9,000 Year Old Beer – Chateau Jiahu

Via Archaeoblog:

9,000-year-old brew hitting the shelves this summer

This summer, how would you like to lean back in your lawn chair and toss back a brew made from what may be the world’s oldest recipe for beer? Called Chateau Jiahu, this blend of rice, honey and fruit was intoxicating Chinese villagers 9,000 years ago—long before grape wine had its start in Mesopotamia.

University of Pennsylvania molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern first described the beverage in 2005 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences based on chemical traces from pottery in the Neolithic village of Jiahu in Northern China. Soon after, McGovern called on Sam Calagione at the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Del., to do the ancient recipe justice. Later this month, you can give it a try when a new batch hits shelves across the country. The Beer Babe blog was impressed, writing that it is “very smooth,” and “not overly sweet.”

If any of our American friends would like to gift us a six pack or two or three, we’d happily try it out.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 1:51 pm. It is filed under About Archaeology, About the Beer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.