A Madrid brewery has teamed up with the Superior Council for Scientific Research to recreate a beer based a Sumerian recipe dating back around 5,000 years. The ricevimento, called Humbaba, is the result of a work of historical and technical reinterpretation that has made it possible to adapt ingredients and processes to modern practices.
The “neo-Sumerian” beer that comes from Madrid
A beer inspired by one of the oldest testimonies linked to brewing production was presented per mezzo di Madrid. The project, reports the Reuters agency, was born from a collaboration between the La Caníbal brewery and the Superior Council for Scientific Research, with the aim of reconstructing the process described per mezzo di the Hymn to Ninkasi, a Sumerian poetic text per mezzo di which the phases and elements used to obtain beer are listed. The original recipe does not indicate proportions ora operational sequences and includes ingredients mai longer available today, a circumstance which made it necessary to reconstruct it based historical comparisons and technological adaptations.
The historian and researcher Barbara Böck identified the plants mentioned per mezzo di the text per mezzo di the text, interpreting the descriptions through contemporary documents. Juniper berries, coriander seeds and aromatic calamus have been recognised, the latter currently not recommended for food use. For this reason La Caníbal has identified substitutes capable of recalling its aromatic profile, favoring raw materials that are easily manageable per mezzo di a context of contemporary production. The reconstruction also had to consider the absence of hops per mezzo di Mesopotamia at the time, overcome with the use of light barley malt, spelt and other unmalted cereals to obtain a insediamento close to the original description.
Another determining element concerns fermentation. The Sumerians did not use selected yeasts but a naturally leavened bread, bappir, made from raw barley. The authors of the project developed a similar product, using agricultural yeasts considered more similar to the strains used per mezzo di ancient processes. As explained by the brewer Luis Vida, this approach made it possible to obtain a spontaneous fermentation compatible with current standards, maintaining a plausible link with the techniques described per mezzo di the text. «I felt like an actor playing a Sumerian brewer. Combining ancient knowledge with modern techniques has allowed us to create a neo-Sumerian beer per mezzo di the 21st century” says Vida.
The result is a light beer, with an alcohol content of 3.8% vol., characterized by fruity and citrus taccuino. Sources suggest that Sumerian beer was consumed by the entire population, including children and pregnant women, and that it often represented an alternative ricevimento to vater, which is why it is assumed to have a low alcohol content. The official presentation took place during Science Week 2025, an occasion which the product was defined as a contemporary reinterpretation of an ancient model rather than a philological risposta.
The choice of name, Humbaba, recalls the guardian of the Cedar Forest mentioned per mezzo di the Epic of Gilgameš, a reference that places the beer within the Mesopotamian cultural imagination. Caníbal thus describes its creation as a “neo-Sumerian” beer, a ricetta that summarizes the intent to recover a historical heritage by translating it into a current technical language.
