The (Brief) History of Beer

If you want to get a taste of history, go pour yourself a pint, as beer is without question one of the world’s oldest beverages. “Alongside wine made from grapes and rice, beer, defined as a liquid made of fermented cereal grains, has been a part of most of the earliest human civilizations and groups,” says Malcolm F. Purinton, Ph.D., visiting scholar of history at Northeastern University in Boston who’s been studying the history of beer for over 20 years. His new book, Globalization in a Glass, will be published by Bloomsbury Academic Press in late 2022 or early 2023.

Curious about beer’s evolution? While its rich history is too lengthy a subject to cover in one article, numerous historical highlights deserve your attention.

How old is beer?

Beer’s exact birth date has always been somewhat of a mystery – until recently. While some accounts suggest that beer may have gotten its start over 5,000 years ago in southern Babylonia, new evidence points to even earlier origination. 

This research found evidence of extensive beer brewing operations in a graveyard site in Israel of an ancient group of hunter-gatherers known as the Natufians. Researchers believe the Natufians used beer in ritual feasts to honor the dead. 

Beer was also consumed much differently back then. Images from Babylonian and Egyptian sites show people drinking beer from large clay containers, straws being used to filter out the grains and other materials in the beer.  

Another fact that may surprise you? For thousands of years, the majority of brewers were women. Perhaps this is because the task of brewing beer was considered a domestic one, according to the National Women’s History Museum. Many of the taverns were also owned by women. 

Yet that started shifting about a millennia ago when men began to be the main brewers of beer, thanks to several factors. There was a financial opportunity to brew beer as a primary job versus a side hustle, and many skills were being professionalized and taken over by men, Purinton says. 

Around the same time, another key shift happened, namely the adoption of hops. “As a result, beer became a much more stable product with a much longer shelf life that helped professionalize the European brewing trade,” Purinton says. 

The birth of beer in the United States

While Yuengling is credited as the oldest operating brewery in the United States, having opened in 1829, there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of breweries in existence before then. The first brewing by the colonists was in 1587. However, Central and South American civilizations were brewing a concoction from maize called chicha at least hundreds of years prior to this, Purinton says. 

Colonists brewed with whatever grain and hops they could import along with locally-foraged and grown ingredients like pumpkins, gourds, and acorns to create ales, brown ales, and once the mid-eighteenth century hit, porters. They needed to brew quickly because taverns, which usually produced beer, played a crucial role in society. “Because taverns were essential places for colonists to meet and conduct business, several laws even required that towns must have a local tavern within a few years of their founding,” Purinton says. 

Yet it’s the European immigrants, especially the Germans, who often receive the most credit for propelling America’s beer industry forward. With revolutions happening in Europe in 1848, immigrants from Germany began flooding into the United States, an event that continued throughout the mid-nineteenth century. “They not only established lager breweries in the East Coast and the Midwest (think Anheuser, Busch, Pabst, Schlitz, and Yuengling) but also helped develop the macro-brewing companies that continue to dominate the beer industry across the world with their light golden lagers that were derivative of the original Pilsner first brewed in 1842,” Purinton says. In fact, without the German, even Czech, immigration into the United States, America’s beer landscape might be much different today.

The making of the craft beer industry

America’s craft beer industry didn’t get its start until the 1960s, an occurrence that coincided not only with the hippie/cultural revolution happening then but also the back-to-the-land movement. “People were attempting to establish their own gardens to produce food and try brewing their own beer,” Purinton says. Homebrewing, in fact, was actually illegal until 1978, when President Jimmy Carter legalized it. 

Other factors also spurred the craft beer revolution, including European travels by future brewers, an increase in homebrew supply stores, and the influence of early craft breweries like New Albion and Sierra Nevada, Purinton says.