(mysterious music) (bubbling)
- With a lot of ancient cultures,
we focus on the kings, the aristocratic elite.
But that makes up such a minor percentage of the population,
I want to know what I would have been drinking
if I went into a pub 1100 years ago.
My name is Travis Rupp.
I make really old beer.
(light hearted music)
- [Narrator] Travis isn't your everyday brew master.
He and his team have put a spin on craft beer
by taking a look back in time to brew ancient beers.
(rustling)
- When we produce the ancient Egyptian
and the ancient Peruvian beer,
I made them as close as I possibly could
to exactly the way an ancient beer would have been produced.
And, they turned out quite well.
- [Narrator] In ancient times beer was traditionally
brewed in clay pots.
There was no carbonation and the beer had a very low
alcohol content.
While Travis brews his beer using modern equipment,
he meticulously adjusts his recipes to include
ingredients used thousands of years ago.
Turns out,
ancient beer is surprisingly delicious.
- Ahh.
It is often presumed that the beer they drank was
very gross or unpalatable
because we want to presume they're just dumb
and don't know any better.
The ancient Egyptian beer,
it's one of my favorite beers to drink
at the end of a long day at work.
One of the biggest challenges really
in doing beer archeology is really defining these recipes.
And brewing ancient beer on a modern system
is very, very challenging.
- [Narrator] Ancient beer has some unusual ingredients
such as baking yeast, juniper berries and Mugwort.
- [Travis] It's constantly thinking outside of the box.
How do I bring in all of these elements and ingredients?
But how do I still mimic the steps?
- [Narrator] In order to prepare for his next brew,
Travis spends three to four months
researching ancient civilizations.
- The beer I'm working on right now is a Viking beer.
It was consumed probably at least 1100 years ago
according to the archeological record.
I think that beer is a really phenomenal lens
for viewing history and viewing culture throughout time
because it really does seem to unify people
from as early as 8500 BCE to the present.
The modern consumer they can come experience what it was
that ancient people may have been drinking
and then realize that, wow,
they're not all that different than we are.
And that's what's so fascinating to me to watch
that fluidity from one culture to the next.