Long before glass bottles clinked in neighbourhood pubs or frothy mugs crowned wooden tavern tables, beer was already flowing through the veins of civilisation. It was not born in a brewery, nor perfected in laboratories. Beer emerged quietly, almost accidentally, alongside humanity’s earliest attempts at agriculture, settlement, and ritual. In many ways, beer did not merely accompany civilisation—it helped shape it.

To trace the story of beer is to trace the story of humankind itself.

Where It All Began: The Cradle of Civilisation

Our journey begins in ancient Sumeria, in the fertile lands between the Tigris and Euphrates, in what is modern-day Iraq. Nearly 5,000 years ago, when writing itself was still a novelty, the Sumerians were already brewing beer.

This was not beer as we know it today—no carbonation, no hops, no crystal clarity. Instead, it was a humble, cloudy concoction made from barley soaked in water, left to ferment naturally. Mildly alcoholic, nourishing, and safe to drink in a world where water often wasn’t, beer became both sustenance and solace.

An administrative account of barley distribution with cylinder seal impression of a male figure, hunting dogs, and boars. 3100–2900 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Beer was so central to Sumerian life that it transcended the mundane. It entered the divine.

The Sumerians worshipped Ninkasi, the goddess of beer and brewing. Around 1800 BCE, they composed a hymn in her honour—not merely praise, but something far more practical. The Hymn to Ninkasi doubles as the world’s oldest recorded beer recipe, a lyrical manual passed down orally long before printed instructions existed.

When you pour out the filtered beer from the collector vat, it is like the onrush of the Tigris and Euphrates.

Hymn to Ninkasi, circa 1800 BCE.

In that line alone, one senses how deeply beer was woven into their imagination—flowing, life-giving, sacred.

Bread, Barley, & Belief

Sumerian brewing was ingenious in its simplicity. Barley was malted, mixed with water, yeast, and sometimes date syrup, then fermented using loaves of barley bread. Within a week, the result was a pale, mildly alcoholic drink—about 2% alcohol, nourishing and communal.

Sumerian wall relief, depicts beer making, now preserved in British Museum

Beer was offered to gods, paid as wages, and consumed daily. It was not indulgence; it was life.

A Global Thirst

From Mesopotamia, beer quietly travelled the world.

In ancient China, residues found in pottery reveal that fermented grain beverages existed as early as 5,000 years ago, brewed from barley and local grains. In Africa, beer evolved using millet and sorghum. In the Americas, maize, cassava, and even cacao became the base for fermented drinks that mirrored beer’s social role.

Every land adapted beer to its soil, its climate, its crops. The result was not a single drink, but a thousand regional interpretations—each telling a local story.

Egypt: Beer of the Gods & the People

If Sumeria gave beer its birth, ancient Egypt gave it scale. Beer in Egypt was a dietary staple, consumed daily by peasants and pharaohs alike. Workers building pyramids were often paid in beer. It was thick, nutritious, and sustaining—closer to liquid bread than a recreational drink.

Egyptians believed beer was a gift from the gods, used in religious rituals and funerary offerings. Brewing was industrial by ancient standards, with large-scale production to feed cities, armies, and temples.

India Before Beer: Fermentation Without a Name

Long before the word beer entered the subcontinent’s vocabulary, India already knew fermentation intimately. Ancient Indian texts speak not of beer, but of surā, madhu, sīdhu, and āsava—fermented drinks made from grains, rice, fruits, palm sap, and honey. These beverages appear in the Rig Veda, Atharva Veda, and later Ayurvedic literature. They were ritualistic, medicinal, celebratory, and social.

Rice beer, in particular, has deep indigenous roots across India’s eastern, central, and northeastern regions. Among tribal communities, fermentation was never industrial—it was familial, seasonal, and sacred.

In Odisha, handia is made from rice and ranu tablets; in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, haria and mahua-based brews; in the Northeast, apong, zu, kiad, and chhang—each region evolved its own grain-based fermented drink, strikingly similar in spirit, if not in name, to beer.

These brews were often low in alcohol, rich in probiotics, and consumed during harvest festivals, marriages, and rites of passage. For these communities, fermentation was not indulgence—it was continuity.

When Beer Arrived in India

What India lacked was not fermented grain beverages, but barley-based beer in the European sense. That arrived with colonialism.

The British, accustomed to ale and porter, found India’s climate hostile to both their bodies and their habits. Beer was seen not just as recreation, but as nourishment and morale for soldiers stationed far from home.

In 1830, the first commercial brewery in India was established at Kasauli, in the Himalayan foothills, by Edward Dyer. Cool temperatures made it ideal for brewing, and the beer was supplied primarily to British troops.

Soon followed breweries in Shimla, Solan, Murree, Calcutta, and Bombay. Beer became a colonial companion—an emblem of empire, leisure, and separation from the native population.

From Empire to Industry

Post-Independence, beer in India went through a long, quiet phase. Stringent regulations, high taxation, and social ambivalence toward alcohol kept beer largely confined to urban elites and military canteens. Brands were few, styles limited, and innovation scarce.

Yet beer endured.

By the late 20th century, Indian breweries began modernising. Lagers dominated—light, affordable, and suited to the climate. Beer became less colonial, more social; less exclusive, more accessible.

The Craft Awakening

The 21st century has seen beer return to its oldest identity—local, experimental, and narrative-driven.

Across Bengaluru, Pune, Gurugram, Mumbai, Delhi, Goa, and beyond, microbreweries have reclaimed brewing as an art. Indian brewers are now experimenting with millets, rice, jaggery, spices, and local hops, quietly reconnecting beer with its indigenous past.

In an unexpected twist of history, India’s ancient fermentation traditions are finding expression in modern pint glasses.

Beer as Cultural Memory

Beer is more than just a drink; it is a cultural archive. It reflects geography, agriculture, labour, belief systems, technology, and taste. From Sumerian hymns to tribal hearths, from monastery cellars to Himalayan breweries, beer has been humanity’s silent companion.

Each sip carries memory. And perhaps that is why beer endures—not because it intoxicates, but because it connects. Across time, across cultures, across continents.

From civilisation’s first loaf of fermented barley to a modern craft tap in India, beer remains what it has always been:

A civilisation in a cup.

Cheers—to history, to culture, and to the stories we continue to ferment.