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Today beer is the third most popular drink after water and tea and dates back even before the roots of modern
Civilization relate home brewing today can be an incredibly complex process requiring specialized tools and equipment
Appears initial invention is believed to be just by accident
so in this video
I'm gonna try and replicate the beer making process using some very very limited tools and ingredients
Basically just dirt and grass with them of exploring three beers an accidental brew a rough
Replication of the oldest recorded beer recipe from Mesopotamia and an attempt at a more modern form of beer
Let's brew these up and see how they taste everything
We use comes from 8,000 generations of collective innovation and discovery
But could an average person figure it all out themselves and work their way from the Stone Age to today
That's the question we're exploring each week. I try to take that next step forward in human history
My name is Andy and this is how to make everything
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For the grass's I grew and process a few varieties of grass grains last summer today
We'll be using the wheat and barley seeds then to help hold and siftings
I have another grasp cattails the Anneliese help weave into some baskets then for the dirt
We have some high quality clay
We reel the dig up and with a small bit of dry processing and sifting it using the baskets could turn into some quality clay
Also in the earthen category is a current stone we previously shaped and have previously used for grinding our grains for bread
Then there be a few small exceptions for the rest of the recipes like some rosemary and dates
So first in the terms of tools
What we're really gonna need is a few containers
both to prep our grains and contain them and to be able to heat them to the proper temperatures and then lastly some vessels for
Them to sit in and ferment in a process of building ourselves of history
We are still just before the invention of the wheel
So unfortunately, I don't have that tool to assist which would have made making larger and more symmetrical vessels a lot easier
Also if I had any experience in pottery since first grade that probably would have helped you
All right, so got most of these guys fired now still this big guy left you and so I'm back at this point
We're still doing mostly pit firing which has a little bit of temperature you can get up to you
Which means these are all kind of low fired clays that
Are actually still porous you do give us like glaze accidentally sometimes from wood. Ash
it's not really a high enough temperature to I think apply consistent one and
Glazes will become a little bit later in history. If you fill it with water, it'll hold it for a while
We'll try them ferment beer in these long-term. It's going to slowly escape
So one solution they used to do is use pine pitch to line the inside other vessels and that water perfect
The Greeks are known for doing that for a lot of the wine vessels
Well, do these two for now after skies fire do him so then we can start fermenting our beer
Whistles containers now we can do the first step for any beer multi in the grains
So after soaking and drying and soaking and drying these guys a few cycles they started to sprout and do the multi process
Which is turning the carbohydrates in the seeds into a multiple sugar?
Which will then ferment it alcohol and now that we've halted it
This should be sugar we can extract out of it by putting it into a bath
So at this point they all have little sprouts on them just gonna kind of agitate them and try and let all the roots fall
Through the gaps in these baskets and then get Adam to the pot and start making the beer
Now for the first brew the accidental one yeast can be found in the wild pretty much anywhere
So if left exposed it can pretty easily start to propagate around any source of sugar
I please Lee did this to get a starter for my bread
It's believed that beer was likely
Accidentally invented when someone left out a gruel of malted cereal and came back to discover and had a unique taste and effect of alcohol
Since then I've been cultivating my starter by continuing defeated ground wheat malt
I was just leaving some stuff to rot and hoping the East it's a little risky. So to
Test it out to make sure it works. I did two batches of beer
he's and store-bought ingredients kind of a standard brewing yeast for this one as a control and then use some of my wild east and
Let it go and ferment and the end results were pretty similar both tasted pretty good
The wild yeast was a little bit more sour which is common with wild yeasts and actually preferred it
So I think we're in good shape think we have a good culture to make some beer
so I'm gonna add some of my yeast to some watered-down gruel and
Accidentally make some beer
Next up the ancient Sumerian recipe from Mesopotamia beer traces
Its origin to multiple places around the world potentially as early as 11,000 BCE
But the first record recipe is a Sumerian song written down around 1800 BC as a hymn to the goddess of alcohol
Nika see the recipe has been replicated and interpreted a variety of different ways in recent years
But the most unique aspect of it is its use of bread to make beer. Here's one interpretation of the recipe
First by using dates and crushing them
a
Nanny nice to start what would be more of a date wine?
Then some of the multi barley is ground to make flour it mix with water and yeast to form a bread called pepper
Left to set it is then baked in our earthen oven which we also previously made using grass and dirt
Then the bread and additional ground peep molds are added to some hot water and left to sit for an hour
Then brought to a boil to sanitize it and after cooling added to already fermenting date wine and left to finish fermenting
Then for last and attempt at a more modern recipe
But with my limited ceramic tools first adding the malted barley to hot strike water and laying it soaked for one hour
The hot water roughly 155 degrees Fahrenheit helps activate the last step of converting the starches into sugar
Then rinsing with even hotter water roughly 200 degrees Fahrenheit a step known as bargain to help extract the very last of the sugar
That's still in the grain after setting for 10 minutes drain out the solids
Bring the liquid or wort to a boil and add the flavor e to date
This is most oftenly done with hops, but hops weren't engaged in brewing for another five thousand years
However prior to hops a collection of herbs called a Groot would be used so it keeps things simple
I'll use an herb that sometimes found in this and I've already grown and have handy
rosemary
After boiling is then removed from the heat and left to cool to room temperature
Then add to the fermenting bottle with some of the wild yeast
Now we wait a week or so for everything to ferment and hopefully not produce anything toxic
All right, so these guys ferment for a little over a week and should hopefully have turned into alcohol
Let's open them up give them a taste and see how they turned out. Okay, not poison myself
It's got a nice color
All right. So we got the three final drinks here interesting unique color to them all those look like a slushie disclaimer
Don't do this at home. Don't let random things rot
And then taste them there is a potential for different molds and stuff to get into this and poison yourself
Don't do that, but I'm gonna take a chance and get done enough precautionary measures to hopefully not to kill myself
Look at the accidental beer, authenticly this maybe should be more like an actual paste rule no retail
There's a lot of floaties in it from the malted grain
But there's also likely some
Pieces of the pine resin that used to seal the bottle and that should add a unique flavor to all of them because Greek wine
Was no 1 for having that extra flavor
That's pretty good. Yeah, there's not a whole lot to it
Very sour not very strong almost citrusy sour water almost a seltzer
I guess it might be worth mentioning that at this time in history. They want to have had carbonation on another beer
So everything would be pretty flat. All right slurring my speech
We have the Sumerian beer how it was done about
4,000 years ago known for being kind of chunky and that's kind of a tenant
That's why they had actual reed straws didn't have a good way to filter it by just still has pieces of the dates
This is kind of a weird hybrid between a wine and a beer wild yeast. I might have cultivated here
It could be different than what they had in Sumeria back then so my results might be a lot different than what they had
I would see if I get the straw to work
Yeah
That has a lot of flavor that wild yeasts again
Really packs a punch in this really nice sour kick. I like it
I think I've heard of it compared to a cider I could see that I drink this women in my attempt at a modern beer
it's actually like
Really mellow the rosemary as a nice flavor to it. I don't know if I've had a rosemary beer before but this uh
Very nice turned out a little weak. It's very smooth and easy to drink. We're all I think that actually turned out surprisingly
Well, I might take a bit to get you drunk. The alcohol percentages were not the strongest
I think I'd say the Cimmerian beer was probably the best
It's got the the strongest flavor and got probably Strong's alcohol, too
Which is always good to have so the whole processing of a growing the grains harvesty
Processing Multi making the ceramics was about 24 hours of active work
So roughly one hundred ninety five dollars at today's minimum wage and broken down for each one because he made three different ones
sixty-five dollars
for each of the bottles of beer
So yeah, it is possible to make your own beer out of just grass and dirt
My ceramic seals have obviously not improved too much since the last time I did I'm in first grade in retrospect making some other tools
Like a funnel might have been a good idea now
I know Indiana was able to make beer which was a pretty important development in history and
was kind of a luxury payment made in a lot of different situations such as for building the pyramids and subscribing to KPBC
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Just debauchery. All right, let's get drunk
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