I started Shore Craft Beer in 2014 to help highlight the breweries here on the Shore and to develop tourism around craft beer here.  I was challenged into this act by someone who said craft beer was a fad and that women didn’t like craft beer.  I worked for an airline in 1985 where we started putting Sam Adams on our planes exclusively which was particularly popular on our flights between Logan International in Boston and our hub at Dulles.  I didn’t like beer until there was craft beer.  I was focused on a movement that was 35 – 40 years old in the United States.  We learned recently that a large brewery has just been discovered in ancient Egypt.

5000 year old brewing kettles from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism

Remains of Ancient Brewery Found in Abydos, Egypt

This brewery site dates back to 3100 BC when King Narmer ruled.  He was considered to be the unifier of Egypt and founder of the First Dynasty.  Dr. Matthew Adams, one of the leaders of the expedition that found the brewery believes that the beer was used in royal burial rituals for Egypt’s early kings. “Evidence for the use of beer in sacrificial rites was found during  excavations in these facilities.”

According to Abydos.org which describes Abydos archaeology, Abydos was “Egypt’s most important religious center and burial place of its earliest kings — is situated along a low desert terrace between two promontories jutting out from the cliffs that shelter the site in a sandy bay.”

Beer tourism in Egypt, visit the site of a large production brewery from 5000 years ago

Production Capacity of 22,400 Litres

Forty clay pots were found that were used to warm mixtures of grain and water.  Natural yeasts found their way into these pots of cooked grains and began the fermentation process.  According to Reuters, the brewery was split into eight sections for brewing.  Each area was 65 feet long and contained about 40 pots arranged in two rows.  The pots were “held in place by levers made of clay placed vertically in the form of rings.”

Beer Tourism

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism is hoping that this new brewery site will help revive the tourism industry in Egypt which, like here, has been decimated by COVID.  The site is located in the northern part of Egypt near Luxor, a popular tourism destination in recent times.

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Ann McGinnis Hillyer
Author: Ann McGinnis Hillyer

Ann's father was in the Corps of Engineers so she was born in Africa and moved all over the world and the United States growing up. After graduating cum laude from Duke University, she started her marketing career at an airline based out of Dulles International Airport. She furthered this career in both the for-profit and non-profit worlds before helping launch StateVentures, LLC, the publisher of OceanCity.com, Annapolis.com, and other state and regional geodomains. Here, she focuses on tourism and tourism marketing through a broad media mix including online, print, and social media efforts. While at the airline, she worked with Jim Koch and the Boston Beer Company, brewers of Sam Adams beer. This love of craft beer and the craft beer industry as well as her interest in tourism, led to the founding of ShoreCraftBeer.com and the effort to make the Shore a craft beer destination.

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