9,000 year old beer recipe recreated

Dogfish Head Brewery is always in the news for making one of a kind beers. But now, they have gone ahead and made a beer whose recipe is 9,000 year old.

A 9,000 year old beer made of rice, honey and hawthorn may give a whole new meaning to cracking open a cold one. The beer, called Chateau Jiahu, will come July be on sale in British Columbia and depending on sales perhaps sometimes soon in the rest of Canada. Chateau Jiahu has its roots in a village in Hunan province in northern China. A molecular archeologist Patrick McGovern from the University of Pennsylvania found chemical traces of a 9,000 year old beer on some pottery in a dig in the Neolithic village of Jiahu. The beer was made of a blend of rice, honey and hawthorn berries.

9,000 year old beer recreated

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[edit on 4/6/10 by coredrill]

Hells yea, I'll try and be one of the first out here to taste this goodness.

It'll be trippy tasting it and having my mind flood back to the time of the ancients. Maybe i'll have to come up with a drinking game wear we all wear animal skins while we drink this. Or a themed party lol anyways sweet post dude.

reply to post by coredrill


Lol looking at your location I bet you dream about superb beers I hope this one is I'd love to give it a try.

Just to let you know. That beer has been around since 2006. I've seen it at lots of stores in the States.

beeradvocate.com...

Not that it's any less cool.

I hope it actually tastes good.

Originally posted by joeroxor
I hope it actually tastes good.

Buy some and give us a personal review.

reply to post by WickettheRabbit


Found the news link when i looked at Archaeoligca.org news page today.

reply to post by Thepreye


Nope, beer is freely available in the United Arab emirates, only from liquor outlets. some emirates ban the sale of alcohol, others have outlets, bars etc.
Most emirates require liquor permits to buy alcohol.
where i am based, there is no need of any permit, its just go to the outlet, take a shopping trolley pick whatever brew you want, pay for it at the counter and be off..simple!

since last week, i have given up on drinking..god help me!!

It would be nice if there was a list of retailers that sells this beer nationwide. Oh and I quit drinking every monday, hang in there

if honey is being used, is this not mead?

peace

reply to post by WickettheRabbit


Those folks at Beer Advocate sound like a bunch of poseurs. I wonder if they drink it with their pinky in the air?

reply to post by coredrill
Coredrill! Nice to see you back

American beer has a terrible reputation...awful. This brewery throws all that out the window. They've brewed a lot of 'ancient' beers and I want to try them all. The Aztec cocao beer is another that sounds good enough to try.

Categorically speaking it is more of a mead in that it isn't using malted barley as the base fermentable, but honey and rice.

Many American beers for that matter, such as Budweiser and other lighter American style beers use rice to create a lighter body which appeals to women....and lowers the cost.

This ancient beer also isn't using hops so it will have a different flavor in that the hops balance the sweetness of the beer with a bit of bitterness in the finish as well as adding to the foam/head, that some of us all love.

I think that reputation of American breweries is changing for the better. Many of the craft beers are appearing here in the us.

Has anyone here tried Samuel Adams Nobel Pilsener ?

Excellent Hoppy lager. Even makes Pilsener Urquell taste somewhat common place.

The traditional light American beers originate from prohibition when lower alcohol beers were allowed.

It is a different style of beer here in the US primarily due to how damn hot it gets here. Much hotter than Europe.

I honestly don't know how well a Guiness would work for me on a hot 95 degree day after cutting the lawn !!!!

Even as a homebrewer who loves all types of beer.

In the hot weather , give me an American beer anyday.
They also compliment food well.....who needs water when you can have a cold american brew instead !!!!

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by coredrill

 

Coredrill! Nice to see you back

American beer has a terrible reputation...awful.

True of the mainstream beers but I've heard there's a massive micro brewery industry turning out fine brews, I've yet to knowingly try any of them though.

no ones recreating these beers the one thing no beer had more then 500 years agaio was the bubbles there were NO carbanated beers or champains or anything else all beer was FLAT so there taking an old beer and adding carbanation to it making it to something that NEVER excisted

Perhaps some of the ancient beers were brewed using naturally carbonated water?

Anyway, European beers are far superior, mainly because of longer experience in the trade (when you have breweries established between 1319 and 1383, you get my meaning ). And they work fine on a hot day, provided you do not drink them in the traditional British way

Now, if someone tries to brew this, let me know!!

reply to post by nh_ee


that's exactly what i was thinking

seeing that honey was being used, obviously as the sugar catalyst, i assumed this was some mead recipe, seeing as how mead was one of the first alcohols ever made anyhow and were extremely popular in the begining of human brewing, as well as still being popular in more... less advanced civilizations existing today, such as africa

i guess because mead itself is just easy as heck to make and ferments relatively fast, and tastes good too

as for the rice ingredient, that reminds me of sake from japan, rice wine, what a strange mixture, i can only imagine what the result would taste like

i do know that sake is actually quite hard to make, so this recipe, though it being pretty old, probably was brewed (if successfully brewed) by an experienced brewer, showing that the brewers of the region and/or time probably dedicated alot of time and thought and energy to brewing alcohol

You know, I've always wondered at the moment of creation of beer.

Did the creator take one sip and say "Wow! That's delicious! I'm going to make more!" Somehow I doubt it.

I've been trying to like beer for 15 years and it's not really happening for me, and I'm Australian.

I feel so ashamed but I'm not convinced many people like it as much as they claim.

i think its more an admiration for the end result

i think it also tastes better to slightly older taste buds being a more bitter than sweet taste

then again who am i to say i love a nice beer and clamato or tomato juice on a hot day or any day

Originally posted by dean007
i think its more an admiration for the end result

i think it also tastes better to slightly older taste buds being a more bitter than sweet taste

then again who am i to say i love a nice beer and clamato or tomato juice on a hot day or any day

There may be a medial tendency, but in old age people tend to gravitate towards sweet, as the other taste sensations do not work properly.

I have seen Alzheimer patients that will put a lemon bar on a tuna sandwich, just so they could taste something. Without the sweet of the lemon bar, they would likely not have cared for the food.

it is part of what causes appetite and wasting issues in old age.