BEER, II

A beverage rather low in alcohol content, brewed by slow fermentation from wheat or other grain. The Hebrew word soʹveʼ, rendered “wheat beer,” may also be translated “liquor.”​—Isa 1:22, ftn; Ho 4:18, ftn; Na 1:10, ftn.

Cuneiform tablets reveal that the art of brewing beer from grain was practiced in ancient Mesopotamia as early as the third millennium B.C.E. When Abraham first arrived in Egypt he probably found that beer was already a common drink there. At a later date, it is said, Ramses III prized beer so highly that he offered up some 114,000 L (30,000 gal) a year to his gods. Many Philistine beer mugs with their strainer spouts have been found. Those various nations, it seems, had a great variety of beers to suit every taste​—sweet beer, dark beer, perfumed beer, sparkling beer, spiced beer—​served either hot or cold, watered down or thick and syrupy.​—See WINE AND STRONG DRINK.