9,000-year-old brew hitting the shelves this summer

[crushing]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/b...00-year-old-brew-hitting-the-shel-2009-06-05&

This summer, how would you like to lean back in your lawn chair and toss back a brew made from what may be the world’s oldest recipe for beer? Called Chateau Jiahu, this blend of rice, honey and fruit was intoxicating Chinese villagers 9,000 years ago—long before grape wine had its start in Mesopotamia.

This sounds very interesting. I love it when history, science and technology come together like this to give us a glimpse, and even a taste, of the past.

The brewery doing this is Dogfish Head in Delaware. The family and I took the free tour of the Dogfish Head brewery back in May. I was hoping that the Sah'tea mentioned in the article was going to be ready and available when I was there, but it wasn't. I did pick up some Midas Touch which is based on a 2,700 year old Turkish recipe.

Cheers!

 

[theletch1]

Dogfish head always shows up at our local micro brew festival here in Roanoke, Va each year. I hope they have it for sample this year. I'd give it a try just to check out the history of a huge part of what it is to be human.

 

[Omar B]

I'm drooling for this already. Sounds amazing.

 

[tellner]

This isn't the first "oldest beer" recipe. There was one a few years back that came out of early dynasty Egyptian jars and another that was scraped off Mesopotamian pottery. If memory serves both of them were flavored with coriander, berries and a couple other spices. Hops only made their appearance thousands of years later.

This stuff is probably better than what the Ancients drank. We have such better consistency and quality control that there's no comparison. I'm glad Dogfish is doing this version. Some of their beers like the 90-minute are fantastic.