DISCLAIMER: All claims below of a historical order called "FreeZymurgy" existing before this exact moment are completely and utterly false (at least to the best of our limited knowledge). We are taking some liberty with facts to make our points. But not all of them! Beer, mead, and wine are pretty miraculous, after all.
Way, WAY back in 7000 BC (when you had to walk up hill both ways to get to to your sleeping hole) our ancestors left behind the first recorded evidence of mead making. Some assert the glorious concoction might have existed long before the first surviving piece of the archeological record, but to us this seems a mute point. Since the earliest evidence of mead predates the invention of writing by at least 3 millenia, it is clear our ancestors had their priorities straight. Mead pops up in Europe's archeological record in about 3000 BC, but by then both wine and beer had entered the historical record. The world was changing fast, and some scholars have attributed the development of civilization to the invention of beer!(Brief tangent: how does one get into actual beer scholarship?!)
Many of history's finest figures have waxed poetic about alcoholic beverages over the years, alluding to the incredibly diverse role of giggle juice throughout the ancient ages. We will devote some blogs (and maybe some of these new-fangled tweets) to these in the future. For now, we have some really interesting (and exclusive!) history regarding a newly discovered ancient order protecting the artisan-ship and integrity of the alcoholic crafts... (read: this is where we start making crap up)
... FreeZymurgy!
When we discovered the ancient avatar used to represent the FreeZymurgy order, it looked suspiciously like the emblem associated with the Freemasons. And, like the Freemasons, we found the original FreeZymurgists had a compelling origin story worthy of any comic book strip out there (if you have a bullshit meter, it should be going crazy right now...)
... It all started one glorious day in the spring of the same "long, long time ago" referenced often by pop culture, Ninkasi (the Sumerian goddess of beer and inspiration for the first written record of a beer recipe) had just thrown the last pound of grain into her kettle when she was approached by two odd looking characters. One smelled like a barnyard and had an extremely haggard look; almost like he had been cooped up for 40 days (and, consequently, 40 nights) on a boat somewhere in the middle of the ocean. He said his name was Noah, and that he had been given the gift of wine to ease his mind at the end of days spent laboring in the fields. The second was a tall, barbaric looking man carrying a giant spear and one hell of an ego. He seemed bi-polar, alternately scowling and appearing on the verge of tears. Ninkasi learned his name was Odin, and he had stolen "inspirational" mead from two jackals in his employ named Fjalar and Galar. Word has it they were slightly murderous dwarves, and tricky at that. As the paragons of alcoholic beverages, the three looked at the world and thought the state of humanity was (and I quote) "pretty shitty". So they vowed to make it their mission to propagate their craft and help humanity move into civilization by taking the edge off of life. As eons came and went, they passed their knowledge from generation to generation. Those who employed their craft were called "artisans" and produced some of the finest beverages the world had ever seen. Soon, beer had hops, meads had fruits and spices, and wine had... well, different grapes and more rules. Then one sad morning, humanity inevitably (and shamefully) applied the breakthroughs of the industrial revolution to brewing, and shifted beer out of the realm of households and neighborhoods and into gargantuan facilities turning out massive amounts of pale yellow, barely flavored, and all around inferior beverages. Mead was lost into the annals of history, and wine, well... still had more rules.
But all is not lost! The society of Zymurgists dedicated to the craft of great beverage making still exists, and it refuses to be a secret any longer. Take back your crafts, and come into the open arms of home brewing and home mead making (wine too, but promise to leave some of the rules out of the way of flavor).
Become a FreeZymurgist today!
A blog dedicated to advancing the art of creating delectable alcoholic libations at home!
Bullshit, indeed! I had to look up Ninkasi and mead. I appreciate your sense of humor.
ReplyDeleteI have been vaguely interested in brewing and found your blog. I wish you the best of luck!