Portable Beer: Got your loaves?

Beer is an alcoholic drink. It is made (brewed) with water, sugar, hops, barley (types of cereal grains), and yeast (a fungus that produces alcohol). Beer is made when the yeast 'eats' the sugar, and as it does, it lets out alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The earliest records of beer were written around 4000 to 5000 years ago by the Sumerians. It is said that the Sumerians discovered the fermentation process by accident. It is not known exactly how this happened, but it could be that a piece of bread or grain became wet, and a short time later, it began to ferment and made a pulp that causes drunkenness. A seal around 4,000 years old is a Sumerian "Hymn to Ninkasi", the goddess of brewing. This "hymn" is also a recipe for making beer. A description of the making of beer on this ancient engraving in the Sumerian language is the earliest account of what is easily recognised as barley, followed by a pictograph of bread being baked, crumbled into water to form a mash, and then made into a drink, that is recorded as having made people feel "...wonderful and blissful".

It could even be possible that bread was first baked to be a way to make beer that is easy to carry around.

The Sumerians were probably the first people to brew beer. They had found a "divine drink" -- they felt it was a gift from the gods.

from here.