Making 4000 year old Ancient Sumerian (Mesopotamian) beer

Hello and welcome to the Pastors of Foreign Pantry where today we're making 4,000 year old Sumerian beer. Today's experiment follows the supposedly step-by-step instructions in the 18th century BC poem Hymn to Ninkazi. Ninkazi was the Sumerian goddess of beer and brewing and the poem goes like this. Given birth by the flowing water, tenderly cared for by Ninhursaga. Having founded your town upon wax, she completed its great wars for you. Your father is Enki, the lord Ninhud and your mother is Ninti, the queen of the Abzu. It is you who handle the dough with a big shovel, mixing in a pit the beer bread with sweet aromatics. Ninkazi, it is you who bake the beer bread in the big oven and put in order the piles of hulled grain. Ninkazi, it is you who water the earth-covered malt. The noble dogs guard it, even from the potentates. Ninkazi, it is you who soak the malt in a jar. The waves rise, the waves fall. Ninkazi, it is you who spread the cooked mash on large reed mats. Coolness overcomes. Ninkazi, it is you who hold with both hands the great sweet warts, brewing it with honey and wine. Ninkazi, you place the fermenting vats, which makes a pleasant sound, appropriately on top of a large collector vat. Ninkazi, it is you who pour out the filtered beer of the collector vat. It is like the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Okay, so I don't know anything about brewing at all and the poem is beautiful but it's really not a recipe as I would understand it. The waves rise, the waves fall. I don't know what that's referring to. There's no quantities, some of the lines are missing, some of the instructions are pretty vague. It's not super helpful. Now scholars think that this poem was meant to be said aloud and it might have been said by brewers to remind them of the steps that they had to take as they were brewing beer. Ninkazi, as I said, was the goddess of beer and supposedly she brew a new batch of beer every single day. No pressure to get this right then. There is just an ancient goddess judging me as I try and do it. So without further ado, here are your instructions. Why pour that off? Add 500 grams or two cups of unmalted barley to a large jar. Cover with water. Cover your barley with a cloth and then turn your attention to the yeast that you'll need for your beer. Crush 500 grams or two cups of grapes in a bowl. Our ancestors would have used their hands for this so don't be afraid to get stuck in and add 400 millilitres, that's 13 fluid ounces, of water. Shake up and pour into a sterilised bottle. Cover the bottle with a balloon. You'll be able to tell if you have successfully yeasted if the balloon rises over the next few days. The Sumerians also use dates to make beer so if you want to make a date-based wine for this, add 200 grams, that's about one cup, of pitted dates to 400 mils of water, which is about 13 fluid ounces, and place in a sterilised bottle. Cover with a balloon. Place your wines somewhere warm. I'm using a boiler cupboard because I live in England and it is absolutely freezing but you might be blessed with a more temperate climate so perhaps a windowsill would be better for you guys. Leave the wines and the yeast to do their thing and check in them every day. As soon as you notice the balloons start to rise, prick them with a pin and this will allow the air out of the balloon but stop any extra things getting in. This is easier said than done. Day two. Drain the grain. After 24 hours go back to your grains. Drain them in a sieve and then rinse them off with clean water. Place them back in the jug but don't add any more water to the jug. If you're sensible you'll have a wider rimmed jug. I've gone for aesthetics over practicality. You're going to want to keep rinsing them every 12 hours until they begin to sprout. Day three. When your grains begin to sprout. Also on day three it's time to malt the grains. Spread your grains out onto a baking tray and bake at 120 degrees celsius or 248 degrees fahrenheit for between one and two hours. The grains will begin to smell very nutty and will turn a richer brown colour. They will be done when they are completely dry. Once your grains have become malt it's time to grind them and I hope you've got your elbow grease because in true authentic fashion we're using a pestle and mortar. It's going to take a long time. 20 grams done only 480 grams to go. Am I sweating? Yes. Nice. Second tray. Yeah. I find it's easier to put like a small handful in at a time than trying to get loads through at once. Oh 10,000 steps. Anyway after 14 hours it will look like this and you can see that there is still some of the chaff that kind of shell that husk that's in there. I don't think this will be too much of a problem for this but the actual grain itself has been ground down to a quite a coarse flour. With your grain ground and your muscles double the size of what they were before you started this it is now time to make Add 250 grams or one cup of your ground grain to a bowl. Add any aromatic spices. I'm using cardamom coriander seeds and cumin as these are what the ancient Sumerians had available to them but you can use any flavourings you like. Add about a cup of water. Mix to form a relatively loose dough. Add a couple of tablespoons of honey and then place on baking trays and bake at 160 degrees that's 320 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately one and a half to two hours. You want the bapir to be incredibly dry when it comes out. Day four. Almost there. It's time to make your cold mash. Crumble up your bapirs into a bowl and add one litre of cold water to them. Allow this to sit for about one to two hours. While your cold mash mashes it's time to make your hot mash. Add the remaining grain that you didn't add to your bapir to a pan and add a litre of water. Heat this water to 65 degrees Celsius that's 149 degrees Fahrenheit and keep it at this temperature or as close as you can for about an hour. Once your two mashes are completed it's time to combine them to create the mishmash. That's not a technical term by the way. You then need to be patient and allow the two mash mix to cool down to about 35 degrees C or 95 degrees Fahrenheit before you add your yeast. If you add your yeast before it reaches this temperature and it is too hot all of your hard work will be for nothing and the yeasts in your wine will be killed straight away. So once your mash has reduced to these temperatures add your yeasts whichever ones you want to use to the mixture and begin to mix in. I decided to split my beer into two batches and add my date yeast to one batch and my grape yeast to the other. Don't worry too much about the sediment because that will all be sieved out. Place a sieve over a large bowl and pour your beer and your yeast and your gunk mixture into the sieve and allow the liquid to slowly drain away leaving behind all of the sediment and all of the grains. Add a tablespoon of honey for taste. Pour your filtered beer into a large container. 24 hours later it is time to drink your beer. Give thanks to Ninkazi and have a bit of a party. You need to make sure that you drink this beer within 36 hours of it being made because it does not keep well at all. Enjoy! Okay so it's been 24 hours this has been hopefully fermenting there's a few tiny bubbles but there's not loads and in here we have the raisin wine if you like the one that was made with the raisin yeast. Now the ancient Sumerians obviously this is totally unfiltered other than being kind of sieved to get rid of the husks so they drank their beer with straws so I've got here a wheat straw which is hollow inside and just for the aesthetics of it really I'm not really sure that it's going to do anything I'm going to taste my beer through a straw in this pot which is way too big for the amount of liquid I've got and it's super heavy so I don't know let's see it's slightly fizzy I don't know that's fermentation I guess slightly fizzy and it tastes like one of those you know like those um Fentimans old-fashioned drinks you know when it's always like slightly herbally um it tastes a little bit like that it doesn't taste instantly alcoholic there's a beer company I think it's called Ninkazi they were inspired by this poem they um estimate that if it was brewed correctly who knows whether this is or not it would have an alcohol content of roughly 3.5 percent so that's you know like a weak lager I guess I don't like lager at all though I don't like beer and actually I could drink more of that this is not bad it's quite sweet it tastes almost grassy you know like quite earthy but sweet and herbally is how I would describe it I don't know maybe I should have gone to some wine tasting it's got notes of sunshine and hopefulness no that's sediment hot it is actually nice if you get the liquidy bit if you get the sediment it's quite sour quite sour thumbs up modern Ninkazi right let's try the date bit so this has got slightly less honey in it because I assumed that the dates would be quite a lot sweeter than the raisins so it'll be interesting to see if it's as sweet as that one is it's not pretty it's not a pretty liquid let's try oh that's much sweeter this is almost syrupy and this one does taste more alcoholic than that one it's not as fragrant it's it just sweet it just tastes very sweet sweet and nutty I would say oh look maybe I am a beer expert after all nutty undertones I don't know anything about beer so I can't compare them to any kinds of beer but both are drinkable I think my favourite is the raisin one just because it's slightly less sweet but both are both are pretty nice so if you fancy giving it a go all of the instructions can be found in the comments below so let me know and thank you very much for watching join me next time for my future experiment on the pastas of iron we could just go and buy some beer no one's gonna know just say that I did it I don't understand why this became a drink of people it's so hard to make just milk a cow just go don't stick your head under a cow it's quicker it's not as nice but it's quicker start a youtube channel they said so much fun they said such a good reach bastards