Brewing

The oldest known beer recipe is 3,800 years old — a hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of brewing, that doubled as an instruction manual: step by step from soaking the grain to the finished drink, sung in verse.

The Weihenstephan brewery in Freising — today part of TUM Munich — has been operating since 1040 and is considered the oldest continuously working brewery in the world. Almost a thousand years of beer without any notable interruption.

Cleanliness is half the job. In home brewing, more batches die from stray microbes than from recipe mistakes — sterilize all equipment before the hop step, don't just rinse it.