On Neolithic beer (and Japanese TV)

... I should be more specific, the title should probably be "on drinking Neolithic beer", but then the Japanese TV doesn't get mentioned. And I think it is worth mentioning.

I wanted to adapt the title because I wasn't actually involved in making the beer - however I did get to sample it!

Göbekli Tepe is a site in current Turkey that contains a Neolithic ritual site. Not only was it a meeting point in the 10th to 8th millenium BCE, it also was a meeting point before humans made ceramics or became sedentry. In other words it's a really really really old meeting point. In this site, excavations and re-examinations of old findings have been taking place for the last twenty years and I think it must be in the context of these more recent findings that this experiment took place.

Now as I wasn't too closely involved in the making please don't place too much weight in my understanding of the findings or the process of beer making - if you really have detailed questions research yourself or I can try to forward more academic requests to the academics involved. The results have not yet been published, I expect them to be published early next year in our annual journal.

Disclaimer in place, here is how I understand that the findings and their interpretation were. Large stone vessels were found and for some reason the archeologists seem to say that wild barley had been in these vessels (I guess they found traces). The two likely interpretations are that the vessels were used to bake bread or to brew beer. As wild barley really was an effort to collect for non-sedentry humans, the beer-interpretation is seen as more likely. The picture drawn is that people got together to celebrate rituals and for this occasion would make beer and drink it together. This also would have the advantage of making otherwise undrinkable water drinkable - I can only imagine that this would be an advantage in a large get-together.

In Düppel a reproduction of this beer was made. I don't know too many details. The steps I know of are: barley and water were mixed to form a mash which was fermented (presumably using wild yeast from the barley, so without explicitely adding yeast... but I don't know this). The mash was heated by dropping hot stones from the fire into the stone vessel. At some later point the mash was strained through cloth into a wooden vessel.

I got to drink some of the resulting beer and I know that it was stored in a glass vessel for that purpose, however I guess in Neolithic times it didn't get to sit round too much? I really don't know.

But I know what it tastes like! It was a bit sour, like a weak vinegar, and tasted of barley. Though it smelled yeasty, like young wine, it didn't actually taste very yeasty at all. It tasted quite refreshing and really suited the hot summer day we drank it on. Slightly diluted I would actually drink this more frequently. I don't like the bitterness of normal beer, but as this beer did not contain any hops or other bitter elements it wasn't bitter at all. More like an unsweetened fermented barley lemonade... without the fizz. That description doesn't sound appetizing, but even volunteers who were very skeptical tried it and afterwards declared it wasn't that bad.

So... what about Japanese TV then? Well, we rarely have TV crews in and if they do come then they usually want to film a horror film or something. For some reason my museum village does not really attract many documentary TV crews. So I was really baffled when a Japanese TV crew showed up to film the Neolithic beer brewing for a Japanese documentary.

I think that's really cool!