McDonnell started his research by reading the Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian text from around 1550 B.C.E. that contains hundreds of medicinal recipes promising cures and treatments for everything from male baldness to crocodile bites. He narrowed his focus to the approximately 75 recipes that referenced beer and listed all the ingredients on a spreadsheet.
From there, he sorted the list by the most common ingredients, which turned out to be eight items: Egyptian balsam fruit (desert dates), Yemeni Sidr honey, sycamore figs, black cumin, juniper berries, Israeli golden raisins, carob fruit and frankincense, reports the Salt Lake Tribune’s Kolbie Peterson. Meet the Utah man brewing a ‘3,000-year-old’ beer, with yeast from ancient pottery Watch on YouTube Logo
He sourced the rare sycamore figs from a 1,400-year-old grove with help from a friend conducting research in Egypt. And for the base grains, he landed on purple Egyptian barley and emmer wheat, an ancient grain known as farro in Europe.
For the yeast, he got in touch with a German company called Primer’s Yeast that brings together archaeologists, microbiologists and other experts to resurrect ancient yeast strains. From the company, he was able to snag a strain of yeast that had been taken from a piece of pottery in Israel. The strain dates to around 850 B.C.E. and was likely used by the Philistines for making beer.
McDonnell has no plans to sell his brew, but he has offered to host private tastings. A modified version of his recipe—with slightly easier-to-find ingredients—will eventually be published on the Primer’s Yeast website.
Some microbrewery might be interested in making and selling it.
The man’s doing Ra’s work.
Sounds cool but can’t help but think that’s how a horror movie starts, reviving an ancient Egyptian fungus using ancient alchemy recipes.
Haunted by ancient Egyptian brewmasters.
Ooooooo you fucked up the fermenting process you absolute dipshit ooooooo
Wouldn’t this be similar to what dogfish head did with the beer Midus Touch?
Isis Pale Ale.
It should be interesting to see what Sumerian beer was like, too, there’s a 5,000 year old ode to drinking beer on a hot late afternoon, as the cool ocean breeze begins to arrive.
If I understand what I’ve read recently, they’d already had beer since beyond memory, brewing beer was one of the great drivers of the adoption of agriculture, the oldest known jugs where beer might have been fermented predate ovens for baking bread by millennia, of course humanity must have been chasing the buzz for as long as it’s been able.
However, they did also make a rudimentary bread back then, spreading kneaded dough on flat rocks, leaving it to cook and harden by the sun’s rays.
EDIT: restoring a little bit of text that got deleted by mistake
