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Attendees at Great Lakes Brewing Co.'s Sumerian beer dinner use reeds to taste special beer on Wednesday, Aug. 14. It was brewed based on studies of beer from 4,000 years ago.

(Joshua Gunter, The Plain Dealer)

It’s not enough for Pat Conway of

to understand how to brew beer now. He wants to know how people brewed thousands of years ago, to comprehend the genesis of his business.

So Conway initiated a unique, hands-on academic collaboration with the University of Chicago’s

. In an event that sold out within two days, more than 60 people gathered in Great Lakes’ tasting room on Carroll Street in Ohio City on Wednesday for a united purpose: To experience beer that was brewed, and drunk, 4,000 years ago.

“As a brewer, we would love to know where our roots came from,” Conway said. That curiosity led to what Conway terms a “marrying of archeology and brewing.”

Tate Paulette of the Oriental Institute gave attendees an overview of the area in question: Mesopotamia, the Middle-East region that comprises Iraq. The specific time frame, for those who remember their world history, encompasses the Bronze ages, and Sumerian is the language. It was a time when cities were being constructed, kings were emerging, and beer was being brewed, Paulette said.

“Beer,” he said, “was really the beverage of choice.”

What the teams of archeologists and brewers today had going for them was the preservation of an organized system of accounting for ingredients in beer. Tablets even recorded specific types of beer by color distinctions, including golden, dark, sweet dark and sweet. What the team didn’t have was a specific recipe.

People apparently spent more time on praying to Ninkasi, the goddess of beer, instead of recording the brewing process. The prayers worked, they figured, since they started to see – but not fully understand – fermentation. Brewers then used two main ingredients in beer – malted barley and bappir, a bread, Paulette said.

“We really have very little information on other ingredients in beer,” he said. For instance, dates were used, but hops were not. A two-vessel system was constructed, with a fermentation pot sitting atop a collecting vessel.

Drinkers of the time often drank in communal pots using reeds as straws – something that Conway and the organizers offered to Wednesday’s crowd. Reeds were used because what people were drinking was more “alcohol in porridge, rather than the consistency we are used to,” Paulette said.

Great Lakes brewers – who included Luke Purcell, Michael Williams and Joel Warger – had “an innovator’s dilemma,” Conway said. They worked hard on creating a recipe from another time period while still brewing for the public today. But they made the project work, staying as true to research as possible, he said. Williams said guesstimates for recipes were based on ingredients available at different times of year.

For the dinner, the organizers tried to create a menu “as close to what was served 4,000 years ago,” said Great Lakes’ retail general manager Jeff West. Dried dates, goat cheese and double-smoked bacon served as starters, with duck legs confit, a barley porridge and stewed turnips as dinner. Flatbread had the wonderful consistency of Pop Tarts crust, and dessert was mersu, a golf-ball-sized mix composed of ground sweet dates and pistachios.

But the stars of the dinner were the three beers created.

The beer on the left was made in old vessels and is very sour. The one on the right was brewed with modern technology. Both are based on studies of beer from 4,000 years ago.

The first two were made in old vessels:

The first was an extremely sour, milky-colored flat brew that attendee Tim Gacek deemed “Sumerian vinaigrette.” Gacek was in attendance along with colleagues from ViewRay, an Oakwood Village company.

“You really have to like sour to like this,” Purcell said of the concoction that looked a bit like grapefruit juice.

The second brew was similar to the first, with dates offering a sweet tinge that cut through the sour a bit.

The third, made in modern vessels, was much closer in color and taste to beer today, and with carbonation.

Polled, the audience was divided on which they liked best – not too surprising since sour is a style that is gaining in popularity in microbreweries.

The academic Paulette and the brewer Conway share an equal enthusiasm for the project.

“It’s a topic that is way underdone. It’s (beer) such a fundamental part of the culture,” said Paulette, whose personal tastes run to English bitters.

The Sumerian beer project is going on the road. A similar presentation with several Great Lakes staffers will be made in Chicago at Fountainhead restaurant on Monday, Aug. 26.