Chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Sudanese Nubians who lived nearly 2000 years ago shows they were ingesting the antibiotic tetracycline on a regular basis, likely from a special brew of beer. The find is the strongest yet that antibiotics were previously discovered by humans before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928.

“The bones of these ancient people were saturated with tetracycline, showing that they had been taking it for a long time,” Nelson said in a press release August 30. “I’m convinced that they had the science of fermentation under control and were purposely producing the drug.”

Armelagos, who specializes in reconstructing ancient diets, proposed that the Nubians made the tetracycline in their beer. There is evidence they knew how to make it, he says. Tetracycline is produced by a soil bacteria called streptomyces, which is how it was discovered by modern society in the 1940s. Streptomyces thrives in warm, arid regions such as that of ancient Nubia, and likely contaminated a batch of beer.

They must have known how to propagate the beer because they were doing it to make wine, Nelson says. There was also so much of it in their bones that it is near impossible that the tetracycline-laced beer was a fluke event.

To make sure that making the antibiotic beer was possible, Armelagos had his graduate students give it a try.

“What they were making wasn’t like a Bud Light but a cereal gruel,” Armelagos said. “My students said that it was ‘not bad,’ but it is like a sour porridge substance. The ancient people would have drained the liquid off and also eaten the gruel.”

(They would have drained the liquid off? Then what part are they calling “beer”?)

In addition to having discovered the healthy benefits of their beer, they would have been drinking it for the other health reason all societies took up with beer: it was safer than the water.

At any rate, I wonder how long it will be before everyone’s favorite brewer of ancient beers takes a crack at this?

This month is the 42nd edition of The Session, and hosting honors belong to Derrick at Ramblings of a Beer Runner: the theme is all about location in A Special Place, A Special Beer.

Two of the best ways I’ve found to explore a new place are to run around in it, and to sample the beer from it. And like many in the craft beer community, I constantly exhort anyone who will listen to support their local brewery, while simultaneously seeking out beers from distant lands that are new, novel, and exotically foreign. The Session provides a unique opportunity to explore this connection between the beer in our glasses and the place it comes from with perspectives from all over the world

So I ask for this 42nd Session that you write about a special place in your life, and a beer or brewery that connects you to that place. It can be the beer from your childhood home, a place you once lived, your current hometown, a memorable vacation you once took, or a place you’ve always wanted to go to but never had the chance. Please take a few moments to think about the how the beer connects you to this place, and share this with us. Of course, the definition of “place” is rather open ended, and in some cases, highly debatable, so it will be interesting to see the responses on what constitutes a place.

This month’s topic is perfect because it gives me an opportunity to write about a brewery that I’ve been wanting to cover for a while: the defunct Birkebeiner Brewing Company from Spokane, Washington. (There are a couple of reasons for this. One is nostalgia. The other is in the spirit of trying to document a bit of the history of these breweries that are no longer around, combined with a bit of web archaeology.)

Back through the mid-90s I spent four years in Spokane, Washington, generally going to school and discovering my affinity for craft beer and homebrewing (which I’ve written about before). These were formative beer years for me, and while Spokane wasn’t the beer town that Portland was (or is), there were still several microbreweries, the best of which (in my opinion) was the Birkebeiner Brewery.

It was in fact one of my semi-regular beer haunts, in large part because Tuesday nights they had their $1 pint specials (I would get off work in the evening—I worked late hours while going to school—and enjoy two or three pints for cheap along with something to eat). They also had a tremendous number of beers on tap for a brewpub, a dozen or so, and were always rotating and experimenting with new beers: I remember when they first brewed a chili beer, and one night we were there and a woman at the table next to us had ordered a pint of it. She had barely a sip and didn’t like it, and offered it to me instead (she felt bad about sending it back). Always game to try a new beer (not to mention a free one!), I accepted.

It was awful. I couldn’t drink it either, but I had to give the brewery credit for attempting it.

I drank a lot of their beer, and two that stand out in memory are the Apricot Ale and the Oatmeal Stout. In fact, I even have an old T-shirt for that stout:

The Stout was a great beer, and the Apricot was well-brewed and tasted like an Apricot Ale should (not something I will say about a lot of versions).

The Birkebeiner was located in a (then) sketchy part of town, on 35 West Main, and they lasted from 1994 until 2000 (a few years after I moved away). Despite the fact that the brewpub has been closed for 10 years, there are still a surprising number of regional guide websites that have it listed—it even shows up on Google Maps! But real information online about the brewery is scarce; so far all I’ve found of substance is this article from 1999 that talks about the overall Spokane beer scene:

Just a few blocks away from Fort Spokane at 35 West Main Street is the Birkebeiner Brewing Co. Founded by owner/brewer James Gimurtu in 1994, it is located in an old dry goods warehouse and textile factory. The building has been extensively remodeled inside, with large storefront windows, a handsome bar and marble-topped tables. The surrounding area is sadly in need of refurbishing, however, consisting mostly of a row of crumbling warehouses. Just down the block is the House of Charity, a local mission for the homeless. It is reminiscent of Pioneer Square or the Market Area is Seattle twenty years ago, before its massive renovation.

But Birkebeiner is a bright spot in this somewhat seedy location. Gimurtu, an avid cross-country skier, named it for a legendary group of hardy Norwegian skiers who rescued the infant King Haakon V (birkebeiner means “birch binding”) Originally from Minnesota, James has lived in Seattle and Portland, where he went to hotel/restaurant school in 1992. Afterward, he moved to Spokane to open a coffee bar. James decided to open a brewery after taking brewing classes at UC Davis in California, and getting hands-on experience at a couple of western Washington brewpubs. Gimutrtu opened Birkebeiner in May of 1994.

He has worked hard to make a go of it in an admittedly difficult spot for business. The brewery has a comfortable restaurant, managed by Joe Kaler. It is handsomely decorated with vintage beer posters from old Spokane breweries, advertising Bohemian Club from Bohemia Breweries and Goetz Beer from the Spokane Brewing Co. (with its certificate of excellence from Siebel Institute in Chicago, no less.)

The menu is more adventurous than most pub fare, with choices like Buffalo Burgers and several Cajun items, including andouille sausage and jambalaya. Prices are very reasonable as well. The restaurant is open from 11:30 a.m. to midnight weekdays, until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.

James brews with a 12 barrel brewhouse (the kettle size) from Century Manufacturing in Ohio, with two 22-barrel fermentation tanks. There are up to 12 beers on tap at any given time, including an American-style Hefeweizen; a somewhat fruity blonde ale; Alien Amber ale ( poured from a twisted rebar-hand tap handle), a nut brown ale, a roasty Scottish ale, a strongly bitter IPA, a seasonal winter dark, a hoppy, dark amber ale, and a roasty but smooth Oatmeal Stout. There are several fruit-flavored brews, including the blueberryish Tough Guy, a golden, aromatic but somewhat thin Belgian Raspberry, and an apricot ale, a cloudy pale ale which seemed to have the best fruit taste. Also available when I visited was a malty chili beer, with a good peppery aroma and not too much heat in the finish.

Good times. The Birkebeiner’s Apricot Ale inspired me to try brewing my own version (with fresh apricots a friend brought back from Moses Lake, Washington)—which turned out just okay as I recall, not great—which I hope gives you an idea of the impact the brewery had on me. It was a great place, and in some ways I wish I could revisit it. But then again, this month’s Session has helped me do just that.

Many, if not most, of our local breweries and drinking establishments are housed in older buildings just by the fact that rarely is a new brewery built from scratch because let’s face it, most older buildings have an existing personality, architectural touches, good location, and good bones. As I’ve sat at many a bar and sipped on a cold one, I’ve often visualized the building in its previous life – Storefont? Office building? House of ill repute? Haunted by a 1920s flapper girl? [Ghosts are always romantic figures like a scorned lover from the 1920s that threw herself out the window. How many junkies that OD’ed on smack in a flophouse stick around to haunt the place?]

This seems like it could be an interesting subject regardless of where the brewery is located, but being it’s an Oregon-themed blog, naturally it’ll only cover the Oregon breweries.

The first one featured is Widmer’s Gasthaus.

France is generally sniffed at by the real brewing countries, and indeed its glory has always rested on wine, not beer. I guess the scorn is not undeserved, as a reference around 1800 describes beers showcasing grass, coconut, parsnips, beets, potatoes, carrots, and every form of sugar then known. If all that’s not bad enough, the same book also described a “bastard-beer” made from cooked unmalted barley and molasses, brewed circa 1774 to cover a shortfall in cider supplies. Overall, pretty appalling.

That’s all he posts on the topic. I thought it was pretty amusing.

In Central Oregon, it will be playing at the Old Mill 16 at 8pm.

This month’s topic comes to us from London-based Boak and Bailey: How did it all start for you?

Continuing the “Beervangelism” theme, we’d like you to write about the moment when you saw the light. At what point did you realise you were a beer lover / geek / enthusiast? What beer(s) triggered the conversion? Did someone help you along your way, or did you come to it yourself?

In short; how did you get into good beer?

I have two answers, and I can’t say for sure which came first because the mists of time have worked their magic on my memory and my chronology is a bit mixed up. Both answers related to things happening within a fairly short period of each other which is why I can’t quite remember… it’s a bit of a "chicken and egg" problem in that sense, I guess.

It was the mid nineties, we were living in Spokane, and—being in my early twenties and going to school—the cheaper the beer I could get, the better. Sadly, I was a big drinker of Keystone Light, mostly because it was available at Costco for $7.99 per case. But I wasn’t overly particular; sometimes I’d "splurge" and pick up Miller Genuine Draft—in bottles!—and at some point I graduated to Molson Ice. (Had the higher alcohol content, natch.)

I was certainly aware of the existence of craft beers; Deschutes was a big thing in my home town of Bend, and I’d probably tried various micros from time to time. But—well, it’s a familiar story, so I won’t bore you any more with it.

One of the first things to raise my beer awareness and start me down the path was my friend Geoff insisting I try some microbrewed beer one night while we were at Ichabod’s North, and he bought a pitcher of Widmer Hefeweizen. The beer was orange and cloudy and smelled like fresh bread. My first impressions: thick, yeasty, bready, crisp, bracing, and the most delicious beer to pass my lips ever, at that point. Seriously, it was that good, and it really opened my eyes to what was happening with craft beer.

The other thing that happened was my introduction to homebrew. This was around the same time, and my friend Justin—who was also getting into good beer—brought over some homebrewed beer that a friend of his had made. It was Toad Spit Stout, the Irish stout recipe from Charlie Papazian’s New Complete Joy of Homebrewing. (Yes, I intentionally linked to the second-edition version knowing perfectly well there’s been a revised edition released.)

That Stout was far better than I frankly expected it to be, and opened my eyes to homebrewing the same way that Widmer’s Hefeweizen opened my eyes to microbrew. I was hooked. I bought Papazian’s book and it became my bible. I started homebrewing—clumsily at first, naturally—and explored Spokane’s tiny craft beer scene.

(A big help in this was Jim’s Homebrew—the best beer and homebrewing store in Spokane. Not only a homebrewing store, they had (have) several big refrigerator cases filled with craft and import beers—so I got to try a lot more beer than I would have otherwise (there were no other stores in Spokane at that time offering a variety even remotely like Jim’s).)

After that, I had the bug. Ever since I’m always looking to try new beers, new breweries, and learn something new. Back in 2004, I went online and "officially" launched The Brew Site… and the rest, as they say, is history.

Shortly before the beer began pouring at 12:01 a.m. on the morning of April 7th, 1933, August A. Busch, Jr., went on national radio (KMOX CBS) to address the nation.

Anheuser-Busch has uploaded that address to YouTube and put together a nifty video with it consisting of their historic imagery and video:

“There is a song in our hearts as ‘Happy Days are Here Again.’ And they are here again for out of a maze of confusion and anxiety has come a beacon light to guide the way to better times.”

One of the first cases of Budweiser was shipped directly to President Roosevelt via air express… this really amuses me for some reason. Maybe it’s the image of a mad dash to get as much beer out to the people as possible as soon as possible… even to the President.

(I kind of like "Legal Beer Day" for the 7th, and maybe "New Beer’s Eve" for the 6th…)

Anyway, some more tidbits I kind of like from the Anheuser-Busch stuff. First, I like this photo of St. Louis brewery workers loading up the trucks:

I guess I like the sense of "imminent to midnight" feel this seems to convey… loading up the trucks to be ready to roll out at 12:01 a.m. on the 7th.

Similarly, another picture:

The caption for this one reads, "A crowd estimated at 25,000 gathered at Anheuser-Busch’s Bevo bottling plant before midnight on April 6 to be among the first St. Louisans to taste post-Prohibition Budweiser." Sounds like a crazy Saturday at the Oregon Brewers Festival. Interesting on how A-B wasted no time in ditching their Bevo drink for the real deal—I imagine this sentiment was shared all over.

Speaking of Bevo, I’ve ferreted out some more Prohibition-era products A-B was producing. Aside from the Bevo and malt syrup and ginger ale and such, there were:

• Buschtee and Kaffo: soft drinks (introduced 1920, withdrawn ’21)
• Extra Dry Ginger Ale
• Old Devon Root Beer
• Grape Bouquet (?)
• Corn sugar, corn oil, corn syrup
• Carcho: chocolate beverage
• Other drinks: Malt Nutrine, Ino, Fermo, Windsor

Interestingly, by 1926 their ice cream sales topped 1 million gallons per year—though I don’t know what a comparable ice cream production/sales figure for other companies would be.

Tomorrow: Drink a beer for Legal Beer Day!

Along with non-alcohol Budweiser (think "near beer"), they produced other malt-based and soft drinks. First, Bevo:

Then, ginger ale:

Yes, the tagline says, "Makes an excellent horse’s neck." No, I don’t know what that means.

Of course, like many struggling brewers, A-B produced malt and yeast (but never to be combined!). An example ad for malt:

Perhaps the malt syrup could be poured over Anheuser-Busch brand ice cream. Yes, ice cream—another staple produced by brewers, whose vats and tanks and large-scale refrigeration equipment required minimal conversion:

And finally, this next image is so oddball enough that I couldn’t not post it:

No, I have no context for this image whatsoever. But I like it.

(An aside: April 7th was not the Repeal of the 18th Amendment, and thus Prohibition; that actually occurred on December 5th with the ratification of the 21st Amendment. Bob Skilnik has a good post on this. Therefore December 5th is "Repeal Day" and perhaps April 7th should be called "3.2 Day" or something similar…)

In fact, A-B sent me a press kit package for Beer is Back, consisting of a CD-ROM full of material, a bottle opener, and, oddly (but in a strangely cool way), both those small things came in a rather largish wooden crate—the type of crate, I’m guessing, that used to hold those old-timey bottles of beer. It’s really well constructed, with a hinged lid… check out my pictures:

I know I’ll be using it to store beer in, at the very least.

But anyway, Beer is Back… A-B is really promoting this and the CD-ROM includes things such as historic imagery, the audio of August Busch Jr.’s radio address from April 7, 1933, bits about history, and more. I actually find this rather cool because I just read Maureen Ogle’s terrific book Ambitious Brew earlier this year and loved it—I thought it was particularly eye-opening in regards to the big brewers that people love to loathe.

Incidentally, Ogle has been running a daily "countdown" of sorts on her blog leading up to April 7th, as well… good stuff.

So each day up through April 7th I’ll be posting a bit from the Anheuser-Busch package, some historic tidbits here and there (along with my regular blogging). Basically just cool things I find on the CD, and maybe more.

In the meantime, check out that crate.