Beer made 9,000 years back in China recreated

A beer that was brewed in China 9,000 years ago from a blend of rice, honey and hawthorn berries has successfully been recreated.

The beer, called Chateau Jiahu, has its roots in a village in Hunan province in northern China.

A molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern from the University of Pennsylvania found chemical traces of the 9,000-year-old beer on some pottery in a dig in the Neolithic village of Jiahu.

McGovern and people at Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Delaware decided to take the ancient beer's ingredients and make a modern-day version of it, which was nowhere any easy task.

"All that Patrick McGovern could tell us is what the evidence was or a laundry list of organic substances," thestar.com quoted Sam Calagione, founder and president of the brewery, as saying.

"From there we have to create a recipe. We have to come up with the percentage or ratios and volumes of weight of honey, rice and fruit. We have to figure out how strong an alcohol it might have been.

"Whether it was filtered or cloudy, carbonated or flat. We have a lot of creative latitude to bring a modern interpretation of this ancient beverage back to life," Calagione stated.

The company has managed to replicate the beer, with Chateau Jiahu winning a gold medal at the Great American Beer Fest in 2009.

It will be on sale in British Columbia by July and depending on sales perhaps sometimes soon in the rest of Canada.