Settle in, kids, for a short history lesson.

Unlike some other history lessons you may have skipped in years gone by, this one is pretty important.

We don’t need to tell you that South Africans love our beer (it accounts for 36,5% of all drinks sales expenditure, alcoholic and non-alcoholic, after all), and if you’re looking for someone to thank, you have to go way, way back.

IOL went looking through the history books for the origin of the beloved brew:

…beer was invented by Agrarian Communities (any communities whose economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland) about 12,000 years ago, as these communities developed the infrastructure for cultivating cereal grains.

“As hunter-gatherer tribes settled into agrarian civilizations based around staple crops like wheat, rice, barley and maize, they may have also stumbled upon the fermentation process and started brewing beer,” Evan Andrews wrote…

They say that beer was especially well-loved by the Egyptians, where workers were partially paid in beers flavoured with olive oil, dates, and other seemingly exotic ingredients for it.

12 000 years old – I’ll drink to that. No word on whether the hunter-gatherers necked a few ales and then decided they couldn’t be bothered to venture out for the day.

Also, congrats to the Egyptians for kickstarting the craft beer revolution, although I’m unsure what they would make of some of today’s more questionable efforts.

When it comes to beer origin stories, there’s one that stands head and shoulders above the rest. In 1899, in a brewery near Pico de Orizaba, the highest peak in Mexico, a brewer created a light, refreshing beer made from the water closest to the sun.

The story goes that, as the brewer held up the beer, a ray of sun peeped through a hole in the roof onto the transparent bottle and, in honour of the sun, inspired the name Sol.

120 years ago, and South Africans are embracing Espiritu Libre, the spirit of freedom, in a very big way.

Put a Sol to your lips, tip your head back, and taste the sun.

We raise a glass to the Agrarian Communities who first invented beer, and to that brewer in Mexico who perfected it.

[source:iol]