Here's what a 5,000 year old beer recipe tastes like

Did you know that the Chinese brewed beer about 5,000 years ago?

A group of researchers at Stanford were able to piece together the ancient recipe by analysing a yellowish residue found in 5,000-year-old Chinese clay funnels.

With that recipe, a group of students managed to do a homebrew of the uniquely Chinese beer, thanks to ingredients native to Asia.

The recipe calls for several components including barley, broomcorn millets, as well as Job's tears, also known as Chinese pearl barley.

Professor Liu Li, who was part of the team that unearthed the recipe, said that it was surprising to find barley in the recipe, as the earliest evidence of barley seeds in China date back only 4,000 years ago.

"Our results suggest the purpose of barley's introduction in China could have been related to making alcohol rather than as a staple food," she said in a Stanford publication.

According to Liu, the ancient Chinese didn't filter the ingredients out of the beer, using straws for drinking. This left the beer looking more like porridge, and likely tasting sweeter and fruitier than lagers today, which are clear and bitter.

But students doing the experiment noted that their brew had a sour taste.

"We all came together and sampled the beers that we had made," said Madeleine Ota, an undergraduate student, in a video.

"The alcohols in general all had sort of a sour taste."

We can only wish our classes at school were this cool.