Who were the first brewers?

Who were the first brewers?

Britons have been drinking alcoholic beverages for thousands of years. But what would ancient brews have tasted like? And how long ago, exactly, did we get a taste for it?

About 30 years ago, Bruce Williams had a homebrew supply shop in Alloa, Scotland.

Now and again, customers would travel in from far-off places like the Outer Hebrides or isolated parts of the Scottish Highlands, bringing with them stories about old beers that they remembered their grandparents brewing - made from recipes that had been handed down through the generations.

Many were hoping to use all sorts of ingredients that Williams had not thought of putting in beer before. One was heather.

It gives the beer a sort of astringency - a dryness, especially when you open your mouth after taking a sip - and adds a herby woodiness to the flavour.

Millions of acres of heather have blanketed the country's moors since the Stone Age, so it is quite conceivable that, if brewers experimented with local plants and other resources thousands of years ago, they would have used it as an ingredient to flavour ale.

Few would dispute that heather ale has been made for centuries in Scotland.

It has even been romanticised in a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson.

We are also more or less certain that British brewing of some form was going on as far back as the Romans and that mead - a fermented honey drink - has been quaffed here for hundreds of years.

But how far back, specifically, does beer-making go in Britain?

Do archaeological records reveal what beverages Britons were drinking as far back as the Neolithic - the era roughly between 6,000 and 4,500 years ago?

Famously, one 1980s archaeological dig at Kinloch on the Outer Hebrides' Isle of Rhum found apparent residue from a long-evaporated beverage.

The pottery came from dated back about 4,000 years. Microscopic analysis detected pollen grains, which suggested high levels of heather, and some meadowsweet and royal fern.

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