Approved by:
Paige Master, Gainesville Weddings in Gainesville Florida
In these fast-moving, ever updating days of smartphones, music downloads, hybrid engines, coalition governments, and, errrgh, alcopops, isn’t it nice to know that you can still walk into a pub and enjoy something that’s remained pretty much unchanged for millennia – beer. So if you’ve ever wanted to know more about civilisation’s most enduring beverage, here’s a pint of beer history.
9500 BC – as beer making probably coincided with the advent of cereal farming, experts speculate that the first beers brought merriment to the lives of Early Neolithic man sometime around 9500 BC (with the first hangover occurring a day later, presumably!).
7000 BC – Evidence suggests that the Chinese enjoyed a beer made from rice around this time.
4300 BC – A beer recipe is found on Babylonian clay tablets dating from this time.
3500-3100 BC – Iran is the earliest known place that is proved to have had beer.
Pre 3000 BC – Egyptian Pharaohs regularly drink beer as part of their diet.
3000 BC – A beer known as Kui is consumed by the Chinese.
3000 BC – Celtic and Germanic tribes spread beer through Europe.
2500 BC – The Ebla Tablets show that the ancient Syrian city produced beer, including the first known instance of branding with ‘Ebla’ beer.
1900 BC – Ninkasi, a Sumerian poem from the period, mentions Mesopotamian beer.
500 BC – Records show that beer existed in Armenia at this time.
49 BC – Caesar and his army cross the Rubicon and celebrate with beer.
500-1000 AD – Beer brewing begins in medieval Europe and becomes one of the most popular drinks.
600s AD – European monasteries start brewing beer.
1000 AD – Hops first become a staple of beer.
1004 AD – A surviving beer tax receipt shows that beer is produced at the Czech brewery of Zatec – notable because beer is still produced there today.
1200 AD – England, Austria and Germany establish beer making as a commercial enterprise.
1490s AD – Columbus discovers that Indians also drink beer.
1490s AD – Columbus discovers that Indians drink a kind of beer.
1553 AD – Germany’s Beck’s brewery is founded.
1612 AD – The first commercial brewery opens in New Amsterdam (New York).
1708 AD – At the Dennis Hoenery brewery in Belgium Sebastianus Artois invents the Stella.
1742 AD – Samuel Whitbread starts making beer.
1750 AD – In London, Whitbread opens the UK’s first ever purpose-built brewery.
1758 AD – Samuel Smith’s, Yorkshire’s oldest brewery, is founded.
1759 AD – Arthur Guinness begins producing ale in Dublin.
1777 AD – Bass Brewery is founded.
1810 AD – The first Munich Oktoberfest takes place.
1827 AD – Robert Theakston commences brewing at The Black Bull Inn and Brewhouse in Masham, North Yorkshire.
1842 AD – Bavarian brewmeister Josef Groll invents the pilsner.
1845 AD – Fuller’s Brewery founded at the Griffin Brewery, Chiswick, West London.
1847 AD – Denmark’s Carlsberg brewery is founded.
1873 AD – The Dutch brew up their first Heineken.
1876 AD – Budweiser marketed in the US for the first time.
1927 AD – Newcastle Brown Ale served for the first time.
2008 AD – China’s Snow beer relieves Bud Light of ‘world’s best selling beer’ crown.
2010 AD – A 200 year old beer found in a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea is sampled by professional beer tasters. They comment that it “…tastes very old”.
The secret to beer’s incredible longevity is of course taste. After all, why else would people be coming back for more for over 11,000 years. But maintaining that taste isn’t just the responsibility of breweries, it’s also the responsibility of landlords. That’s why publicans and licensees need to keep their beer lines clean if they want drinks to stay tasting great, pint after pint. One of the best ways to do this is to fit a beer line cleaning system – such those provided by CellarBright – which can take the hassle out of keeping lines clean at an affordable price.
CellarBright is a innovative automated beer line cleaning system which can save thousands of pounds a year for businesses selling keg and cask beer and lager. It minimises waste by allowing the beer that’s in the lines be drawn off and sold before cleaning commences, letting you sell 100% of the beer that you’ve paid for. A beer profit calculator on the site shows how much you can save.