Ancient history of malting barley

Malting is a process where the seeds of the harvested barley are soaked in water until they sprout and begin to activate enzymes that can covert starch to sugars. Beer yeast will later convert those sugars to alcohol and carbon oxide.

Around 6000 years ago, the Sumerians wrote the first references about barley and beer.

During the next 5000 years the Sumerian beer recipes were refined by the Babylonians and then by the Egyptians, by the Greeks and then the Romans.

Herodotus, Pliny, Strabo assert that beer was prepared by malting barley called zythos.

According to the historian and student of Socrates, Xenophon of Athens (430 – 354 BC) the Armenian prepared fermented drink from barley.

The introduction of beer and barley malting into Europe began in 55 BC by Julius Caesar’s Roman Legions.

Beer making then spread throughout Europe and especially to the northern part of the Empire to the Gauls the Teutons and into Scandinavian.

According to Cornelius Tacitus (56 AD – 117 AD), the ancient Germans malted their barley before brewing from it.

By the end of the first millennium AD the art and science of malting barley and beer making were firmly established in the monasteries.
Ancient history of malting barley