An Israeli brewery has created a craft beer with a flavor that supposedly tastes the way beer did back in the days of Jesus Christ. .
Jerusalem’s Herzl Brewery brewed this historic beer using a strain of wheat that is similar to the wheat used to brew beer more than 2,000 years ago. Tel Aviv University geneticists have confirmed the identification of this wheat strain and they say it helps explain why wine was the most popular sacred beverage during biblical times.
Herzl Brewery owner Itai Gutman says he heard about the findings from Tel Aviv University and set off to create his own holy brew.
“I found this article about these guys at the Tel Aviv University that made the genome of the model of wheat, the same grain I used and just made a light bulb light up and I just contacted them and within a few days I had several kilograms of this material, we just started to process and eventually is this beer that we’re drinking,” said Gutman.
Gutman doesn’t have much more of the holy beer to share. He says the brewery produced only a small, 20 liter (about 5.3 gallons) batch and almost all of the beer was consumed by Gutman and his friends.
Wine is the beverage most often associated with the ancient Israelis and its use is often cited in the Bible and other religious texts. But the Middle East was once the center of beer brewing and drinking until beer was pushed aside in favor of wine.
“The historians they say that beer is coming from around this area of the world, from the Middle East area, Mesopotamia and what was there back then. The rumor mentions that it moved back to Europe when the Romans came with the wine that also brew up here and somehow only the wine stayed here and the beer kind of made into a folks drink in Europe,” Gutman explained.
As for the sacred brew concocted by Herzl Brewery, it has a flavor that combines honey, grain, and berries with a cloudy body and a small head of foam. The alcohol content of the beer is three percent by volume. Gutman says he didn’t expect the beer to taste the way it did. He also said that the taste isn’t likely to catch on with modern- day consumers.
“The flavor was surprising, this is something that we, that we never expected. We got kind of this red fruit kind of a raspberry flavor and there is no fruit addition into it and it’s only because of the grains we used,” Gutman said.
Beer isn’t mentioned in sacred books like its sister alcoholic beverage wine, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t consumed by Jesus and others during his time. Beer was a popular drink in ancient Egypt and according to the Jewish Museum in Munich, Germany, beer was introduced to the area now known as Israel when the ancient Israelis brought it over from neighboring Egypt.
It remains unknown whether Herzl Brewery will one day brew more of this special beer or whether Itai Gutman will perhaps sell the recipe. Only one bottle of the beer remains and while there are no immediate plans to brew it again, widespread interest in this holy beer could prompt Gutman to change his mind and fire up the kettles once more.
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