Funnels used at the ancient brewery — Jiajing Wang/PNAS
❝ A 5,000-year-old brewery has been unearthed in China.
Archaeologists uncovered ancient “beer-making tool kits” in underground rooms built between 3400 and 2900 B.C. Discovered at a dig site in the Central Plain of China, the kits included funnels, pots and specialized jugs. The shapes of the objects suggest they could be used for brewing, filtration and storage.
It’s the oldest beer-making facility ever discovered in China — and the evidence indicates that these early brewers were already using specialized tools and advanced beer-making techniques.
❝ For instance, the scientists found a pottery stove, which the ancient brewers would have heated to break down carbohydrates to sugar. And the brewery’s underground location was important for both storing beer and controlling temperature — too much heat can destroy the enzymes responsible for that carb-to-sugar conversion…
The research group inspected the pots and jugs and found ancient grains that had lingered inside. The grains showed evidence that they had been damaged by malting and mashing, two key steps in beer-making. Residue from inside the uncovered pots and funnels was tested with ion chromatography to find out what the ancient beer was made of. The 5,000-year-old beer “recipe” was published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
❝ 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. The recipe also called for tubers, the starchy and sugary parts of plants, which were added to sweeten and flavor the beer…
Gotta love it. I think any culture that bumps into natural fermentation – and the products thereof – would have carried on to research and expand uses of the process.
Of course, I’m a devotee. I started my weekly “poolish” a couple hours ago – that will end up in a home-baked loaf of bread Wednesday morning. And my wife brews hard cider every couple of weeks. For a couple of geek hermits, we keep occupied in pretty traditional ways.
Eideard 
I always find it fascinating when I read things like this…it’s easy to think of people being very primitive 5000 years ago but there is constant evidence to prove that they weren’t. I was also interested in your poolish…from a quick google search it looks similar to sourdough (which I make) – is that what it is?
Thanks to Nicole Garneau and fellow scientist Lindsay Barr, identifying flavors and judging the quality of craft beer just got easier. Garneau and Barr are the brains behind the Beer Flavor Map, a science-based analysis tool that is changing the way industry professionals and casual drinkers alike think about the taste, aroma, and mouthfeel of beer. https://www.craftbeer.com/editors-picks/beer-flavor-map-revolutionizes-beer-terminology Garneau was also responsible for the groundbreaking, crowdsourced research on oleogustus that led to the newly discovered sixth taste of fat.
A new method for reliably identifying the presence of beer or other malted foodstuffs in archaeological finds is described in a study published May 6, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/p-bwh042920.php
“Mashes to Mashes, Crust to Crust. Presenting a novel microstructural marker for malting in the archaeological record” (PLOS ONE 5/7/20) https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0231696
“German chemists identified over 7,700 different chemical formulas in beers” https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/german-chemists-identified-over-7700-different-chemical-formulas-in-beers/
“On the Trail of the German Purity Law: Distinguishing the Metabolic Signatures of Wheat, Corn and Rice in Beer” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fchem.2021.715372/full
p/s: “God made beer because he loves us and wants us to be happy.” Benjamin Franklin never said this—about beer, at least. https://www.fi.edu/benjamin-franklin/7-things-benjamin-franklin-never-said
“Intrepid brewer risks scalding to recreate recipe for long-lost medieval mead
The recipe for bochet was lost for centuries, until it was rediscovered in 2009.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/recreating-a-medieval-mead-calls-for-a-giant-cauldron-to-caramelize-honey/
“It’s made from Honey” (The 13th Warrior, 1999) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UutK8FXjNOQ
9,000 years ago, funerals in China involved a lot of beer https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/9000-years-ago-funerals-in-china-involved-a-lot-of-beer/
PLOS ONE: “Early evidence for beer drinking in a 9000-year-old platform mound in southern China” https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0255833