How to make 5,000 year old beer I Pleasant Vices episode 3
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- Опубліковано 22 тра 2018
- In episode 3 of the Pleasant Vices series food historian Tasha Marks is joined by brewer Michaela Charles and beverage consultant Susan Boyle to make Ancient Egyptian beer.
To find out more about ancient brewing, read Tasha’s article on the British Museum blog, or visit her website www.avmcuriosities.com/ to see what else she’s been up to.
Pleasant Vices is a four-part series on aphrodisiacs, beer, sugar and chocolate. Each is hosted by Tasha Marks with invited guests and each has an accompanying recipe film. To accompany this episode Tasha is making a cocktail using the flavours of Ancient Egypt which will be available from Monday on this channel.
With thanks to the Alpha Beta brewery and Pitt Cue restaurant for allowing us to film in their beautiful premises. To find out more visit them here: alphabetabrewery.com/
For everyone looking for the recipe, you can find out the ingredients and more about the vessel here:
blog.britishmuseum.org/a-sip-of-history-ancient-egyptian-beer/
Thank you so much for posting that, I really wanted to get online and add it! Im not sure our actual brew sheet is there but I am more than happy to make it available. M
please do! I'd love to try this at home but i'm very curious to the yeast. Did you add any culture or was the yeast on the dates enough?
I am also very curious as to the yeast strain that was used, if you could share that, I am certain that the avid home-brewing community would find it to be of great interest.
Cheers
another vote/request to know about yeasts. I bake with wild yeast - it's present on the grain. i happily have access to grain from individual farms, ground to order in a water-driven stone mill. lately I've been getting a new culture from zero to bread-ready in less than 24 hours. although i've never brewed i'm looking forward to trying this. my guess is your whole grain had plenty of wild yeast on the bran (fast culture growty), PLUS the yeast on the dates and the added sugar of the dates (raising the potential abv)
If you could make it available my wife and I would like to try this for ourselves.
The British Museum should negotiate with a brewer to make and bottle these! The Museum's financial needs would be satisfied and then some!
Would be interesting to try
The british museum should return all their war loot and burn to the ground
White people stealing more African culture
I made this at home the best I could by how they said here. It's lightly sweet . If you let it age a bit longer the alcohol gets up 14%.
"Pharoah's Rest"
The woman on the right looks like her sweater textures didn't load in LOL
Hahah I'm sure it looks much better in person, but on camera my eyes kept straining to focus :D I'm glad somebody else had this thought, I was definitely laughing at myself for it lol.
😂 😂 😂
This is what a pond with lots of algae in the water and autumn leaves on the surface looks like to me when I'm not wearing my glasses.
Brewing starts at 5:33
Tasting starts at 9:29
Thank you
Thx
Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware has a line of ancient beers that are interesting and very tasty. They teamed up with a biomolecular archaeologist to determine ingredients used in ancient recipes from around the world. Theoborma is by far my favorite and it was made by analyzing pottery fragments found in Honduras.
I had a really bad reaction and felt like my stomach was going to explode followed by horrible bowels after drinking their dogfish's egyptian beer I purchased in Atlanta. I thought I was going to die and couldnt move for days.
This is really interesting
I just looked it’s hard to get!
Thanks for sharing I'd been trying to find Ta Henket but after reading this don't mind if I never do
Hi all, thank you all so much for viewing our video and sharing it with us. we had a blast. Yes, we would love to share a recipe with you. we have one written out and we WILL be putting a link up to it, watch this space!
Has it been shared yet?
Hi! Where is the recipe posted? Thanks!
Loved you girls in this video, would like to see more in the future!
I suspect rather than just throwing the hot mash and the cold mash together they would add the hot mash to the cold mash slowly, bit by bit, to bring the temperature up slowly. This is effectively what modern brewers do, and it makes the sacharification process much more efficient.
I think this must work the way it does bc there is a temperature gradient and the 2 mixtures don't mix together right away to equalizer the temp. But what if they actually mashed first around 145 or so then strained out the liquid containing enzymes, then added more water and heated up 175 or so for gelatinization, then combined them assuming both mixtures cooled enough first that you hit a good mash temp after combining
@@jeremiahstone5285 That could be. I've seen recipes that call for something like that. IIRC, I think what you're talking about is called "batch sparging" in the brewing industry. I've seen recipes that call for 3 batches, and produce different beers from each of the three batches.
The British Museum needs to make an ancient boardgames and beer day. 😍
yes! senit and barley beer would be good fun
I drank with the Pharaohs - indeed I have - and I must say, these Egyptian beer reconstructions are pretty bang on!
watching this while drinking a nice glass of home brew
see making Egyptian brew as a interesting winter project, thank you
truly thank you. That was a great joy to watch. I know I want to try it for myself.
Golf clap with the greatest respect! Very well played! Super excited to play with this method. Thank you.
When shall we three meet again?
When the beer is done, of course!
What an excellent video! It left me better informed and thirstier. Well done to all concerned.
This was giving me Hocus Pocus vibes when they were mixing the ingredients. So cool.
Love these ladies!! More like this pls!
As a home Brewer I love how simple this recipe is. Can't wait to try it out!
How did it goes?
Thanks for the reminder! I'll get back to you soon. You should try it was well and we can compare notes!
@@poozizzle fellow homebrewer, I've been DYING to find a functioning recipe for this, as I haven't been able to reproduce this on my own.
After years of homebrewing with commercial yeast I got a Kveik (centuries old re-used mixture of yeast from Norway) to ferment with. I used the raw ale method of a maximum temperature of 75 degrees Celsius. The Kveik ferments in less then 36 hours at 30-39 C. The taste of this beer is very good at this stage. Even without carbonation. This Kveik can be dried for storage and used over and over again. In the past when someone had one that turned sour they would get some from their neighbours to start over. The taste of these beers is easier to get used to because there is no or almost no hops involved.
Whiskey is medicinal; wine is aphrodisiac; beer is a food!!
any excuse for a drink. :D
Beer is all 3.. :)
Beer = civilization.
Loved this.
Great panel - very interesting.
I would love to try it!! You guys are so lucky to actually taste it!
This video was great!
I'd love to try some of this!
really enjoyed this
Thank you for posting this! I don't even like beer, but I am so keen on making something like this. So interesting - a real way of connecting with past cultures.
Northward Bound I was thinking that. I think it’s the hops, why I don’t like ordinary beer. :)
A small brewery near San Francisco made a batch of beer by the Sumerian recipe awhile back. I've always regretted not being there for it. But I did get to try homemade Eritrean beer at one point, and it was probably very similar to this. They used different flavors, but it was also made from a multigrain mash.
I'm more familiar with the Sumerian style, but from the description I figured their beer could have been invented by accident during one unusually rainy summer. It's made from cakes, themselves made from malted barley. So suppose it's normally dry in the summer and one night you forget to put the cover back onto the pot where you store your barley. Normally that's not a big deal in the summer; it's dry. But then it rains. Maybe you don't notice for a few days, and by the time you do the barley has sprouted. "[Sumerian swear word]!" you say. But you can't let it go to waste, so you dry it out over a fire so it becomes hard enough to grind, and make your barley cakes as usual. But what happens when you set them out to cool? It rains again? Now your cakes are soaked. At a loss for what else to do with them, you toss them into a pot, that maybe has more water in the bottom. A few days later: Beer.
Turns out to be not so bad. Not great, but not bad. Plus, being slightly alcoholic, you find you don't feel so terrible about the wasted food anymore. But you want it to taste better, so you work on it until you find a more complete method that results in something more palatable.
A complicated hypothesis, but I always thought it a bit odd that they started with cakes they'd have to bake first, rather than the malted barley directly.
Thanks for sharing!
“What are you doing @quarantine?” Me: Drinking and Brewing Ancient Egypt’s BEER 𓃟𓃟𓃟
Were you able to reproduce it?
Very cool!
Enjoyed!!!
Excellent episode, I've brewed regular modern beer twice now, and I think it might be time to challenge myself with something new.
Cheers!
I'm loving this series!
Good stuff, as a homebrewer I love the connection with 5k ago
"In heaven there is no beer. That's why we drink it here." - Frankie Yankovic
"You can still get gas in Heaven
And drink in Kingdom Come" - Mark Knopfler, "Cleaning My Gun"
(That was the line _I_ immediately thought of...)
"Beer is proof God loves us, and wants us to be happy" - Not Ben Franklin
"Peasant Vices"? Lol. Those are my favorites!
I seek ancient sumerian beer.
Thank you very much for this, I am a fan of ancient beers and brewing methods, mostly because I don't like hops at all. The thought of what the spice packet added to the taste is tantalizing!!
I'm glad to know that some of the beer was brewed in steel, as that is much easier to locate than a terracotta amphora LOL. I may also just use glass, which I already have. This certainly inspiring!!
Really enjoyed this episode! And I'll join the other commenters in asking for the recipe! :) Also, more information about the terra cotta vessel please. Would love to try making this.
Hi there, thanks for watching and enjoying the video. We had to make a vessel with as low a porosity as possible. To do this we fired red ware to its highest temperature in a single firing. This vitrifies it. We did observe some weight loss on the combined vessel and contents over the first night but this was probably the initial absorption. hope that proves helpful.
Did mine in a bucket. The main points for earthenware would be temperature control and having a built in yeast culture. And I used a wild yeast strain that I cultivated by taking a couple grapes from my backyard and placing them in sugar water for a few days
What fun.
5:04 “the crux of pleasant vices” nice.
The beers seem to be delicious.
Recipe? Not seeing it on Tasha's blog or on the BM's blog. I'd love to try making this at home, although I doubt I could find a handy terracotta fermenting pot. :D
I concur. The British Museum should post the recipe / instructions. Even if I would have to find a terracotta fermenting pot somewhere. . .
Would definitely love to have a recipe for this one.
4th on the recipe
I dont no poo aboot breawin beer but that beer sound great and would luv to try it out, altho iam not sure if they will post the rec. Just cause who ever heard of a museum teachin beer ideas, maybe they should post them ! :)
Please Ma'ams, may we have the recipes?
What an excellent job of translating archæological research into an ancient practice. What must be clearly understood by a contemporary viewer is that references such as “enzymes,” “starch,” “sugar,” and “yeast” have no referents to those who brewed using these methods. The people making this “BC. beer” were operating from methods deduced experientially.
i think that the tricky part getting the terracotta , soon do my own beer
Thank you for the interesting video. Is there much difference to mesopotamian beer?
Nice upload. I would have been interested to know a bit more about the brewer's opinion and technical insight.
fire away if you have any questions. I'm happy to answer if I can. Michaela
It's been four years but I'll ask again - any chance we can see that recipe sheet please?
But how exactly did they serve the beer? Did they use like a dipper and dip it into your cup?
I want to hear Susan Boyle sing.
Wait a minute, didn't Egyptians had wells, so they don't have to drink from the Nile? Didn't one of hieroglyphs described shaduf - wooden crane used to draw water from a well? Am I wrong here? Also in myth of The Eye of Re, Thoth used wine or red colored beer to deceive angry goddess of Sekhmet who acquire a taste for human blood? I heard both versions - which one is true ? Other than that, this is cool video - Ancient Egypt and beer are one of my favorite things and I wonder; can you buy beer made in this style ?
was it a 1:1 ratio of cold mash to hot mash? and how did you know it was done fermenting?
Great, now I'm a fan of two Susan Boyles.
Tried to recreate this figuring out the quantities of the various ingredients, and failed miserably. Is there the exact recipe somewhere on the internet? I’d like to do this properly.
Can hops be added to this brew or do hops HAVE to be boiled?
It's interesting to see the genius of ancients. I feel we often underestimate their knowledge and ability.
Now, my question is how do you make the ceramic pot rofl will there be a tutorial
I made it the same but i made all the mash hot let it cool down. I then added yeast rose water dates and pomegranate. My take on it anyway it was delicious. I got 14% alcoholic in it and it keap 2 weeks in refrigerator.
This makes my thirsty. xD
Does anyone know how they pre-inoculated the terracotta vessel with the yeast?
You had me at "This whole episode is about alcohol"......and how exactly do I become a Drinks Researcher please......
Hello, is there gonna be an item on the yeast you used for the beer? There's nothing in the blog, video or in the recipe about it
I got from it that they used wild yeast
It is utterly disappointing that I can not now go out to pick up a 6-pack of British Museum Ancient Beer Iterations #1 through #3.
Please tell me the British Museum sells this stuff! Worth noting our modern grains are very different from Ancient Egyptian grains - modern varieties are much bigger and more packed with calories. Ancient grains would've been closer to their wild ancestors. Possibly that's why there was a lot more alcohol.
I was thinking the same thing about the grains and alcohol content.
This was a cool one! I've always wondered about stuff like this. Did you guys not use rye so you wouldn't be hallucinating and whatnot? I dunno how long it takes ergot to form up but if that process is that efficient it'd probably do it pretty fast.
Ergot is a fungus that grows on the grain in place of a seed, it's not something that forms during fermentation. Even bread can be tainted by Ergot. You don't really hallucinate unless there is huge amounts of Ergot, you'd suffer spasms, heart palpitations and possible limb loss long before that. LSD is just a single component of the thousands of compounds in Ergot, and veeery refined.
Fun trivia; in Swedish it's called Mjöldryga, which means flour-stretch or -dilute. Farmers apparently saw it as a welcome addition since the Ergot fungus is much bigger than the usual grain seeds.
So how many takes did you do of the tasting? I'll bet the video got better and better with successive takes! ;->
what ever happened to the recipe that was going to be shared?? almost 3 years later and I'm still here!
I chased down your info, but never actually saw a recipe. Bits and pieces that left out whatever you girls did. Not enough info to duplicate...my attempt is fermenting. I hope it wasn't a lot of money wasted. Thanks for the inspiration. I have learned a lot more about making beer than I knew before, and I doubt I would have looked it up without your video.
Is this wild-fermented? No 'yeast' added?
Any ideas why this method has such a high efficiency? You mention it a couple of times but never go into the details.
Mmmmm beer :)
Step 1: Make beer
Step 2: Wait 5,000 years
😂I thought the middle girl was wearing one of those food caps
Three Woman arond a Kettle: witsches 😏
Good job Ladys!
Prost from Frankfurt Germany 🍻
The beer made by the Ancient Egyptians was also much lower in alcohol. Modern yeasts were developed to make much stronger beer.
I was thinking it's probably because modern grains are much higher in sacharides.
interesting...it's been my experience that the more people add descriptors to something they taste it's because they are searching for a reason to like the product. I'm not suggesting the process is wrong (super cool in fact). I'm suggesting their recipe might have got them in trouble in ancient Egypt lol.
Hmm, I wonder if the higher than expected ABV is a result of the modern ingredients? Modern dates, I would expect, are holding more sugar capacity than ancient varieties? Never mind grains that likely looked half-again smaller and held less nutrient content.
I wonder too at the strain of yeast from the ancient period. Would it have been as efficient at processing sugars?
The higher abv is due to the complete lack of a boil. There is no halt point to the enzymes converting the sugars. left to its own devises absolutely every scrap of starch is converted firstly to sugar and then to alcohol. The use of a yeast, repeatedly, ensures that it is suited to the breweries specific conditions and also becomes increasingly efficient. We know these things, seems that the Egyptian did too!
If the beer had higher ABV than expected would it potentially been consumed in a watered down form? I can only imagine that a workforce moving +1000lb stones would have been . . . entertaining to watch if they were drinking 6% all day =D
Or would the everyday worker have consumed something akin to medieval small-beer? I keep forgetting these are examples of brews found in tombs and the common peoples burials were simple pit burials.
Where did the majority of the yeast come from? Was it the grain or the dates?
As for the ABV, do you think that the ancient Egyptians would have waterd down their beer just enough to keep it sterile without being too intoxicating?
We harvested the yeast from a previous brew, the evidence that we have supported that method. We don't believe water was added to the beer after fermentation, as that could have contaminated the beer. Recent studies have shown that the process of fermentation eradicates pathogens not just the heating of the water to make the beer.
susan boyle Thank you so much for answering my question. It's amazing that brewers have been selective in cultivating yeasts for so long.
2 things to say, first... Egyptians liked getting drunk or stoned... There are arcgeologic evidence of them using drugs, that paint drug use in a good way... So, i dont think they were against the intoxicating part of beer...
Second... Might not be THEIR method, but you can harvest yeast from fruitskins... Grapes usually have lots of it... Its that "silky dust" that usually can be found on the grape skin... So, if you want to, you can use that if you want to :3
in Europe the yeast often was controlled by bakers so it would be very likely is started in Egypt or maybe far before as our history book are as only as recorded by what is written or said and that was often by the winners so totally tainted
The carbonation seems anachronistic, considering they wouldn't have had the type of glassware necessary to keep those pressures. It's only very recently that we've been able to store carbonated drinks.
we believe they drank the beer super fresh so the co2 would be present, and the beer would at least have been somewhat a spritzy but not in a forced carb/ bottle conditioned way.
What good is an eternal afterlife without beer
drool
The womans shirt on the right makes it look like her shirt texture hasn't fully loaded.
Did I miss the ingredient list?
did ya find these recipes
when you took the rest of Egyptian culture back home to your island?
I thought the ancient Egyptian beer was a thick liquid food, not like modern day beer
I knew that beer was invent in Egypt and i knew it was common in English medieval life but i did not know it was given to all the workers so thank you for correcting history
The residue would make a good granola base
Sumerians invented the first beer 🍺 cheers
What temperature was the second mash heated to?
I've been trying to make this myself and I'm getting very close to getting a similar recipe all set up. I'm assuming hot enough that touching won't hurt, but not hot enough for it to be steaming. I'm looking at it in the video and it doesn't seem to be steaming. Cheers.
the blog said not more than 80 Celcius because of the pottery containers they were in.
11:00 They misspelled "iteration."
It takes 5 minutes into the video for three British women to figure out that people like things to taste good.
5::33 brewing
7:07 vindaloo for dinner last night
😂😂😂
Recipe?
we are working on getting a link for you all.
You have to drink this when you watch a documentary about eygpt.
Why did they have no mention of sanitation?
What sanitation would have been around back in the ancient days?
I'm confused, you say they couldn't drink the water but the beer, which is low in alcohol content is made from water and malt with hops.
P.S. Wikipedia would suggest that it is precisely the addition of hops that makes it safer to drink.
*shrugs*
why am i watching this i just want to pass a course in uni
I was looking down when they said "Susan Boyle," lol NOT the Susan Boyle I was expecting to see!