Events in date order, with the certainty the sources allow. Select an event for its place, its consequences and its sources.
c. 10,750 BCE – c. 1,900 BCE
Use-wear and residue analysis of three stone mortars at a Natufian burial site found wheat or barley, oat, legumes and flax; the authors propose that malted grain was stored and a cereal beer brewed for funerary feasts.
Why it mattered If confirmed, brewing by foragers would predate domesticated cereals by millennia and bear on the theory that beer helped drive cereal farming.
DebatedChemical analysis of residues absorbed into pottery jars identified a mixed fermented drink of rice, honey and fruit (hawthorn and/or grape).
Why it mattered Among the earliest chemical evidence for a fermented drink anywhere; a mixed beverage rather than a beer in the modern sense.
Scholarly consensusInstallations of heated ceramic vats producing beer from malted emmer wheat with some barley, at a scale far beyond household brewing.
Why it mattered Evidence of organised, large-scale brewing linked to elites and funerary cult at the birth of the Egyptian state.
Scholarly consensusA hymn praising Ninkasi that mentions beerbread, malt, mash spread on reed mats and filtered beer from a collector vat.
Why it mattered The best-known literary text on Mesopotamian beer; its use as a 'recipe' rests on disputed translations.
Documented822 – 1438
Monastic statutes assign the porter a tenth part of the hops delivered to the monastery and tell him to obtain more if he lacks enough to make his beers.
Why it mattered Earliest dated written link between hops and brewing; it does not explain how the hops were used.
DocumentedRoyal charter incorporating the 'Mystery of Brewers of the City of London', with four annual wardens and powers over all malt liquor sold or made in the City and suburbs.
Why it mattered An example of the guilds that regulated brewing in late medieval towns.
Documented1516
A clause of the Bavarian Landesordnung issued by Dukes Wilhelm IV and Ludwig X limiting beer ingredients to barley, hops and water and capping beer prices.
Why it mattered Became the model for later German beer law and a powerful marketing symbol; it built on earlier town ordinances.
Documented1842 – 1883
The Bavarian brewer Josef Groll brewed a bottom-fermented lager from very pale malt at the Burghers' Brewery.
Why it mattered It gave its name and model to the pilsner style of pale lager.
DocumentedAn experimental refrigeration machine, using dimethyl ether, installed at Spaten; Linde later used ammonia.
Why it mattered Freed lager brewing from natural ice and cold seasons, so bottom-fermented beer could be made all year.
DocumentedPublication of 'Études sur la bière, ses maladies, causes qui les provoquent, procédé pour la rendre inaltérable' (Gauthier-Villars).
Why it mattered Gave brewers a microbiological explanation of spoilage and a basis for controlled fermentation.
DocumentedHansen showed that wild yeast in pitching yeast caused 'beer sickness' and propagated a pure culture from one cell; Carlsberg brewed with it and gave it to other brewers.
Why it mattered Pure-culture yeast became standard practice in lager brewing worldwide.
Documented