A Short History of Beer

We would like to begin by quoting the greatest thinker of modern times, Mr. Homer J. Simpson: “Ah, good ol’ trustworthy beer. My love for you will never die.”

It isn’t simply that beer makes bad situations better, better situations good, and good situations perfect, it’s that we at Qraved Journal have found that it literally goes with any and every meal. Breakfast? A pilsner. Lunch? Perhaps a Hef. Intimate brunch with in-laws or important business associates? A good dark stout. Possibly two!

In this spirit of ‘well, why not another?’, Qraved is offering a special promotion all the way through December 31st: when you book at any of these nine participating restaurants, you get a free Bintang Radler. Simple as that. Click the link, free beer. You were going to order a beer anyway, and now you have two. Seems like a sound weekend decision, no?

But you’re not just in it for the booze and how utterly charming it makes you. No, you’re thinking ‘I cannot drink another drop without historical context!’

Well, strap into your seats, ‘ya buncha lushes. Because the only thing Qraved Journal loves more than good food, good drink, the works of Kanye West, long walks on the beach, and cats dressed like people, is putting everyday beverages into historical context.

Beer: A Brief History

The first recorded archaeological evidence of beer is from the year 9500BC. Yes, that means humans have been drinking beer as long as we’ve been domesticating crops. Yes, that means that our ancient ancestors liked to party. Yes, that means we wish we had a time machine.

Fast-forward a couple of thousand years. The Hymn to Ninkasi becomes popular in ancient Samaria. The Hymn to Ninkasi is a pagan chant to a beer god, a chant that is used to help them remember the ingredients for making more beer. Moving on!

By 3000 BC, beer has spread to every corner of Asia, Europe, and Africa. This concoction probably wouldn’t be what we today know as beer, but it had almost all of the essential elements. The standardized definition of ‘this is what beer is, it has hops and barley malt’ didn’t become common until much, much later: sometime around 800AD.

1516 is the year William the IV of Bavaria gave us the final key ingredient: the Reinheitsgebot, a set of rules for making beer that would both taste good and not kill you from impurities. These regulations on German breweries, while obviously modified for modern production, haven’t changed a whole lot. They also gave birth to Oktoberfest, which is a chance for non-Germans to cover their obvious drinking binges in the cloak of holiday respectability.

The Reinheitsgebot rules eventually transformed Europe into a continent of beer drinkers (yay!), and their colonial misadventures (boo!) spread Europe’s brewing methods across the planet (also yay!). Today, in China alone, 45 billion litres of beer are drank every year. We could come up with a clever analogy for how much that is, but we’ll just settle on simply saying:

“Damn, that’s a lot of beer.”

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