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Episode 9

What Came First: Beer or Bread?

Gary Arndt and Bobby Fleshman are joined by special guest Joel Hermansen to delve into the intriguing history of beer.

Joel Hermansen, a local history teacher, beer enthusiast, and McFleshman's bartender, shares his knowledge of the origins of beer and its role in ancient civilizations.

The discussion covers the controversial theory that beer gave birth to agriculture at scale to beer as a main source of water. From the role of honey for higher ABVs to the perfect climate for beer making. We've got it covered with more to come!

Got a question about beer or just want to get social? Join the RtB Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/respectingthebeer

--

Hosts:

Bobby Fleshman

Allison McCoy-Fleshman

Gary Ardnt

Music by Sarah Lynn Huss

Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow

Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co

Transcript
Gary Arndt:

Hello everyone.

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And welcome to another episode

of Respecting the Beer.

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My name is Gary aren't.

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And with me as usual is

the brewers brewer, Mr.

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Bobby Fleshman say hi, but today

we got someone new on the show.

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Or actually the first guest we've

had on the show, Joel Hermanson.

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He is a teacher of history, a

student of history, a lover of beer.

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And why don't you introduce yourself?

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If there's anything I missed.

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Joel Hermanson: No, I think

actually you probably captured me

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in that, in that short introduction.

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No, I'm happy to be here.

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It's, it's as I was saying off air,

it's intimidating sitting with you two

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I'm feeling a little, yeah, starstruck

was the, was the phrase I used.

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Gary Arndt: The reason we have you on

this episode is because you literally

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teach a course here at McFleshman's on.

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The history of beer, which is your day

job as well, being a history teacher.

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Joel Hermanson: Right.

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Gary Arndt: So we wanted to

talk about the history of beer.

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We've talked a little bit

about the science of beer.

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We've talked about the origins of this

particular establishment, but what we

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want to do in the next few episodes

is get into the very simple question.

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Where did beer come from?

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Joel Hermanson: That is,

that is a deep question.

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And ever since this idea for

this podcast began to germinate,

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I've been thinking on that.

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So I've, I've, yeah, I've got a

lot of thoughts to share today.

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I'm excited to be here.

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Bobby Fleshman: More courses to

come probably from the research.

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I expect.

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Joel Hermanson: Yep.

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And I would also point out, I don't know

if I have this as a tangible fact, but

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I think we might be the only brewery

in the United States that actually

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doubles as an academic institution.

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Bobby Fleshman: Potentially,

unless it's disputed.

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Gary Arndt: Yeah.

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Joel Hermanson: Yeah.

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I mean, if,

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Gary, are we?

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Gary Arndt: I don't know of any,

but I'm not in this industry, so.

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Right.

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Joel Hermanson: We have history classes.

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We have science classes.

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Which by the way,

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Gary Arndt: and your graduation

party's tied right in with the course.

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Right.

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So

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Joel Hermanson: Shameless plug

there a lot of fun in the graduation

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rate is a hundred percent.

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So it's, it's a lot of fun.

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Gary Arndt: So all right, let's,

let's get started with this

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question: where did beer come from?

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Joel Hermanson: Well, I want to go

back all the way back to the beginning

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and kind of touch on some things

that, that Bobby had touched on.

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And I believe it was in

episode number three.

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In looking a little bit.

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at the issues that were happening in

the earliest societies as it related

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to grain cultivation, grain gathering.

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We do know that beer did not exist

before, organized civilization.

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At some level, I mean, and I'm not,

because civilization basically is a term

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that means gathered and living in a group.

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So the idea that beer existed outside

of people taking grain and storing it in

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containers that were not watertight, it's

not, it's not particularly realistic.

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Because that's where we think that the

idea to ferment grain into beer came

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from, is the putting of grain into

non-a irtight vessel, and then water is

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going to leak into that vessel, which

is going to cause the grain to sprout.

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Again, if you were with us in episode

three, Bobby talked at great length

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about malting and sprouting and draying.

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all sorts of fun scientific things.

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But it's very clear that when

the, when the grain sprouted,

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that it became sweeter.

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And as it set, as it sat in, you know,

the, this non airtight vessel, it, it

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acquired water, it began to ferment.

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And when that runoff was consumed, it

had very early beer like qualities.

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Bobby Fleshman: Was was this harnessed

by no nomadic people or only after we

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settled down and started agriculture?

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Joel Hermanson: Yes, this this is the

great question and and we could spend

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three podcast episodes on this one

because there's a prevailing theory right

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now that agriculture in a systematic,

organized way may have actually been

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done to satisfy the grain requirements

for producing beer and not the other way

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around, which would really completely

disrupt kind of the timeline that we have

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of, of things because the normal timeline

that we have is that civilization emerged

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after people started systematically

planting crops to control their food

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source you If you believe some of the

current scholarship including one of

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your old professors at UC Davis has, has

talked a little bit about this in some

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of his books, Charles Bamforth, that the

idea of producing grain in a systematic

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way was advantageous for the production

of beer, not the other way around.

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Gary Arndt: And just to be

clear, we're, this, This is not

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beer as we would know it today.

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Oh, this is like a proto beer,

something grain based and there

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was alcohol and that's about it.

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It wouldn't have tasted or looked even

kind of like what we think of as beer

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Bobby Fleshman: And the grass seed.

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I assume would not have looked

like modern barley be very small.

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It was before we selected out for

for larger grain to make beer with,

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Joel Hermanson: Right.

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So and I think Gary's talked

a little bit about this.

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I think it was an episode.

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one or two, I've been

riveted to these episodes.

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It's been so exciting to hear these,

but there's actually 56 different

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species of large grain grasses.

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And 33 of those were

indigenous to Mesopotamia.

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So they were probably just grabbing, you

know, different types of grain that were,

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you know, growing wild, soaking them,

sprouting them, releasing the enzyme.

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What, give me the name of the enzyme

that's released when you soak grain.

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You're gonna have to help me with this.

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Bobby Fleshman: Well, when you

get to the brewing level, after

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it's been malted, it's amylase.

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So the sugar is, there's different

types of, starch breaking down

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enzymes and they're called amylase.

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Joel Hermanson: Cause

that's really what beer is.

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Beer is grain that's been soaked and

enzymes have been activated at various

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temperatures, which is where brewers

have turned the production of beer

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from a soupy porridge into an art form.

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You know, even in Mesopotamia they had,

there's estimates that they had, about

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20 different colors of beer based on

the amount of, of grain they would use.

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So in terms of the, the very, very

early origin story, making some sort

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of a porridgey soup out of the grain,

which would sweeten the grain, because

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some of the grains that we're talking

about were not, they were not useful

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unless you tried to break them down

with, with water and made them soluble.

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Bobby Fleshman: Very starchy.

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Yeah.

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At South America, there's

something called Chicha.

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Joel Hermanson: Yeah.

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The Inca used that.

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah.

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And that, that includes, you wanna

describe how that, how that goes about?

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Joel Hermanson: Yeah.

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Before I do that, yeah.

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One, one of the, one of the really

cool things about the story of beer

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is that everybody is developing

it independently of one another.

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Because normally we think of, and I,

and I think wine develops in, in many of

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the same ways, but distilling doesn't.

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Because if you're going to distill,

that's, that's the technology that is,

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that is being shared across cultures.

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But we have evidence of brewing in China.

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We have evidence of

brewing in the Near East.

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We have it in early Europe.

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We have it in societies in the

Americas before the Columbian exchange

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before that moment of interaction.

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So it, to me, that's always been one of

the cool things is that everybody was

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developing this independently because they

thought of beer in many respects, the same

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way we do that kind of makes you feel fun.

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And it's, somewhat refreshing and

it, it kind of acts as a social

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lubricant to be quite honest, even

in that porridgey, sludge form.

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The Egyptians actually wrote

quite a bit about that.

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But back to, the Incan beer that you were

referencing in one of the beer history

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classes that we have here, we have a, a,

a picture of that beer being poured and

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it, it, it's corn based because wheat

was not indigenous to the Americas before

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the Columbian Exchange, so they would,

try to break down corn and this is where

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I'm I'm going to flip it back on you

because Is corn more or less soluble?

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Does it release enzymes easier

to break down starches than, than

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Bobby Fleshman: I'm not

familiar with malting corn.

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Malting is where you really create

those enzymes and you do that pre

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breakdown of the starches and so on,

but in this case, at least in the

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chicha case, to the punchline, those

enzymes come from our own mouths.

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Oh, for, yes.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So our own, they, they would chew

these and they actually in their,

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even today, as far as I know, there

are places you can find where their

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teeth are worn down from that being

sort of their, parallel occupation.

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They're chewing this stuff off.

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Joel Hermanson: Is that the only

way to get enzymes out of corn?

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Bobby Fleshman: No, I think not.

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I don't know the details of how

you malt corn, but it has to be

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similar to when you malt barley.

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You, you have to hydrate it,

trick it into germinating.

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It'll start to break itself down

and then it would eventually

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sprout and grow a new plant.

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all that's happening across

these different seeds, but

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I don't know the details.

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They've discovered they can,

they can expedite the process.

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Joel Hermanson: And then was it about

five, seven years ago, that dogfish head?

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah, they, they

released one of these commercially.

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Anyone's grossed out by that.

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It gets boiled.

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Right.

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And this no one's saliva made it into

the end product, but yeah, they hated

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working there for a couple of weeks.

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I think everyone was required

to chew corn, certain blue

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corn from the south America.

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Gary Arndt: To put a time on this.

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So the oldest megalithic structure that

we know of that currently has been found.

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It's called Becky Tempe

in Southern Turkey.

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I did an episode on this on my

podcast and that dates back about

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11, 000 years and it's really kind

of rewritten what we thought about...

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Civilization because like you

said, there's this notion that,

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Oh, agriculture developed.

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And from that we had everything else.

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But with gold Becky Tempe, there's

no evidence of agriculture.

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There was nothing around there,

but it is in an area that at

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the time it was believed had

a lot of wild fields of grain.

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And the current theory is that

they, people were nomadic.

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They would come here maybe in the fall,

they would harvest this wild grain.

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Probably make beer or

something close to it.

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And then over a period of centuries, they

just built up this place that was probably

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like a festival center or something, but

it, it basically predated civilization

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and it may have been due to beer.

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but 11, 000 years, as far as I know,

is about as far back as we can date

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it right now with any reasonable

accuracy where there may have been beer.

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Bobby Fleshman: And something we've

glossed over on several episodes so far is

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that one of the motivations for drinking

anything alcoholic is because it's a

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stable, it's a sterile source of water.

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It's a way to survive.

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Yeah, we landed on beer in the

modern context for that reason, but I

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think it must have been historically

true as well at some point.

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Joel Hermanson: Well, I think this is

probably a good time to Introduce a

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quote by your mentor, Charlie Bamforth,

which is that, beer is the basic basis,

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excuse me, of modern static civilization.

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That almost everything that was generated

by these early communities, whether

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it's the making of pottery, whether

it's writing in some respects, because

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writing was done for very, boring reasons.

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Initially, they didn't

just sit down and start

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Gary Arndt: Accounting.

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Joel Hermanson: Yeah, it

was for accounting purposes.

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It was for recording trade transactions.

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It was for recording agricultural surplus.

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And in many respects, it may have been

used to write recipes, to take brewer's

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notes, if you will, about, you know,

what they were putting in at different

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points in the process, because ultimately

after a certain time, they weren't just

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sprouting grain, making a porridge, that

had sort of a fizzy aftertaste to it.

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It was very cloudy and milky.

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They would start to actually

secondarily ferment it.

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They would run off the, the grain,

and they would pour it into a

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second clay vessel, which pottery

was probably developed for this

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reason in many respects also.

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And then into that, they would add

berries and herbs and nuts and honey and

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all sorts of things, which only kind of

accelerated the fermentation process.

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It probably started to clarify

the beer a little bit and it would

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certainly add secondary flavors.

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And I think one of the points where they

probably started to drive things up as

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far as ABVs was the introduction of honey.

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Because those wild yeasts that, and I'll

have you mention airborne yeast because

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I've always found that idea fascinating.

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The, the yeast that they were using

was airborne and, honey is such a

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high, has such a high content of sugar

that those yeast undoubtedly loved.

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah.

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Something you said, Joel, the, something

that occurs to me as we're sitting

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here, there's a positive feedback here.

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We, we came together in order to produce

to, we started arguably agriculture in

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the name of making beer, at least in part.

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And then we become in these, we, we

live in these congested societies.

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Maybe getting over time and maybe

we get annoyed with one another.

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Maybe our water becomes less

potable and you start to see

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sort of positive feedback.

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So now we need to make more beer so we

can socially lubricate our relationships.

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But also our water

supply is is in jeopardy.

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So I can anyway that just occurred to

me as you were saying that I think I've

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thought of it in those terms before.

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But comes back to me now.

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You're talking about honey?

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Joel Hermanson: Honey as, as an

agent of, you know, driving up

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ABVs, clarifying beer, giving

that yeast more more to devour.

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I feel like...

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah, without, without

myself knowing the full history, it seems

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logical that it probably all began with

honey because it's such a, it's all there.

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Everything you need is you have

sugar, you have yeasts, And with a

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bit of hydration, you, you, that's it.

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There's nothing else you

have to do and you have mead.

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The, this yeast was

airborne, you say wild.

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It, it was just carried by the

bees as, as the pollen and, and

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the nectar, I would imagine.

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So you, so you get everything

just naturally occurring.

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We have a love affair with bees

here incidentally at the brewery.

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Yeah, so it seemed very natural.

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And then if somebody figures out that

you can replace that sugar source when

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you run deplete of honey with grape

pressings or barley grass or whatever it

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may be, you, you, you can see where we

end up with all these modern different

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alcoholic drinks that potentially spurred

from, from bees in the very beginning.

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Joel Hermanson: Right.

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Gary Arndt: I know the Romans used honey

to sweeten wine, but I don't know if they

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used it prior to fermentation because

the Romans also watered down their

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wine and it was considered uncivilized

to drink wine that was straight.

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And you may know more about this, but

I, I don't know if like in the middle

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ages or whatever, they, the, the alcohol

content of, of beer was necessarily that

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high, that children drank beer, it was

something you drank in the morning, it

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was something you drank all day long and

that it was just enough to kill whatever,

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you know, pathogens were in the water,

but if it was a super, you know, if we

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were drinking 547 all day long, most

people wouldn't be able to function.

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Joel Hermanson: No, that's, you're,

you're a hundred percent right on that.

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547.

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What a, what a masterpiece.

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Bobby Fleshman: But, there's

a recreational slant on how

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we do beer these days, right?

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So we can, we can drink high ABV and

then dilute it back down with water

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because we can trust our water, right?

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So you have to have something

that you can drink all day.

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If you go back at certain times.

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Joel Hermanson: And I think this

comes back to that Bamforth quote,

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though, that so much of the technology

that was developed ultimately found

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its way, you know, into brewing.

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The development of, of early

bronze kettles, you know, probably

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enabled them to, to maintain

a more consistent temperature.

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Because if you've ever done any home

brewing, you know, If the biggest

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challenge in a homebrew situation is

not having all of your wort boil off,

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you know, onto your grass or, you know,

heaven forbid onto the kitchen counter

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and whatnot, because you're, you're, you

know, revving that the, the heat so high,

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the heat is what will extract further

enzymes from a higher content of grain,

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which is going to drive up the ABVs.

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So.

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In the case of Mesopotamia, with

their 20 recorded beer styles, they

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had beers that were much darker.

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They actually would make loaves of kind

of chunked barley that they would bake

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twice and then store those and then

crumble those into basically a wart.

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And the higher the grain content

plus the length of time of the

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boil, there's an equation for this.

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I think it's written on the wall

downstairs in the brewery, but that's

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going to equal, you know, higher ABVs.

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And then they also did

water their beer down too.

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And they probably had, dare I

say, children's beer, I would

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imagine, where they would drink.

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah, I can't

imagine that again, that your water

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could be dependent on once that

was discovered to be the case, of

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course, your kids would have it too.

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And I think that hits sterility at

a fairly low level, not giving them

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12 percent barley wines, but yeah.

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Joel Hermanson: Right.

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I think governments also came from, in

many respects, from beer, because, you

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know, governments, the, the initial

purpose of governments were to organize

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irrigation projects, it was to organize

the protection of, of arable land, it was

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to organize the the, the, the maintenance

of a surplus, and undoubtedly beer factors

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into, into all three of those components.

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Gary Arndt: Someone listening to

this might be skeptical because when

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they think of the ancient world,

maybe they'll think of people eating

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bread egyptians ate a lot of bread.

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Everybody ate a lot of bread that

lived in a wheat producing area

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Why do you think that it was beer

probably and not bread that drove

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much of the very early civilizations?

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Joel Hermanson: Can I tell you

that when I first met bobby back

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in 2014 2014 The first words that

I heard him say out of his mouth.

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He was giving a speech at

Lawrence on the physics of beer.

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He said, and I quote, and I still have

this recorded, someday when I work on

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a Wednesday I want to have this lecture

playing to the masses, but you said

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that in seven ancient languages the word

for beer and bread are the same word.

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah, don't ask

me which one of, which of those

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languages they were, but, yeah.

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Joel Hermanson: Well,

one of them is Egyptian.

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The hieroglyph for bread

and beer are the same.

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Right.

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Bobby Fleshman: And I think that's

because, like you said, I think this

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bread is making its way into the mash.

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It's becoming the beer.

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And the beer can be

used to make the bread.

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There's actually a cyclical.

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You can actually utilize

the beer itself...

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Gary Arndt: To get into the

chicken and egg aspect of it.

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What do you think came first?

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The

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Bobby Fleshman: beer or the bread?

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Precisely.

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I don't think I think it

had to have been beer.

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Joel Hermanson: I would agree because

beer making that sludgy porridge.

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It's simpler.

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Is an easier process.

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Gary Arndt: Yeah.

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Joel Hermanson: It is an easier process.

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah, I agree with that.

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Gary Arndt: The grinding that's

involved with bread and the leavening

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process, even if you don't leaven it

actually, but the baking of it making

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beer is just simpler in some ways

can happen by accident, whereas it's

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harder for bread to happen by accident.

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Bobby Fleshman: This is true.

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Yeah.

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It seems a little bit more industrial

when you put it in those terms.

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Joel Hermanson: In Germany, don't they

refer to a beer as four slices of bread?

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Bobby Fleshman: Oh, good point.

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I don't.

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Joel Hermanson: That's a Christoph thing.

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We'll have to check.

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We'll have to get Christoph on.

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We'll touch base with Christoph.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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McFleshman's resident German and see

if we can't get clarification on that.

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Gary Arndt: As civilization

move forward, not every place

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was a beer producing place.

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They're kind of developed

a, regional differences.

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And one of the best is, you know, around

the Mediterranean wine became predominant.

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But in Northern Europe, beer

remained predominant because it

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wasn't a grape growing region.

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And in fact, you can still see today that

there is a very, kind of definite line

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that goes through Europe as to whether or

not beer or wine is the preferred beverage

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of choice and it actually dates back from.

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Ancient Rome.

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One of the things I, I, I found it

again, doing this for my own podcast

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is that beer was known in ancient

Rome, because of their contact with

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Germanic tribes and everything.

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It just, it was considered more of a high

end thing because wine was so common.

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Wine was what everybody drank.

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They had lots of wine, but beer was

something that was only for the elite

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because it was so difficult to, make.

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for them because they didn't

have the ingredients and it was

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so it just wasn't made as much.

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Bobby Fleshman: Rare is good, right?

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Wherever we, wherever we live,

whenever we live, something

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harder to get must be better.

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Joel Hermanson: Well, and you know,

one of the things about Greece and

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Rome as an example, historically,

Greece had a very difficult time.

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:

producing an agricultural surplus.

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Their soil is not particularly

fertile in Greece.

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Now, the one thing that grows

really well in Greece is olives.

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So, they would basically trade

their olive oil for grain in

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and around the Mediterranean.

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And Rome is a better cereal grain

producing region than Greece, but

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not nearly as good as, as it is once

you hit, you know, France and, and,

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and Germany and certainly Belgium.

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Belgium is obviously one of the founding

places of the beer that we know.

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But yeah, it, I can see why scarcity

would, would be an issue there.

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Gary Arndt: Another thing when, when

dealing with ancient beer that, you know,

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we don't have to deal with is storage.

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We have refrigeration.

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Beer back then would have had to

have been consumed much faster.

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Right.

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Than it is today, right?

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Joel Hermanson: Yeah.

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If you didn't, if you brewed a

batch of beer, and we'll, we'll put

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it in Rome, if you brewed a batch

of beer in Rome, and you didn't

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drink it within, maybe 72 hours?

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You're going to end up with a sour

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Bobby Fleshman: Sure

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Joel Hermanson: The beer

is going to sour and

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah and I'm sitting

here thinking of all this history of

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beer in sort of two phases one in which

we're handling these raw ingredients

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and we're germinating them potentially

or maybe by other means or extracting

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sugars And then then I'm also then

thinking about sort of this modern

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process by which we brew you know that

it goes from boiling You can actually

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make beer with little to no boil, you

know, there, there are ways to do that.

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I should say that's part of what makes

beer sterile is that it's been boiled.

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Even if there were no alcohol,

that's part of the story.

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And so, yeah, I'm thinking about that

in those two, in those two terms.

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But yeah, back at the, in those

times, they wouldn't have had a full

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:

understanding of biology and, and they

would have had soured beers in three days.

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:

Yeah, and everywhere they would have.

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:

Joel Hermanson: And that's why when you

go, and this becomes a climate issue,

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when you go farther north, you know,

into the northern reaches of Germany

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:

and around the North Sea and, and so

on and so forth where they would have a

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:

longer, cold season, they, they had the

capacity to, to brew different things.

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Whereas in Greece and Rome with this, you

know, Mediterranean climate, which this

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:

is maybe the first time in history that

anyone has ever criticized a Mediterranean

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:

climate because it's fabulous, but it

is not great for, for producing beer.

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And if you listen to episode,

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Bobby Fleshman: The raw ingredients,

nor the beer itself, right?

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Joel Hermanson: Right.

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:

If you listened to episode three,

like when you guys were talking

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about the ice bach I mean, you, you

can do so many different things.

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:

at colder temperatures when you have the

capacity to, to manipulate that variable.

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:

And they had an inherent advantage

in the northern part of Europe as

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:

opposed to the Mediterranean region.

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:

Bobby Fleshman: And I'm sure we'll

open the whole box up later, but we're

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:

talking, when you start thinking about

modern industrial brewing, it really

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:

hinges on artificial refrigeration

because you're talking about the storage

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:

and the distribution of the finished

product, but you also you're talking

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:

about silos of grain that has to be held

at a certain temperature and moisture

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:

level so you can brew throughout

the winter and not have to deal with

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:

these stored sour beers in the cellar.

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:

Yeah, there's there's a lot

of different quantities.

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There are eras and that's one

of the major ones refrigeration.

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Joel Hermanson: Can I

ask you a quick question?

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Gary Arndt: Sure.

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Joel Hermanson: So you, ever

since I first met you, you've been

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:

talking about a Spanish cider.

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Gary Arndt: Well, technically

it's the Basque region of Spain.

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:

But the ciders in Spain are in the north.

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:

Okay.

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:

Asturias, Galicia, and the Basque country.

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:

Joel Hermanson: So that, that climatically

is probably, I mean, it's still

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:

kind of in that Mediterranean zone.

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:

No, it isn't.

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:

Oh, it's not?

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:

Gary Arndt: Because

it's in northern Spain.

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:

It's on the Atlantic coast.

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:

These were Celtic people.

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:

Okay.

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:

So it's close.

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:

It, it, it points towards Britain and

the waters are much colder than what

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you're going to see in the Mediterranean.

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:

Okay.

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:

And that was, that is,

they do grow wine there.

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:

it is a wine producing region, but

I think that the ciders there are

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:

far better than the wines and that

you have to go further East and

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:

South in Spain to get better wines.

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:

Joel Hermanson: So here's yet another

connection between temperature

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:

and the quality of a product.

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:

Bobby Fleshman: Oh, the variation.

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:

Yeah.

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:

Gary Arndt: Yeah, absolutely.

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:

I there are people in Wisconsin

that are trying to make wine

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:

and I, I, I wish them well, but.

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:

I don't think this is the

place to be making wine.

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:

I think this is an excellent

place to make ciders.

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:

And I'm surprised more people don't do it.

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:

And I think it's because we'll be

talking about this in a future episode.

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:

But this is not a wine growing place.

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:

And cider actually was one of the.

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:

things that was popularized in

the early United States, not beer.

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:

Bobby Fleshman: Yeah, we, I

was going to bring it up right

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:

now actually is that we've been

talking about three groups, right?

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:

Really cereal grains and,

and grapes and honey.

500

:

And we should be talking also in

that same context, apples for sure.

501

:

Especially it's American history.

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:

Gary Arndt: All right.

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:

Well, we can get into that in a future

episode, cause we're gonna be talking

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:

about a little bit more history.

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Respecting the Beer
A podcast for the science, history, and joy of beer

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