https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/feb/13/worlds-oldest-known-beer-factory-may-have-been-unearthed-in-egypt

From the article:
He said the factory apparently dates back to the region of King Narmer, who is widely known for his unification of ancient Egypt at the beginning of the first dynastic period (3150BC-2613BC).Archaeologists found eight huge units – each is 20 metres (about 65ft) long and 2.5 metres (about 8ft) wide. Each unit includes about 40 pottery basins in two rows, which were used to heat a mixture of grains and water to produce beer, Waziri said.

And also!
"Egypt has announced dozens of ancient discoveries in the past couple of years, in the hope of attracting more tourists.The tourism industry has been reeling from the political turmoil following the 2011 popular uprising that toppled the longtime autocrat, Hosni Mubarak. The sector was also dealt a further blow last year by the coronavirus pandemic."
 
And an attempt to make that ancient Egyptian "beer"
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/a-sip-of-history-ancient-egyptian-beer/
From the blog:
"Beer was a result of the Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000 BC), as fermentation was an accidental by-product of the gathering of wild grain. It’s said that beer was not invented but discovered, yet the manufacturing of beer was an active choice and the ancient Egyptians produced and consumed it in huge volumes."

And at least they hadn't a Catholic Church against the consumption and brewing as here in the former Roman Belgica, until they had to bow to the customs and invented some miracles to make it salonfähig even in their Catholic circles...
https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t1295-beer-drinking



And finally beer drinking is a custom that belongs on this forum about customs and traditions, the same as certain customs of eating...as the Roman and Medieval manner...spoken of "manners"...at table... they translate "manieren, tafelmanieren" as "manners, table manners"

In his Historia Mundi Naturalis the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder mentions the making of beer:

'Est et Occidentis populis sua ebrietas, fruge madida: pluribus modis per Gallias Hispaniasque nominibus aliis, sed ratione eadem, Hispaniae iam et vetustatem ferre ea genera docuerunt. Aegyptus quoque e fruge sibi potus similes excogitauit. Nullaque in parte mundi cessatebrietas.'

'And the people of the West have their own brew - fermented grain - made in many ways by the Gauls and the Spanish under different names but for the same reason. In Spain they even specialise in varieties which can be stored for a long time. I believe that Egypt also has a similar grain drink. It seems that in no part of the world is there sobriety.'
  
Pliny generally had a low opinion of beer, indeed he associated it with drunkenness. He was appalled that people drank it strait and undiluted (nec diluendo) and contrasted this with wine which he says was modified by being diluted with water. He also despaired that so much time, ingenuity and effort was spent for the sole purpose of achieving inebriation. 

60 years after the Roman defeat in the Teutoburg wilderness, Pliny was writing at a time when the empire had settled upon the river Danube as marking its northern frontier. South of the river was the Roman province of Raetia with its capital Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg). That city was linked to Italy by the Via Claudia Augusta which came north from the Po Valley and over the Alps. The most northerly outpost of the empire in Raetia was Castra Regina (Regensburg) on the southern bank of the Danube where the river makes a turn from heading north and then starts heading south on its long journey to the Black Sea. Castra Regina was a fort at the end of the Roman military road which followed the southern bank of the river - Via iuxta Danuvium. It’s possible that beer could have been exported from the banks of the Danube along the Via Claudia Augusta south to Italy at that time.
  
Today, halfway along the Via iuxta Danuvium between Regensburg and Augsburg, lies the abbey of Weltenburg. It was founded in the 7th Century by Frankish monks trained by Ireland’s St Columbanus. It’s not clear whether they chose the site because there was an existing brewery there or whether the monastery initiated the practice of brewing in the locality. What is the case, however, is that the abbey’s brewery was already well known by the 11th Century with the Benedictine monks producing high quality dark beer. And it is still in production to this day, believed to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest, continuously active breweries in the world.




(Weltenburg Abbey with its beach on a bend on the southern bank of the River Danube in Bavaria. Surrounded by limestone cliffs and caves, was beer being brewed here in the 1st Century AD at the time of Pliny the Elder?)

The mention of making of beer by Pliny might be suitable for Frode's blog.

Vizzer wrote:

Pliny generally had a low opinion of beer, indeed he associated it with drunkenness. He was appalled that people drank it strait and undiluted (nec diluendo) and contrasted this with wine which he says was modified by being diluted with water.

Pliny probably associated beer with drunkenness, not because of its potency (even when undiluted, beers of the time were almost certainly quite weak, containing just a few percent alcohol), but because it was so cheap. In Pliny's time a congius of beer cost about half the price of the same volume of even the poorest quality wine, and so it was most often drunk only by 'the dregs' of Roman society (although when you actually do the sums I think a down-and-out Roman alcoholic would probably have got more ethanol for his quadrans if he'd just stuck to cheap undiluted wine, provided he could stomach it). Livy was of course a very wealthy Patrician, and so a wine-drinking snob, who likely sneered at beer simply because he considered it as being suitable only for the poor, the unsophisticated plebs, and those immigrants who didn't know any better.

Nevertheless he did note that the yeasty foam on beer was excellent for making bread, as well as reporting that;
"Beer-foam is used by women for cosmetic purposes" (Pliny N-H, XXII, 164) although he doesn't explain exactly how they used it ... maybe it was as a type of hair-gel, thus allowing for the creation of those rather extreme and towering hairdos that were so in fashion at the time (mid 1st century AD).

PS - Regarding Viz's photo - I forgot to add:

What a splendid site that abbey/brewery occupies; a broad sandy beach, a clean river, a dramatic rocky gorge, woods all around ... and caves too! Caves are well cool - and in more than one sense of the word. From the time of the abbey's founding those caves were doubtless used to securely store all sorts of produce, and they would also have served to keep barrels of beer (wine too) agreeably cool through the summer months. Additionally, when cool-tolerant, bottom-fermenting yeasts were discovered/developed in the late 15th century - which produced lighter, lager-type beers, in contrast to the darker, ambient-temperature, top-fermenting, ale-type beers of the past - the abbey could readily adapt to the new beer fashion, and no doubt profited thereby.