There’s nothing like the taste of a cold home brew beer on a hot summer day but did you know that people have been kicking back and enjoying beer for thousands of years.

That’s right, according to many historians shortly after barley was domesticated the Sumerian and Mesopotamians were creating their own form of home brewed beer as far back as 10,000 B.C. Technology was a little different back then and the end result of the home brewing would have been different but if you saw it today you would still be able to make it out as a type of beer. There are even people trying to recreate it today!

It wasn’t just the Sumerians that were creating their own home brew, the practice was spread around the world. The Chinese, Egyptians and Europeans all have been brewing beer for thousands of years. The Native Americans even had their own version but instead of barley they used corn. To be honest I haven’t had a corn based beer yet but it is definitely an interesting concept.

Remember back in the day these were all basically home brew beers, yes there were some social gathering areas like inns and pubs that you might consider a microbrew instead of a home brew but basically the only difference is one was sold and the other just enjoyed.

In Europe during the middle ages, the monks took became the caretakers of literature and science and the art of brewing beer happened to fall under the science division. If you are like me you might have hard time believing that religion was responsible for perfecting and improving the beer brewing process, especially since a lot of religions consider beer the nectar of the devil. In the middle ages the monks were the experimenters and the scientists, they studied and experimented with the brewing process adding and removing ingredients, changing the recipe and standardizing the brewing process. In the course of their experiments they are the ones that discovered hops could be used during the brewing process to flavor and preserve beer, this was truly the birth of all modern beers.

Even with all the studying and experiments the monks performed they still had a serious problem creating a consistent brew and beer was a hit and miss endeavor for a long time. It wasn’t until Louis Pasteur, one of the first microbiologists, came up with the germ theory that brewers finally understood what was causing the differences in beers brewed with identical recipes.

You might be a little confused about this what do germs have to do with beer?

Louis Pasteur was experimenting with fermentation using a boiling broth when he came up with the germ theory. In other words he was working with his own form of home brew when he discovered germs, so I guess you could say that home brewed beer changed the face of medicine and the world. I am sure all of you have heard of pasteurized milk which has saved an untold number of lives over the years, this came from Louis Pasteur’s home brew experiments and the germ theory.

Before the germ theory brewers didn’t truly understand that their brews depended on wild airborne yeast to create the fermentation. With this discovery brewers were finally able to control the conversion of sugar into alcohol and produce a consistent product.

Why beer instead of wine? Some of the reason is personal taste but most of it has to do with geological location. The basic difference between beer and wine is wine is usually from fermented fruits (usually grapes) and beer is created from fermented grains (usually barley). Grapes grow better in warm climates and barley grow better in cool climates, this is why places like Germany and England became known for their beers and France for it wine. Germany and England had extra barley and France had extra grapes.

Home Brew Beer in America

I already mentioned that some Native American cultures had their own form of beer made with a corn base but when the Europeans started to migrate to the Americas they brought their barley and their taste for beer with them and started their own home brews.

These home brews quickly became microbrews supplying the local communities from the neighborhood tavern and over the years some became full blown breweries supplying thousands of people over large areas.

Then came prohibition and all commercial production, at least legal commercial production, was stopped and most of the breweries changed over to soft drinks. There were a lot of people creating their own bootleg liquor but beer wasn’t a major part of the gangster alcohol production, they preferred more bang for their buck and smaller containers for the same impact so they mostly created hard liquors like gin and whiskey. But you can be assured that home brew beer was still being created throughout the country.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt repealed the Prohibition Act and the commercial breweries started mass producing beer once again. Personally, I don’t know if this was a blessing or a curse because as production grew and grew they started watering down the process and since the end of World War II the United States has been left with a vast majority of the commercial beers being, in my opinion, bland and flavorless. But that is changing, home brew beer and microbrews are popping up all over the place and people are starting to realize that they were missing something with the commercial brews.

If you like beer and you haven’t tried a home brew beer or any of the microbrews I advise you to go out and sample some, you may be pleasantly surprised.