BBC - Travel - The Holy Land of beer
A surprising story here of how microbreweries are popular in Israel now, including a brand made by Palestinians in the West Bank.
I suppose it's too much to ask that peace be established in the Middle East via beer.
7 comments:
lol
well beer did birth civillisation and in the middle east.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdwYjFnFoJU
It's interesting that beer making doesn't seem to get much of a look in in the Bible, considering both Sumer and Egypt were much more enthusiastic about beer than wine, and these civilisations feature heavily, at least in the earlier parts. In fact is it mentioned at all? (Possibly a reference to mead?)
Have you forgotten my earlier post about this? There was detailed look at beer in the bible in Biblical Archaeology Review, but I recently looked it up again and it is now behind a paywall.
But my post about it is here:
http://opiniondominion.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/ancient-brews.html
Consider my interest reignited by my experiments in home beer making in the past two years! Here's a factoid for you: the earliest beers (because they were essentially over-watered breads, and hence had a gluggy consistency) were drunk out of a kind of straw.
Yes, I think that was mentioned in the above article. It makes early beers sound very unappealing, doesn't it? Warm, alcoholic, fizzy, doughy liquid. Yum.
By the way, do you have any particular kit brand you have tried and recommend, or have you been more artisan than that and made it from ingredients collected yourself?
I have never tried making any of my own alcohol, but the time is coming for me to give it a go. Maybe.
Must have been an adventure though, drinking those early beers.
I used a couple of different kits (Coopers are reliable) but I don't really like the concept of them - I don't like brewing companies deciding the recipes for me. When you get a kit beer the basic type and flavour is already decided for you; you are left with the choice of adding some more crystal malt or sugar to enhance the flavour, and that's more or less it.
So now I've been branching out a bit. I improvised a gruit beer last time (with malt from the supermarket, leftover crystal malt in the cupboard, and herbs from the garden). Next time I'm going to use a recipe in a book I have - haven't decided what, maybe a stout. Shouldn't be too hard...
If it's a first go though the can-kits are easy, relatively cheap, and fun.
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