Beer brewing is a subject close to The Green Mans stomach at the moment having been the subject of considerable experimentation over the past couple of months. GM is currently working his way through a fairly crappy batch that may well be the result of not sterilising properly at the start. It is not that good but after one or two is seems to taste better.

Beer brewing and wine production are lengthy processes and require both time and infrastructure for success. Accordingly Kathleen Antrobus, Justin Jennings and a few of their drinking companions from Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research are using these processes to study feasting strategies in ancient cultures. By exploring the recipes used to make each of these beverages, they demonstrate how details of each drink's manufacture, such as shelf life, plant maturation, and labor crunches, offered challenges and opportunities for those who attempted to organize mass-production of the booze.

See now this is the sort of research that makes Anthropology such a fun descipline.

The results are published in an article entitled "'Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood': Alcohol Production, Operational Chains, and Feasting in the Ancient World." in the latest edition of Current Anthropology. Here is the link to Current Anthropology but they are somewhat unsporting and expect you to pay if you want to read it.