Beer Archaeology: Yes, It’s a Thing

Travis Rupp is a clas­sics instruc­tor at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado. He’s also a “beer archae­ol­o­gist” who works on a spe­cial projects team at the Avery Brew­ing Com­pa­ny (in Boul­der) where they “brew beers the way that ancient Egyp­tians, Peru­vians and Vikings did.” If you can under­stand the beer an ancient peo­ple drank, you can bet­ter under­stand their over­all cul­ture.  That’s assump­tion at the heart of beer archae­ol­o­gy.

Above, watch a three minute intro­duc­tion to Rup­p’s work. Below, find infor­ma­tion on some of the world’s old­est beer recipes from Ancient Egypt and Chi­na.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

5,000-Year-Old Chi­nese Beer Recipe Gets Recre­at­ed by Stan­ford Stu­dents

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.