The Complete Brewer | Brewing Beer – From Hops to Mug (English Edition)

THE origin of beer, using that word in a general sense to indicate a fermented infusion of grain, is lost in the mists of antiquity. Probably the Egyptians were among the first civilized people to engage in the art of brewing, and there appears to be good reason for believing that barley wine or beer was well known in Egypt at least three thousand years before the Christian era. Herodotus, who is not always a model of trustworthiness, mentions that the Egyptians used a wine made from barley because there were no vines in their country, but this is clearly not correct since wine was well known to the ancient Egyptians, and its use is recorded as early as 4000 years B.C. It seems certain, moreover, that at that early period there were many vineyards in the Nile valley and that several kinds of wine were produced. Still it is not altogether unreasonable to suppose that in parts of the world where the grape would not grow, beer occupied the same position as wine in countries where the vine flourished.