A Jerusalem brewery has produced a craft beer with a taste it says dates back to the time of Jesus. A sip of the concoction may help explain why wine was the preferred sacred beverage of the Bible.
Itai Gutman of Herzl Brewery says that researchers at Tel Aviv University had identified the genetic strain of wheat used to brew beer in the region 2,000 years earlier. He got in touch, and was given several kilograms of the grain, he said in an interview with Reuters.
Gutman used the special wheat to brew up a 20-litre batch of beer, which he shared with his friends.
“We were curious about being able to come up with the first ‘biblical’ beer,” he says to Reuters.
But after tasting it, he doesn’t plan to make more. “It’s really not the kind of flavour that has a market.”
According to the Jewish Museum in Munich, beer was introduced to Israel from Egypt by the ancient Israelites.
“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 additions into it and it’s only because of the grains we used,” says Gutman.
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aaron@ugchristiannews.com – Photo – Brewer Itai Gutman at work (Photo: Mike Horton)
