King Tutankhamun’s Ale–1500 BC
Yes, King Tut drank beer–as did almost everyone in ancient Egyptian society, from the pharaohs down to the slaves who built the pyramids.
In 1990, the London-based Egyptian Exploration Society approached British brewing giant, Scottish & Newcastle, for financial help in their study of ancient Egyptian brewing. With the brewery’s help, and that of an Egyptologist and other scientists, research centered on grains and seeds left behind by ancient brewers. The researchers also studied the sediment from old jars found in a brewery housed inside the Sun Temple of Nefertiti, queen of a pharaoh called Akhenaten, whom Egyptologists believe was probably Tutankhamun’s father.
The ruins of the Sun Temple and brewery were found under the desert, 200 miles south of Cairo at Tel el Amarna, once the capital of Egypt. It had gone undiscovered for centuries because it lies beneath a Roman camp dismissed as uninteresting by earlier expeditions. The brewery buildings, said Egyptologist Barry Kemp of Cambridge University and director of the dig, were extensive. “Room after room of ovens formed a combined bakery-brewery of factory proportions.”
Archaeobiologist Delwyn Samuel, also of Cambridge University, worked on the project as well. Upon analyzing the sediment from jars and other vessels, Samuel found evidence of malted barley that had been boiled, similar to modern brewing practice, and a type of wheat called “emmer.” Kemp and Samuel discerned, from Samuel’s lab analysis and by looking at tomb paintings of the period, that, in addition to malting their wheat, the ancient Egyptians brewed quickly, in just three days, probably because of the hot climate, and in 2-gallon vessels. Evidence of coriander and naback fruit was also discovered, ingredients probably used to sweeten and preserve the beer.
“Even the pure water of the desert wells was analyzed,” said Jim Merrington, Scottish and Newcastle’s project director.
To recreate the Tutankhamun beer, Scottish & Newcastle and Samuel needed emmer wheat. Emmer exists in modern times, especially in Turkey, and an attempt was made to cultivate the plant on the banks of the Nile. When this effort failed, Scottish & Newcastle gave a small quantity of emmer seeds to an agricultural college near Edinburgh, where it was successfully grown and harvested. The resulting 60 kilos of grain became the basis for the experimental brew. Eventually, Scottish & Newcastle produced just 1,000 bottles of King Tutankhamun’s Ale.
King Midas Golden Elixir–718 BC
The legendary King Midas turns out not to be a legend, after all. He may not have had a golden touch, but this once powerful ruler of the Phrygians, in the land we now know as Turkey, was a wealthy king.
Evidence of this comes from a University of Pennsylvania archeology find. In 1957, archeologist Rodney Young uncovered the 230-foot-high burial mound of King Midas at Gordion in central Turkey. The date of Midas’s death was set at 718 BC.
A wealth of pots and furniture was recovered from the dig, as well as a tremendous amount of dried residue from food containers and drinking vessels. But in 1957, the science for chemically analyzing this residue was relatively crude. The food and drink remains were bagged and sent to Philadelphia.
Enter Dr. Patrick McGovern, a molecular archeologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. McGovern is a world expert at discovering the drinks and foods of ancient civilizations, by analyzing, sometimes molecule by molecule, the residue in pots and wooden containers. Little did McGovern know that just several floors above his basement office and lab were paper bags full of the food and drink remains from the Midas dig. They had been sitting there for 40 years in the office of Ellen Kohler, an archivist at the museum and a participant in the original 1957 dig.
“I got involved in this project in 1997 with a phone call from the person who did the study of the furniture from the tomb,” explained McGovern. Elizabeth Simpson, a professor at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts in New York City, is considered the world’s leading authority on the furniture found at Midas’s tomb. A former doctoral classmate of McGovern’s at UPenn, Simpson believed that everything found at the tomb was part of the king’s funeral services. The food and drink remains, she believed, would have been from the funeral feast. “She asked me if I was interested in analyzing the material and I jumped right on it,” said McGovern. “All I had to do was walk up the stairs, check the samples out and start doing the analysis.”
McGovern believed that the drink at the feast most certainly would have been alcoholic. “I did a whole series of analyses and gradually figured out the various constituents of the drink and entrée,” he said. What he discovered was that the drink, probably about 10 percent alcohol by volume, was a mixture of wine, beer and honey mead.
“One of the things we didn’t actually identify was the spice or the bittering agent,” said McGovern. “We assume there must have been something like that because we found other spices in the food. And if you have a very sweet mixture of wine, beer and mead, you’d think there must be some sort of spice.” Saffron became McGovern’s best guess at a spice. “It’s native to Turkey,” said McGovern. “You have a lot of wild crocuses growing there and it has that golden look to it, as well as a very special flavor and aroma.”
McGovern had successfully analyzed King Midas’s funeral drink, but he wasn’t a brewer. He didn’t try to recreate the brew. That task fell to others.
“Last March there was a dinner at the university,” said McGovern, “for the beer writer, Michael Jackson. After the dinner, I mentioned what we had been doing with the Midas drink and invited anyone who was interested in learning more about it to come to my lab the next morning to see what we’d discovered. I thought that maybe someone would have an idea what the process would be to recreate this beverage.”
Present that morning were Tess and Mark Szamatulski, Connecticut homebrewers, homebrew shop owners and authors of Clone Brews and Beer Captured. The Szamatulskis experimented with a Midas brew, combining barley malt, wild thyme honey from Greece, and partially fermented muscat grape juice. They fermented this mixture in four vessels with wine yeast, using a different bittering spice in three of the fermenters–Turkish figs, anise and saffron–leaving the last batch unbittered. The final drink was 8 percent alcohol by volume. The Szamaltskis shared their results and recipe with McGovern, and they have since won awards with their creation at homebrew competitions.
At the Jackson dinner, McGovern also spoke to Sam Caligione, owner/brewer of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Delaware, about brewing a microbrewery-sized batch of King Midas brew. Caligione made a 93-gallon experimental batch using malted barley, thyme honey from Italy, and white muscat grapes, seasoning the brew with Indian saffron and fermenting it with mead yeast. The resulting 7.5 percent alcohol by volume brew was served at a $150-per-person benefit for UPenn’s molecular archaeology program.
Asked if he was planning a commercial release of King Midas Golden Elixir, McGovern said the cost factor would first have to be worked out. “Sam said it was one of the most expensive beers he’d ever made,” remarked McGovern.
