms around the world. For instance, Tella (Borde) is an Ethiopian beer and Chicha is a corn beer and kumis is a drink produced from camel milk. Do you know the word beer id derived from the Latin word bibere, meaning “to drink?

• Beer continued to be brewed by Egyptian successors (Greeks and Romans). Plinius accounted of the prominence of beer in the Mediterranean area before wine took hold.

• In Rome, wine happened to ambrosia from the god Bacchus. Beer was only brewed in the outer areas of the Roman Empire where wine was hard to get. For the Romans beer was assumed to be a barbarian drink.

• It was in the early Hallstatt Period (800 B.C) that the proof that beer was brewed on German became known. In those days, Beer could not be stored, was cloudy and produced almost no foam. It was thought it must contain a spirit or god, since drinking beer so possessed the spirit of the drinker.

• Beer brewing played an significant role in every day lives. Beer was obviously so preferred that it led nomadic groups into village life. Beer was taken as a important foodstuff  and workers were often paid with jugs of beer.

Isn’t that a great story? Do you have any local beer in your country about which you would like to share its historical background? Feel free to write us and we will publish it in this blog.
 

Keywords: Sumerians, beer, fermentation, Chang, Tella, Borde, bibere, Chicha, kumis, brew,