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Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

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• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  Michael > August 15th, 2018, 12:30 AM

  I'm not yet convinced we have figured out the history of agriculture and the cultivation of wild plants. Research shows that people were harvesting wild plants in organized plantings as much as 20,000 years ago. They were not farms and the plants were not domesticated.
  
  Now we learn that bread was being made 14,000 years ago in Jordan.
  
  The origins of human civilization are being pushed back every year. Only a few decades ago we thought civilization first arose around 4,000-6,000 BCE. Now we know there were ancient towns and cities as far back as 11,000-12,000 years ago and so-called "hunter-gatherers" were collaborating on building large stone monuments and communities across the world thousands of years before the Egyptians built the pyramids.
  
  Organized, permanent settlements (perhaps used only for seasonal or ritual purposes) now appear to be more ancient than 15,000 BCE. That suggests that neolithic humans were more sophisticated and knowledgeable than we previously believed.

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  rkomar > September 2nd, 2018, 10:17 PM

  Physiologically, I don't think we've changed much for a very long time. We may have had less knowledge before the written word, but I suspect we were just about as clever as we are now. So, I'm not surprised that we were more organized back then than archaeological finds showed until recently.

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  august > September 3rd, 2018, 01:25 PM

  I could have sworn I posted a link somewhere to a documentary from probably History/Discovery called "How Beer Saved the World" - but that may have been in one of the chat threads. I'll dig it up if I get a chance. But basically one of many ideas suggested was that man only decided to settle down when he needed to grow grain, and bread wasn't enough of an incentive, but beer was. ? (Plus grain doesn't need tending, bread can be baked quickly, but beer does require someone on hand.)
  
  But this is a decent summary, from last night's Fear the Walking Dead:
  
  

  Quote: History is built on beer. We are back to a time where a safe and sterile source of hydration and nutrition is needed... Yeah. It is the staff of life. We were nomads. Beer made us settle and become farmers. Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Incans, the Chinese. Beer, beer, beer, beer, beer. You know people who want the world to come back together again... They need me... They need this stuff... They need beer.

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  Michael > September 9th, 2018, 07:20 PM

  I vaguely recall the reference to "How Beer Saved the World". Thinking about the history of beer has always led me to wonder who experimented with fermentation and why. No one really has an adequate explanation, of course. But I imagine someone in the deeps of time must have consumed something they thought was normal food and went off on a bender.
  
  Even modern hunter-gatherer tribes make alcoholic beverages (in some Latin American cultures). I don't know where they learned to do that, but if these are ancient practices then that implies people have been fermenting stuff for a long, long time.

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  august > September 10th, 2018, 11:43 AM

  Michael Wrote:Thinking about the history of beer has always led me to wonder who experimented with fermentation and why. No one really has an adequate explanation, of course. But I imagine someone in the deeps of time must have consumed something they thought was normal food and went off on a bender.

  
  Pretty much. :crazy: :jester: :drink:
  
  The common concensus is that it happened by accident. Wine, of course, can happen on its own - grapes can fall to the ground and into some little rocky nook,
  and ferment on their own. Beer takes a tiny bit of human interaction. So probably someone - probably a woman - had gathered a bunch of grain, possibly barley, in a container,
  and left it out in the rain. Possibly she was carrying a heavy container a long way, and it started raining, and she left it there. The next day, sugar
  starts forming (or whatever it is that happens.) But for whatever reason, the original gatherer doesn't come back. Possibly her tribe goes on a hike
  in the opposite direction for a few days. Maybe she has a cold. Maybe she forgets. Meanwhile, it rains again, harder, and the container is filled up
  with liquid, and then sits there for a longer spell. Eventually, someone finds it. Possibly the woman stumbles across it and says "Oh that's where I left
  that bushel." Possibly a different tribe entirely finds it. Someone has the nerve to take a sip, and as my late friend Moffatt once said, "they must have
  thought it was a gift from the gods!"

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  rkomar > September 11th, 2018, 04:37 AM

  I brew beer myself, and I think it may not have started by accident, at all. There are plenty of wild yeasts floating around, and sweet fruit and berries ferment all on their own. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that sweet liquids produce stuff that makes you drunk. I guess the problem with fruit is that it's season can be pretty short. I suspect that malting barley was discovered by accident, but it shouldn't be a big surprise that someone tried eating sprouting barley at some time and found it to be sweet (the sprouting releases enzymes that convert the starch to sugar in the barley). Roasting the sprouted barley stops the process, and it stores well after that. Mashing it in hot water later to continue the starch to sugar conversion is probably a lucky discovery, but it wouldn't be a big stretch to use that sweetness to ferment alcohol. Once you have a batch that tastes pretty good, you can keep using the yeast to start another batch after that. Since the malted barley stores well, you can make beer year round. The trick was always about finding a simple source of sugar that keeps year round.

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  august > September 11th, 2018, 10:09 AM

  That's very intriguing! :clap:
  
  So any particular type that you enjoy brewing/drinking, or are especially proud of?

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  rkomar > September 11th, 2018, 06:13 PM

  I brew ales, partly because I prefer them over lagers, but also because lagers are really hard to do well on a small scale. Any off-flavour stands out like a sore thumb, while ales have strong flavours that can mask problems. I not a perfectionist, so I'm not particularly careful when making beer. If it tastes okay, it's good enough for me.
  
  That said, I still have old-school tastes in beer, and I'm not happy with the recent fad to over-hop every ale. I prefer that the hop and malt flavours be better balanced than they are now. So, ironically, I tend to buy lager in pubs, and stick to drinking ales at home where I hop them to my own tastes.

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  august > September 11th, 2018, 07:39 PM

  rkomar Wrote:I brew ales, partly because I prefer them over lagers, but also because lagers are really hard to do well on a small scale. Any off-flavour stands out like a sore thumb, while ales have strong flavours that can mask problems.

  
  I've heard that before. Lagers aren't necessarily complex,they're still very difficult. Plus, you'd have to have a really really cool basement.
  
  And yeah, the ultra-hoppy IPA's get insane now. Although the craze now seems to be sours.
  
  So when you say ales, you mean just regular pale ales and bitters? Or do you go darker, like reds and porters and stouts?

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  rkomar > September 11th, 2018, 08:49 PM

  I have four recipes I mostly rotate through: stout, red ale, an autumn ale (a bit darker), and a marzen. The latter is technically a lager, but I treat it like an ale and it tastes that way. I like to taste the hops in all of them, but I keep them below the point where the beer gets really bitter. I tried a lot more recipes when I started out almost 30 years ago, and I eventually found the four that I could count on enjoying without getting sick of. I think the balance each has between the various flavours is what keeps me from getting tired of any of them.
  
  I love porters, but I don't have a recipe for one in my handbook. I should dig one up online and make a batch.
  
  I do like sours, but they haven't caught on here in Vancouver. So, I only drink them once every few years if I stumble across some. I wouldn't try making any, because of the time and equipment required.

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  august > September 12th, 2018, 03:18 PM

  rkomar Wrote:The latter is technically a lager, but I treat it like an ale and it tastes that way.

  
  I know exactly what you mean - there is a local brewer here in town that does a "braunbier" - a fairly dark German lager, but not really a dunkel or a schwarzbier - and it's
  very very complex. I've never asked the main guy, because he'd go into way too many technical and scientific terms that I'm not familiar with :jester: but my guess is that it's all the
  ingredients of a rich nut brown ale, but done as a lager.
  
  I am not into sours (or shandys or flavored witbiers either) at all, but they have become very popular locally with college-age women and those slightly older, and that's a big fat
  source of revenue for local brewpubs. My late friend whom I mentioned above who was an avid home-brewer (back in the 90's before it was cool :laugh: ) went with me to one of those
  locales, and observed it was packed but mainly with college kids. I replied that some seemed a little older, like maybe age 26 or 27. He replied, with perfect timing, "Oh - seniors." :crazy:

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  Michael > September 17th, 2018, 05:53 PM

  And beer is now attested to be at least 13,000 years old. Bread and beer, the cornerstones of modern civilization.
  
  And now researchers are also blaming ancient farmers for climate change. Beer and bread warmed the world.

• Bread More Ancient Than Known Agriculture

  august > September 29th, 2018, 09:47 AM

  There was a microbrewer character named Jim in some recent episodes of "Fear the Walking Dead"- he revealed one recipe:
  
  
  "68% Pilsner malt
  15% wheat malt... Weyerman wheat malt.
  7% flaked oats
  10% Vienna malt
  
  40 grams Slovenian pellets... 70 grams Czech Saaz whole hops.
  
  Belgian and French Saison yeast
  
  Mash at 151 to 152. Pitch the yeast at 68 degrees and hold for 10 days. No less.
  
  By using percentages you can scale this up or down to whatever strength you want. "
  
  He adds a secret ingredient which he says "is the most important part, so no one else can know." And we don't hear it. 🤔 And then adds "Well, there's love in there, too, if you can believe it, but, yep, that's it."
  
  Home brewing sites online have deduced this is a recipe for a saison ale.
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