TRB-brouwen

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 17:34:27 +0100

The Hunebedbuilders most likely drank beer. This picture shows the process of mashing. Malted grains seeped in water are heated by hot stones. This releases sugars, that are needed to ferment to alcohol. In the archaeology, stones are found that are cracked through heating. There is no brewing gear found from the Funnelbeakerculture, so for that we had to make an educated guess. Brewing vats out of sandstone are found in neolithic Orkney and in Goblekli Tepe, but in our region they probably used wood. Vats like the one depicted in this photo were common in the early middle ages and go back as least as far as the iron age, so my guess is also to neolithic times.

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There is a hot debate on weather agriculture was invented for food or for beer. There was plenty of food around the time farming started, so there doesn’t seem to have been a necessity for a stable food source through agriculture. Traces of beer production go back to even before agriculture, the oldest yet found are from the Natufians 13.000 years ago in present day Israel. Gobekli Tepe was a temple complex built by hunter gatherers ca 12.0000 years ago at the dawn of agriculture, where large groups of people came together. Multiple vessels that can each hold up to 160 liters were found there that were used for brewing. This all indicates the importance of beer in the process of the transition to agriculture.

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Contrary to origin stories of beer being invented by accident because someone left a loaf of bread out in the rain, beer brewing must have been a deliberate process. Each step – from grain to malt, suger conversion through mashing, and fermenting to alcohol, are steps that require precision and skill.

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Personally I think malt must have been important to them, because mashing malt results in sugar. Sweet flavors are rare in nature, and it is something that we crave. We do know though, that they did ferment to beer. Fermentation is done throughout the existence of mankind, even before modern humans. This must have been a process that people were very familiar with long before grains were being used.

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In most of the later brewing traditions, brewing used to be done by women, so here we also chose to depict women brewing.