Peter Smith, of the always interesting Smithsonian magazine food blog Food & Think , has dug up an ancient Sumerian drinking song. Or something like a drinking song, anyway--according to the the historian Peter Damerow , the text functions as both a religious hymn to Ninkasi, the goddess of brewing (they had a god for everything back then!) and a fairly readable recipe for how to make a jug of old-school brew:

Ninkasi, you are the one who handles dough (and) ... with a big shovel,

Mixing, in a pit, the bappir with sweet aromatics.

Ninkasi, you are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven,

Puts in order the piles of hulled grain.

Ninkasi, you are the one who waters the earth-covered malt ("munu"),

The noble dogs guard (it even) from the potentates.

Ninkasi, you are the one who soaks the malt ("sun") in a jar,

The waves rise, the waves fall.

Ninkasi, you are the one who spreads the cooked mash ("ti-tab") on large reed mats,

Coolness overcomes ...

Ninkasi, you are the one who holds with both hands the great sweetwort ("dida"),

Brewing (it) with honey (and) wine.

Ninkasi, [...]

[You ...] the sweetwort ("dida") to the vessel.

The fermenting vat, which makes a pleasant sound,

You place appropriately on (top of) a large collector vat ("laÿtan").

Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the filtered beer of the collector vat,

It is (like) the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

What a lady! This same Hymn to Ninkasi inspired the brewers at San Francisco's Anchor Brewing Co. to make their Ninkasi beer, based on something like this recipe, back in the early '90s. It was not sold commercially (Fritz Maytag, the former owner of Anchor, told the Chicago Tribune that "exploiting the name of the goddess" didn't sit well with him), so why not go ahead and try to capture that 4,000-year-old flavor at home.

[via Food & Think , Chicago Tribune ]