Special for San Francisco Beer Week:
How a Prehistoric Culture Discovered Beer, Saved Civilization and Inspired Home Brewers
By Chuck Lenatti
In a New York Times essay a few years ago, psychiatry professor Jeffrey P. Kahn pondered the relationship between beer and civilization.
“Human beings are social animals. But just as important, we are socially constrained as well. We can probably thank the latter trait for keeping our fledgling species alive at the dawn of man,” Kahn writes.
But man does not live — or evolve — by social constraints alone. Kahn argues that “these same lifesaving social instincts didn’t readily lend themselves to exploration, artistic expression, romance, inventiveness and experimentation — the other human drives that make for a vibrant civilization.
“To free up those, we needed something that would suppress the rigid social codes that kept our clans safe and alive. We needed something that, on occasion, would let us break free from our biological herd imperative — or at least let us suppress our angst when we did.
“We needed beer.”
Fortunately for civilization, our prehistoric ancestors were happy to oblige. Archeologists say that around 12,500 to 9,500 years BC, hunter/gatherers called Netufians had settled in small communities in the Middle East. They hunted gazelles, fished and probably boiled the local barley, rye and wheat they foraged, evidenced by the unearthed boiling stones. Scientists also speculate that the large vessels they found at digs may have been used to brew beer for feasts.
In a study in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, archeologist Brian Hayden and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University in Canada concluded, “The technological and technical prerequisites of brewing were well established during Natufian times.”
The Natufians must have really liked and valued beer and the way it affected them because making beer wasn’t easy 10,000 years ago. “Brewing beer is a laborious and time-consuming process that requires surplus amounts of cereals and control over significant labor,” Hayden’s study said. Moreover, the “astonishing” amount of effort involved in creating the vessels suggests they were “possibly only used in feasting contexts and possibly for brewing.”
Beer making, Hayden said in an interview, was one factor “that we think was important in making feasts such powerful tools for attracting people and getting them committed to producing surpluses.”
Feeling secure within the herd, some Netufians might have temporarily shed their instinctive social inhibitions while consuming the 2%-5% ABV beer at feasts.
Kahn writes that with the help of the “new psychopharmacological brew,” humans could overcome their anxiety over questioning the herd mentality. “Conversations around the campfire, no doubt, took on a new dimension: the painfully shy, their angst suddenly quelled, could now speak their minds.”
Our ancient forebears evolved through trial and error. It’s not hard to imagine a Natufian man or woman spotting a bowl of gruel that had accidentally fermented thanks to ambient yeast. Maybe that brave soul said to herself, “I wonder what that tastes like?” Then taking a sip and saying, “Hmmm, that didn’t kill me and it makes me feel sort of good. I wonder if I could make that, and even improve it?”
That first home brewer might have been the catalyst for mankind’s infatuation with beer, brewing a critical ingredient for civilization’s sense of community. We’re a long way from the Natufian home brewers, but their curiosity, out-of-the-box thinking and creativity is still evident in the home brewers of today.
The contributions of home brewers is typically dismissed in commercial brewing circles, but a number of local breweries are now celebrating, embracing and cultivating creative home brewers, and integrating home brewing into their businesses and communities.
Black Sands
“Home brewers are the ether of the craft beer industry. They are the innovation drivers. The more you can engage with those people and get them on your team, you’ll have a better business,” says Cole Emde, head brewer at Black Sands, a brewery, home brew supply store, restaurant and taproom in the Haight.
Emde teaches a popular home-brewing class once a month at the brewery and collaborates with home brewers a few times a year, which allows people to see how somebody who started out with a 5- or 6-gallon kettle can graduate to brewing a beer on Black Sands 3-barrel system.
“A lot of the home brew recipes are just as good or better than the beers we make,” Emde says. “I think you’ll see more young brewers and breweries working home brewers into their concept if they can.”
Emde also “simplifies” the beers he brews in his single malt and a single hop (SMASH) series. Emde describes the process as “cheese pizza beer,” using the fewest ingredients necessary. Simple, hop-forward beers can still be complex, though. “It’s about what hop you’re using, when and how much,” he says. Hop selection, variety selection, brewing equipment and technique are key. Emde has brewed some 60 SMASH beers across multiple styles.
Black Sands will be holding its annual SMASH fest during San Francisco Beer Week, featuring single malt/single hop beers on all of its taps. Keep your eye out for a red IPA using Red X malt from Best Malt in Germany. “The malt character is unlike anything I’ve tasted anywhere,” Emde says. “It tastes like you put malted rye in the grain bill, but you didn’t.”
Black Sands Beer Week Events
https://sfbeerweek.org/schedule/?event=smash-fest-3-0-single-malt-single-hop
Ferment.Drink.Repeat
Kevin and Shae Inglin, co-owners of brewery/taproom/home brew shop Ferment.Drink.Repeat, are experts at building community. As a military family for 21 years, the Inglins had to move every two or three years. “Everywhere you move you have to make your own community,” Shae says.
With Ferment.Drink.Repeat on San Bruno Avenue, the Inglins believe they’ve found a permanent home in San Francisco’s Portola District, a neighborhood underserved by beer and with few public gathering spaces at night. “We consider ourselves a community space,” Shae says. “We host community suppers and have paired with Art Span and act as a gallery for local artists and host artist receptions. Our overall theme at FDR is community and inviting everybody into our world.”
It’s hard to believe that any part of San Francisco has not been deluged by beer, but the Inglins discovered that much of their time is spent educating customers. “We want people to come in even if they know nothing about beer. Some people don’t even know what a brewery is,” Shae says.
Kevin was a home brewer in the Army for 20 years. “No matter where we were stationed, we always had a home brew setup,” says Shae. Once the couple moved to San Francisco, Kevin cofounded the San Francisco Homebrewers Guild and served as its first vice president. He remains a non-voting member of the board. In addition to brewing and serving beer, FDR also sells home brewing supplies, and Kevin is diligent about taking time to answer home brewing questions and give advice about what equipment to buy. “A lot of home brewers make amazing beer and we always want to celebrate them. Not everyone is going to start a commercial brewery,” says Shae.
For the second year, FDR is holding its Iron Brewer home brewing competition, which is a takeoff on Iron Chef. Home brewers blindly select a secret ingredient to incorporate into their beer, brew a small batch and enter it into the competition. Certified beer judges at the brewery whittle down the best entries, which are then brewed at FDR. Taproom customers vote for their favorite. The winning beer in the current competition, Matthew Bixby’s salt-and-pepper gose, will be on tap at the FDR booth during the SF Beer Week Opening Gala.
Ferment.Drink.Repeat Beer Week Events
https://sfbeerweek.org/schedule/?event=beer-appreciation-101
Barebottle Brewing
When it comes to home brewers, Barebottle, a spacious brewery, taproom and popular meeting spot on Cortland Avenue, is all in. They even named their business in honor of the blank bottles that are entered into home brewing competitions.
From the outset, Barebottle cultivated a rapport with the Bay Area’s vibrant home brewing community. “These are the truest, most passionate people out there. Why wouldn’t you reach out to them?” says Michael Saetz, co-founder and CEO of Barebottle.
“It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. They always give us ideas about what things they’re experimenting with and what we should try next,” says Saetz.
Like a high-tech startup, home brewers can iterate quickly in 5-gallon batches, minimize risk and learn their lessons at a nominal cost. “It’s not like several thousands of dollars going down the drain. You can be a lot more adventurous,” Saetz says.
“One of the first things we did when we were coming out with our new beers was to kick off a competition,” he says.
For its recurring home brewing competitions, Barebottle selects an ingredient or idea, and then it’s up to the home brewers. One recent ingredient was local sea salt, and the current competition requires home brewers to make a pale ale brewed with an experimental hop from Crosby Hop Farm in Oregon called Idaho #4, which is only available to the pros.
Certified beer judges at the brewery select two or three finalists from the bare-bottled submissions and the home brewers are invited to brew a batch on Barebottle’s 7-barrel system. Customers at Barebottle’s taproom and several Bay Area “polling location” pubs then cast their votes for their favorite.
Bottles of the winning brew are festooned with the winner’s signature and the winning recipe, and go out to the brewery’s accounts, including Whole Foods and some 50 other retailers. John Warner’s Salted Mangolicious, the winner of the salt beer competition, was just bottled, and Barebottle will pour the two finalists in the Idaho #4 hop pale ale competition at the upcoming SF Beer Week Opening Gala.
Brewing on a commercial system is a dream come true for a home brewer. “They’re over the moon,” says Saetz. One winner wheeled a shopping cart loaded with a keg of his beer around Barebottle’s taproom, proudly handing out samples. Another, John Montes de Oca, who won the second home-brewing competition, even landed a coveted job at Barebottle as an assistant brewer — one example of how yesterday’s home brewer can become the professional brewer of tomorrow.
Barebottle Beer Week Events
https://sfbeerweek.org/schedule/?event=magic-bottle-homebrew-competition-experimental-idaho-4-hops
Winning Home Brew Competition Tips
What separates the home brewing competitors who always do well from the rest? Michael Saetz shares his observations.
1) The best people will do around four versions, tweaking different things. They don’t put all their eggs in one basket thinking they can get it nailed the first time.
2) All of them adjust their water. San Francisco has great brewing water, but it always needs to be adjusted for the style you’re trying to hit.
3) They’re all really intense about yeast health. A lot of people say, you’re not actually in the beer business, you’re in the yeast business; you’re brewing cultures, and beer is a nice byproduct.
4) A lot of these people are willing to take calculated risks on interesting things. A perfect example is John Warner with his salted mango beer. He said he doesn’t necessarily like salt and mango is too tangy and sweet, but if you put those together, it’s really nice. It was a really creative idea, and he didn’t overdo it. It was just a dash of sea salt, a little bit of vanilla and a little bit of mango. A lot of people would go overboard with those things.
Beer Week Events for Home Brewers
https://sfbeerweek.org/schedule/?q=homebrew
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