Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer
Ale
is one of the oldest beverages humans have
produced, dating back to at least the 5th
millennium BC and recorded in the written
history of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
As almost any cereal containing certain sugars
can undergo spontaneous fermentation due to wild
yeasts in the air, it is possible that beer-like
beverages were independently developed
throughout the world soon after a tribe or
culture had domesticated cereal.
Chemical tests of ancient pottery jars reveal
that beer was produced about 7,000 years ago in
what is today Iran, and is one
of
the first-known biological engineering tasks to
utilize the process of fermentation. In
Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence of beer is
believed to be a 6,000-year-old Sumerian tablet
depicting people drinking a beverage through
reed straws from a communal bowl. A
3,900-year-old Sumerian poem honoring Ninkasi,
the patron goddess of brewing, contains the
oldest surviving beer recipe, describing the
production of beer from barley via bread.
The invention of bread and/or beer has been
argued to be responsible for humanity's ability
to develop technology and build civilization.
The earliest chemically confirmed barley beer to
date was discovered at Godin Tepe in the central
Zagros Mountains of Iran, where fragments of a
jug, at least 5,000 years old was found to be
coated with beerstone, a by-product of the
brewing process.
Beer
may have been known in Neolithic Europe as far
back as 5,000 years ago, and was mainly brewed on
a domestic scale.
Ale produced before the Industrial Revolution
continued to be made and sold on a domestic
scale, although by the 7th century AD beer was
also being produced and sold by European
monasteries. During the Industrial Revolution,
the production of beer moved from artisanal
manufacture to industrial manufacture, and
domestic manufacture ceased to be significant by
the end of the 19th century. The development of
hydrometers and thermometers changed brewing by
allowing the brewer more control of the process,
and greater knowledge of the results.
Today, the brewing industry is a global
business, consisting of several dominant
multinational companies and many thousands of
smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to
regional breweries. More than 133 billion liters
(35 billion gallons) are sold per year.