China is home to one of the oldest civilizations, so it's only fitting that it's home to ancient beer as well. But no one knew how its ancient beer was made — until in 2015 a team of archaeologists from Stanford University conducted studies on a primitive brewery discovered on a Neolithic site in China.
The 5,000-year-old brewery is the earliest evidence of barley and millet-based beer-making in the country. Inspired by the scientists' findings, two breweries—Jing-A Brewing Co in Beijing and Moonzen Brewery in Hong Kong — set out to give the modern world a taste of an ancient experience by recreating the original beer recipe. It all started in 2006. While excavating Mijiaya, an ancient site near Xi'an in central China, researchers from the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology found hidden pits dating back 5,000 years. Two of these pits contained sets of pottery vessels, including open-mouthed pots, funnels and small-mouthed jars. The instruments seemed to look like a primitive brewery, where the pottery basin would have been used for keeping that kind of ancient beer.
"People use the same equipment today for beer-making," says Li Liu, a professor in Chinese archaeology at Stanford University. Liu has studied the ancient alcohol on pottery since 2012, and found connections between funnels and alcohol making at other sites. "The funnel is functional and has been in the same shape for thousands of years." Upon learning about the Mijiaya site, Liu and her team began conducting analysis on the pottery, hoping to find more light on their earlier research.
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