While working on his dissertation about grain storage in Mesopotamia, Tate Paulette answered the call to work on a collaboration between the Great Lakes Brewing Co. in Cleveland and the University of Chicago's Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures. Their goal? Creating Mesopotamian beer.
Nestled between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, the area that now encompasses modern day Iraq, northern Syria, and southeastern Turkey is where the world's first cities emerged. Between 3400 and 3200 B.C., the first writing systems were introduced in Mesopotamia — and a major topic was beer.
The beer of this era was made with malted barley but without hops. Paulette believes some sort of aromatics were used. It's debatable whether this early beer was a thick, porridge-like gruel or a thinner, lighter beverage. Different versions may have existed. Perhaps beers were thicker and people drank them through straws to filter out solid material.
"In the Land of Ninkasi" tells the story of the world's first beer culture.
As for the experimental brewing project, the team worked on a beer using no hops, replicating the brewing process as closely as possible and dubbing the beer, Enkibrew, named for Enkidu, a mythological character from The Epic of Gilgamesh. The team also made a version using modern equipment and a modern yeast source. It tasted somewhat like a Belgian saison.
For Paulette, the journey resulted in a book — In the Land of Ninkasi: A History of Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia.