I'm pulling together a reading list for a course I am offering on the geography of the fermented beverage. Thought some of you might like to read this article.
Delphine Sicard, Jean-Luc Legras, Bread, beer and wine: Yeast domestication in the Saccharomyces sensu stricto complex, Comptes Rendus Biologies, Volume 334, Issue 3, March 2011, Pages 229-236, ISSN 1631-0691, 10.1016/j.crvi.2010.12.016.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 9110003057" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)
Keywords: Bakery; Œnology; Brewery; Polyploidization; Speciation; Selection; Boulangerie; Œnologie; Brasserie; Polyploïdisation; Spéciation; Sélection
For those of you who cant access the article, PM me if you want to read it. Although the whole thing is worth the read, I found the first section the the most interesting part:
Leave it to academics to write a two sentence paragraph, but still I found it interesting.It is only in 1860 that it was discovered that yeasts converted sugar into ethanol and carbon dioxide, a process called fermentation [1]. Although the peoples of ancient times had no understanding of this biochemical process, fermentation was used for thousands of years as an effective way to preserve the quality and safety of beverages and foods.
Archaeologists have found molecular evidence for the production of a fermented beverage dated back to 7000 BC from the Neolithic village of Jiahu in China [2]; similar evidence dated to 5400–5000 BC comes from the site of Hajji Firuz Tepe in the northern Zagros Mountains in Mesopotamia [3]. In Asia, fermented beverages were mainly made from rice. In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia the most used beverages were those made from fruits (wine), from honey (mead) and from malted cereals (beer). Evidence of leavened bread was found in Ancient Egypt at the same time period [4].
According to what is believed today, grapes have been domesticated between the Black Sea and Iran during the 7000–4000 BC period [3], [5], [6] and [7]. The first evidence of wine making comes from the presence of tartaric acid in an ancient jar dated from 5400–5000 BC in the Neolithic site of Tepe in Mesopotamia [3] and from the remains for grape juice extraction from 5000 BC in the Neolithic site of Dikili Tash in Greece [8]. When wine was made from wild or cultivated grape remains to be elucidated but archaeological records suggest that wine was made as follows: grapes were hand picked and placed in a vat for traditional grape-treading, or in special wine presses. The resultant juice was captured in open jars, where the fermentation process took place. When ready, these jars were sealed and marked with the date, name of the vineyard and the person in charge of the wine. After aging, they had to be broken when it was time to decant the wine, and then poured into another jar. When the wine was ready to be served, it was poured into shallow vessels with a short stem. Wine was mainly drunk and offered to gods during religious ceremonies or was used in medicine [9] while beer was a popular drink.
Beer was first mentioned in the Mesopotamian “Epic of Gilgamesh”, one of the earliest works of literature. In the poem the “wild man”, Enkidu is given beer to drink. According to the poem, “he ate until he was full, drank seven pitchers of beer, his face glowed and he sang out with joy”. The ancient way of brewing can now be partly retrieved from tomb scenes, clay tablets as well as beer remains in pottery vessels [4] and [10]. Both emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum Schübl.) and barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) were used for brewing, either separately or together. Beer was initially thought to have been made from yeasted dough: the dough was lightly baked and the resulting bread was crumbled and strained through a sieve with water [4] and [11]. However, the analysis of 1500–1300 BC old beer remains by electronic microscopy now suggests that instead beer was made from cooked and uncooked malt with water and the mixture was strained free of husk before inoculation with yeast [4]. Beer was either filtered or not, in which case it was drunk with a straw. Whether the yeast came from bread dough, the water of the Nile, or air inoculums remains to be elucidated [12].
Description of bread making and analysis of bread remains from ancient Egypt suggest an unsophisticated preparation. Bread was made of coarsely milled emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum Schübl.) [4]. Analysis of Egyptian bread microstructure and starch from 1300–1500 BC remains suggest that the dough was moist rather than dry but kneading was not extensive [4]. Deliberately germinated grains, called malt, must have been used for some types of bread. Because emmer breads were dense it is difficult to observe yeast in ancient bread remains. However, yeasts were observed in some breads indicating that at least some leavened breads were made at that time [13].
It is expected that starting from those times, beverages and bread fermentation technologies expanded from Asia, Mesopotamia and Egypt throughout the Old World. While the origin and expansion of the process of leavened breads are poorly documented, the history of wine and beer making is better known (see for review [7]). The cultivation of grapevines and the production of wine spread all over the Mediterranean Sea towards Greece (5000 BC) [8], Italy (900 BC) [14], France (600 BC) [15], Northern Europe (100 AD) and much later to the Americas (1500 AD) [7] and [16]. Beer making diverged into two processes depending on the temperature and the yeast used during the fermentation steps. Ale beer technology, characterized by top-fermentation at 15–20 °C and followed in some cases by aging, was acquired from the Middle East by Germanic and Celtic tribes around the 1st century AD, whereas lager beer technology, characterized by bottom fermentation at 5–14 °C and a long period of maturation, appeared more recently during the Middle Ages in Europe [17] and [18].
In the Neolithic time, fermentations were probably initiated by naturally occurring yeasts, and exchanges of yeast between food and fermented beverages were likely. At what period of time human started to consciously add selected yeast in any of these processes is still unknown.
