You probably know that beer’s been around for quite a while, but what you probably don’t know is that it’s been putting smiles on people’s faces for over 11,000 years. Here’s a quick look back at the history of the world’s most enduring brew.
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 indicates that Chinese people drink a rice-derived beer.
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 enjoy beer as part of their daily diet.
3000 BC – The Chinese drink Kui – a type of beer.
3000 BC – Beer is spread through Europe by Germanic and Celtic tribes.
2500 BC – Branded beer makes its first appearance with ‘Ebla’, named after the Syrian city that produces it.
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 crosses the Rubicon with his army and toasts the event with beer.
500-1000 AD – Beer brewing begins in medieval Europe and becomes one of the most popular drinks.
600s AD – European monasteries get in on the beer brewing act.
1000 AD – Hops becomes an ingredient 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.
1553 AD – Germany’s Beck’s brewery is founded.
1553 AD – Beck’s Brewery founded in Germany.
1612 AD – New York (then New Amsterdam) gets its first commercial brewery.
1708 AD – Stella inventor Sebastianus Artois becomes master brewer at Belgium’s Dennis Horeney brewery.
1742 AD – Samuel Whitbread starts making beer.
1750 AD – Whitbread opens Britain’s first purpose-built brewery in Chiswell Street, London.
1758 AD – Samuel Smith founds Yorkshire’s oldest brewery.
1759 AD – Arthur Guinness gets into the ale business, with the first Guinness exports leaving Dublin 10 years later.
1777 AD – Bass Brewery is founded.
1810 AD – Munich Oktoberfest welcomes beer drinkers for the first time.
1827 AD – Robert Theakston starts brewing beer in Masham, North Yorkshire.
1842 AD – Bavarian brewer Josef Groll serves up the first modern pilsners.
1845 AD – Fuller’s Griffin Brewery opens in Chiswick, West London.
1847 AD – Carlsberg founded in Denmark.
1873 AD – Heineken brewed for the first time in Holland.
1876 AD – Americans are introduced to Budweiser.
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”.
So what is the reason for beer’s amazing longevity? The answer must be taste – as attested by 11,000 years of happy beer drinkers. But maintaining the great taste of beer isn’t just the responsibility of breweries, it’s also the responsibility of licensees and publicans. So it’s the duty of landlords up and down the country to keep lines clean so that beer will stay tasting great. One way to do this is to use the CellarBright line cleaning system, which effectively and affordably keeps lines clean so that beer always retains its fresh taste.
CellarBright is a innovative automated beer line cleaning system which may save thousands of pounds each year for businesses selling keg and cask beer and lager. It reduces waste by letting 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 page shows how much you can save.