Ancient pottery harbors 5,000-year-old beer recipe

Fermented beverages have long been a part of social and religious rituals. Now, researchers have identified a beer-making toolkit at an archaeological site in northern China with a 5,000-year-old recipe for beer.

Ancient pottery vessels, dating to 3400-2900 BC, contained a fermented mixture of barley, broomcorn millets, and other starchy plants. It is the earliest direct evidence of beer brewing in ancient China, the authors say.

“Beer was probably an important part of ritual feasting in ancient China,” says study author Jiajing Wang of Stanford University. “So it’s possible that this finding of beer is associated with increased social complexity and changing events of the time.” The discovery is described today in PNAS.

Technicians excavated the artifacts in 2004-2006 from two pits at the Mijiaya archaeological site in northern China. The pits also contained stoves, likely used to heat the grains for mashing. Stanford professor Li Liu became aware of the pottery shards while reviewing a report from the excavation, and immediately noticed a vessel shaped like a funnel, which would have been used to pour a newly made beverage into a storage container.

- See more at: http://blog.pnas.org/2016/05/journal-club-ancient-pottery-harbors-5000-year-old-beer-recipe/