Beer

Found a concise history of beer consumption in French-language Wikipedia.
The issue is interesting because, the distinction between ale and lager rests on
the temperature at which fermentation takes place, historical beer being fermented
at high temperature. The most recent 'lager' yields a pale drink we often confuse 
with beer itself although ale, rooted in history, can take on a whole gamut of colors.

A beer in a pub, a Stella Artois, an American beer all pack roughly the same alcohol
hit as a hard drink or glass of wine. In England, pubs offered a weaker beer to working
people, in an effort to wean the population  - and women - off gin. Today, these pubs
also offer cider, which can be quite alcoholic...

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The history of beer is intimately linked to that of its ingredients , as well as to the technological advances that made this drink the beverage we know today. The first cultures of cereals , in particular barley and spelt (a variety of wheat ), were attested in 8000 BC. AD in Mesopotamia  . All the ingredients being available at this time, beer could therefore exist and its invention / discovery is estimated to be 6000 BC. BC However, formal evidence of its existence, discovered in the province of Sumeria , dates back to the IVth  millennium BC  At that time, beer, then called "  sikaru  "  (whose literal translation is "liquid bread") was the basis of the diet daily. It was made by cooking pancakes made from spelt and barley which were soaked in water , in order to trigger the fermentation necessary for the production of alcohol , and which were seasoned with the cinnamon , honey or other spices depending on customer preferences. Beer, known to the peoples of Chaldea (now Iraq , Kuwait ) and Assyria ( Iraq , Syria , Lebanon , Palestine ), being used as currency, began its dissemination. Archaeological research has demonstrated that the Provencal already brewed their beer in the v th  century  BC. AD  .

Dionysos drinking a beer, Qingdao Beer Museum .

Consumed with family and used as a means of payment in Babylon , drink of the gods in Egypt , beer became in ancient Greece ( Diodorus of Sicily says that it was invented by Dionysus  ) and in the Roman Empire that of the poor, and while wine was deemed of the gods. It remained however the drink of choice of the peoples of the North , Celts and Germans . The preference for wine was confirmed in Christian Europe at the beginning of the Middle Ages , in particular thanks to the Council of Aachen of 816 which encouraged episcopal and monastic viticulture in order to celebrate the Eucharist . It was not until the viii th  century that we see brewing there take on importance, particularly in Bavaria . Subsequently, around the xii th  century , some monasteries (eg in Alsace and Bavaria ) became specialized in brewing beer, drunk by the people instead of water, often undrinkable.

Token of the corporation of brewers of the North.

Today, beer enjoys worldwide success as a thirst quencher and tasting drink. This success goes back to the xix th  century when control of low-temperature fermention along  with refrigeration and pasteurization allowed the production of new varieties of beer and export.

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