Frist Alcohol

- August 12, 2018

First alcohol

Alcohol is one of the most important part of a restaurant these days, but did you know when did alcohol first came into picture?

Discovery of late stone age jugs reflects the culture & common intention of fermented beverages existed at least as early as the Neolithic period (c. 10000 BC)

It was when the Egyptians used fermented grains to form a liquid which was a prototype form of beer, these grains enabled them to enhance the process of bread making and proved in making raised breads. They found that adding the sediments of the ferment was the quickest and easiest method of starting fermentation in a new batch of dough.

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Wine came after beer but was to become of crucial and religious importance to the Egyptian, Greece & Rome. It was used in celebrations and festivals. In addition to its festive and cultural role wine was also used in culinary purpose as it was used to make tough meat supple, also wine marinades used to remove excess salt from meats which were soaked in brine solution, wine was also depicted in many classic dishes from the romans in their sauce recipes and has an historical importance to the roman cookbook of Apicius (3^rd century B.C.) wine itself was commonly used to infuse spices to mask the rank flavours of oxidation & acetification.

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Alcohol was believed to be the active ingredient in the healing powers of wine. Up to that time the word alcohol was derived for any generic term of product that derived vaporization & condensation. Not only medicines but the ancient practice of alchemy were involved in the European origins of distillation, alchemy was a respected branch of physical sciences and was chiefly concerned with finding the means of transforming ordinary metals into gold, thus people believed a lot in it and thought if it could be discovered then it will guarantee them eternal youth with lots of gold as gold was highly recognised as a precious metal, with the realization that alcohol could be repeatedly distilled to ever-greater levels of purity, people came to believe that spirits could be the holy grail.

It was Arnold de Villanova , a Catalan physician of the 13^th century, who first coined the Latin term ‘aqua vitae’ meaning ‘water of life’, for distilled spirits, indicating that they were associated with the promotion of vitality and health.