People have been brewing beer for thousands of years. Historians in 1992 found evidence of its production in ancient Mesopotamia, now Iraq; one 3,900 year-old Sumerian poem written to honour Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving recipe for beer. Further back still, in China, residue on pottery from 5,000 years ago shows the use of barley and other grains to make the drink.
Here in Britain, brewing has been omnipresent for centuries too. Today it remains a cultural touchstone, a societal fixture talked about and debated (Madri sucks; Asahi is worth the extra quid). And until recently, beer has always been made by people who graft hard. Their expertise has been paramount to the process — a good lager, ale, porter or stout has always required keen and practised human intervention. Take Guinness, which is still based on a recipe created by the family in 1821 (it existed long before, but changed over time).
