Stanford students recreate 5,000-year-old Chinese beer recipe

 
Students brewed an ancient beer during class with Stanford archaeologist Li Liu, who discovered evidence of earliest beer-making in China as part of her recent research.

On a recent afternoon, a small group of students gathered around a large table in one of the rooms at the Stanford Archaeology Center.

A collection of plastic-covered glass beakers and water bottles filled with yellow, foamy liquid stood in front of them on the table, at the end of which sat Li Liu, a professor in Chinese archaeology at Stanford.

White mold-like layers floated on top of the liquids. As the students removed the plastic covers, they crinkled their noses at the smell and sour taste of the odd-looking concoctions, which were the results of their final project for Liu’s course Archaeology of Food: Production, Consumption and Ritual.

The mixtures were homemade beer students made using ancient brewing techniques of early human civilizations. One of the experiments imitated a 5,000-year-old beer recipe Liu and her team revealed as part of published research last spring.

“Archaeology is not just about reading books and analyzing artifacts,” said Liu, the Sir Robert Ho Tung Professor in Chinese Archaeology. “Trying to imitate ancient behavior and make things with the ancient method helps students really put themselves into the past and understand why people did what they did.” ... (Video) Stanford News

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Actualización: Estudiantes recrean una receta de cerveza china de hace 5.000 años
Estudiantes de la Universidad de Stanford han recreado la receta de una cerveza que se tomaba en China hace 5.000 años, obtenida del examen de residuos en el interior de recipientes de cerámica.

"La arqueología no es sólo lectura de libros y el análisis de artefactos", dijo en un comunicado Li Liu, profesor de Arqueología China. "Tratar de imitar el comportamiento antiguo y hacer las cosas con el método antiguo ayuda a los estudiantes a ponerse realmente en el pasado y entender por qué la gente hizo lo que hicieron".

Liu dirigió la pasada primavera una investigación en el noreste de China, publicada en PNAS, que proporcionó la primera evidencia de la producción de cerveza en China hasta el momento...


Actualización: What does the world's oldest beer taste like? - CNN.com

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China is home to one of the oldest civilizations, so it's only fitting that it's home to ancient beer as well.

But no one knew how its ancient beer was made -- until in 2015 a team of archaeologists from Stanford University conducted studies on a primitive brewery discovered on a Neolithic site in China.

The 5,000-year-old brewery is the earliest evidence of barley- and millet-based beer-making in the country.

Inspired by the scientists' findings, two breweries -- Jing-A Brewing Co in Beijing and Moonzen Brewery in Hong Kong -- set out to give the modern world a taste of an ancient experience by recreating the original beer recipe...