[Sca-cooks] 5000 Year old Beer

[Alec Story]

If other people are interested in recreating this, the difficult ingredient
to find is Snake Gourd Root (天花粉 *tiānhuāfěn*).  I bought it from this
supplier <http://tiānhuāfěn>, and it came as a bunch of ~1" diameter, ~1/4"
thick slices.  I'm probably going to have to powder it to get it to mash
properly.

I estimated the amounts of ingredients from the starch grain counts and
their sizes from the published paper, and would be happy to share my math
if people are interested.  The result is (including a few different recipe
options):

Percent by weight Without Tubers Using only Yams as Tubers Using only Snake
Gourd as Tubers
Barley / Wheat (dry) 38.81% 48.47% 38.81% 38.81%
Job's Tears (dry) 35.33% 44.12% 35.33% 35.33%
Proso Millet (dry) 5.93% 7.41% 5.93% 5.93%
Snake Gourd Root (dry) 13.02% 0.00% 0.00% 19.92%
Lily Root (wet) 3.01% 0.00% 19.92% 0.00%
Yam (wet) 3.90% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%


On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 9:53 AM, Alec Story <avs38 at cornell.edu> wrote:

> I'm actually working on making this one right now.  Just malted my barley.
>
> If it works, it'll be at Pennsic.  I plan to panel it at the east kingdom
> brewers' guild, but hopefully will have enough to offer tastings at the A&S
> display.
>
> On Jul 28, 2016 8:25 AM, "Johnna Holloway" <johnnae at mac.com> wrote:
>
>> As to what Cook's Science offers, today's email carried a mention of a
>> paper on ingredients for a 5000 year old beer.
>>
>> "Excitingly, researchers were recently able to determine the ingredients
>> in a beer brewed in China 5,000 years ago. Their discoveries were reported
>> in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This
>> ancient beer recipe included a variety of starches (broomcorn millet,
>> barley, and Job’s tears) as well as tubers such as yam and snake gourd
>> root. This research was made possible by the application of new methods for
>> analyzing microscopic plant remains, including starch granules, recovered
>> from pieces of brewing vessels."
>>
>> "Revealing a 5,000-y-old beer recipe in China" is the name of the paper.
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/z4ykgqu
>>
>> Jiajing Wang, Li Liu, Terry Ball, Linjie Yu, Yuanqing Li, and Fulai Xing
>> Revealing a 5,000-y-old beer recipe in China
>> PNAS 2016 113: 6444-6448.
>>
>> Johnnae
>>
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>>
>


-- 
Alec Story