What does a 3,500-year-old Egyptian beer taste like? Man finds out using ancient papyrus recipe
The ancient Egyptians were one of, if not the most advanced civilizations of their time. They were considered so advanced that modern scientists are still deciphering some of the things the ancient Egyptians had all those thousands of years ago.?We get a sneak peek into the lives of ancient Egyptians from the inscriptions on the pyramids and texts from those days, detailing how life was during the days of the Pharaohs.
Recreating ancient Egyptian beer
Dylan McDonnell, a man from the US state of Utah, got a taste of ancient Egypt, quite literally, from one such text after he recreated a 3,500-year-old beer. McDonnell, a homebrewer, has successfully recreated an ancient Egyptian beer using a recipe that is believed to be around 3,000-3,500 years old.??
Also read:?Scientists Make 3000-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy Talk, After Recreating Its Vocals
Started during lockdown?
McDonnell, who also holds a master¡¯s degree in Middle Eastern studies, started looking into the ancient beer recipe as a side project during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to McDonnell, during the COVID-19 lockdown, he came across a video of a man baking sourdough using a 4,500-year-old yeast strain and wondered if he could do similar work for beer.
¡°The idea came from seeing Seamus Blackley recreate 4,500-year-old sourdough bread, though I¡¯ve always been interested in brewing beer and trying to come up with new unique blends for the beer,¡± he said.
How he found the recipe?
McDonnell then started looking for a recipe and found one in the Ebers Papyrus, a 3,500-year-old document from ancient Egypt that¡¯s full of medicinal recipes. Out of the 75 beer recipes, he decided to use the eight most frequently mentioned ingredients, which included desert dates, Yemeni Sidr honey, sycamore figs, Israeli golden raisins, prickly juniper berries, carob fruit, black cumin, and frankincense.
Also read:?Get Stung And High With This Beer Made Using African Killer Bees
Using same ancient yeast strain
¡°The papyrus gave ingredients and relative amounts of those ingredients, so it seemed like the best candidate for creating a beer from that era,¡± he said.
After painstakingly collecting all the ingredients and resurrecting an ancient yeast strain with the help of some experts, McDonnell got to work.?
McDonnell is confident that the beer, Sinai Sour, which took him three years to brew, is the closest one could get to the original recipe.
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