History

Beer is as old as bread. Both are made with the natural active ingredient, yeast, and man has been farming cereal crops since the Neolithic period, over 6000 years ago. A lot has happened to beer between then and now.

There was once a time when beer was considered the healthier alternative to water, as water was frequently contaminated and beer was described as 'liquid bread'. Beer was used to honour the dead in Ancient Egypt, was an ancestral offering in China, and if a Babylonian brewer abused his position he faced the death sentence. Beer, it seems, was not to be taken lightly.

In the Middle Ages, the first taverns or pubs began when every other house in a community brewed its own beer (mainly by women). The industrial revolution in the 1800s changed this natural method of brewing beer, and new types of beer were introduced, many of which still exist today.