5000-Year-Old Chinese Beer Recipe Revealed

nysepost.com: The archaeological site at Mijiaya, near a tributary of the Wei River in northern China, includes two pits dating to around 3,400-2,900 BC and contains artifacts that point to beer brewing, filtration, and storage, as well as stoves that may have been used to heat and mash grains.

Here’s something you might want to jump on: a recipe for a 5,000-year-old Chinese beer, made from tubers, millet, barley, and a gluten-free something called Job’s tears. Residue from inside the uncovered pots and funnels was tested with ion chromatography to find out what the ancient beer was made of.

The recipe included a mix of fermented grains: broomcorn millet, barley, and Job’s tears, a chewy Asian grain also known as Chinese pearl barley. It was first cultivated in western Asia and might have been used to make beer in ancient Sumer and Babylonia more than 8,000 years ago, according to historians. But besides suggesting some delightfully unconventional paths for craft brewers to explore, what does this tell us about beer and its place in the world 5,000 years ago? Barley “may have been used as a beer-making ingredient long before it became an agricultural staple”, said the study. “However, to our knowledge, [the new discovery] is the first direct evidence of in situ beer making in China”, said Jiajing Wang of Stanford University, first author of the new research.  more