Beer style
Ancient Grain Beer
古法啤酒gǔfǎ píjiǔ
A recipe from 5,000 years ago
- Category
- Historical recreation
- Home region
- Inspired by the Mijiaya site, Shaanxi
Residues found at the Neolithic site of Mijiaya, in Shaanxi, revealed a beer brewed around 5,000 years ago from broomcorn millet, Job's tears, tubers and barley. It is one of the earliest known beers in China, and craft brewers have since been inspired to recreate ancient recipes.
A 5,000-year-old recipe
In 2016, researchers analysing pottery from Mijiaya, in Shaanxi, found the residues of a beer brewed around 5,000 years ago. It combined broomcorn millet, Job's tears and tubers, all Chinese, with barley, which had come from the West. They also found traces of beerstone, the mineral deposit that barley beer leaves inside brewing vessels.
Barley for beer
The discovery pushed back the arrival of barley in central China by about 1,000 years, and suggested that it was first used there to brew beer rather than to make bread.
A living link
The recipe has inspired modern brewers to recreate ancient-style beers, a link between today's craft scene and the first Chinese brewers.
What it tasted like
No one knows exactly how the Mijiaya beer tasted, but its ingredients suggest a cloudy, porridge-like drink, sweet and lightly sour, closer to a farmhouse beer than to a modern lager. It was probably drunk fresh, perhaps through straws, as in other ancient beer cultures.
Why it matters
Mijiaya shows that beer is not a foreign drink in China: it was brewed there thousands of years before modern lager arrived in Harbin and Qingdao. It also shows how early Chinese brewers mixed local grains with barley from the West, a story of the Silk Road before the Silk Road.
How to serve
Cool, in a wide glass that shows its cloudy colour.
Food pairings
- Simple grain dishes, steamed buns, roasted vegetables and fresh cheeses.
Sources
- Revealing a 5,000-y-old beer recipe in China — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Wang et al.), 2016