Ola Latino USA listener, It's Maria no Josa and today we're going to share a podcast with you that we've been listening to. It's called Hungary for History. It's from our colleagues at iHeartMedia's My Gultura podcast network. You might have heard of the hosts, actress and director Eva Longoria and Mike de Gomez Rejon, who's a culinary historian. So they've joined forces to dive into the origins of their favorite Mexican foods and drinks, whether it's Tamales trocolat Caliente
or delicious awkat Is. On today's episode, Eva and Mike dy are going to talk about besa beer. They're going to share their favorite Mexican beers and how the drink has evolved through the years. And guess what. It turns out women were the original beer brewers. So get your favorite drink ready, Servesa and enjoy.
One of the most ancient alcoholic beverages. Beer has brought people together since the dawn of civilization.
Today's episode is all about the history of beer. My name is Evel Lomboria and I am my Racon and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores are past and present through food.
On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages.
So make yourself at home. I do you have a beer.
With you right now?
I have like what I have in front of me. I have a little a little container cooled with ice, and I have a little coronita.
I love those. I have charro beer. You have, I have had you have that.
It's wonderful.
It's like the opposite of this. I love that we both we both picked Mexican beers. I'm gonna open this one up. Is it two? Open it up with my tea.
Don't do that.
Let's know. I got it. Oh that's a good sound. I was trying to get that sound. Now you are a fan of beer. I am not.
You're not a fan of beer.
I'm not a beer drinker. No.
I feel like I drink more other things than I drink beer. But on a hot summer day, there's nothing better than a beer, or like a really good michelada or clamato.
Okay, mich lada, that's my jam. Now you're now you're speaking my language. I'll drink a michalala and I'll drink. What's the other The clamato has that tomato based Yes, that's the one. I like the glamato with the with the chamois on the rim, with the uh pica fresa as a straw. I mean I like it. I like it fully prepared.
That is the best. And when it has a piece of celery sticking out of it, that's even better.
I did not know miche lava came from michella e lava, my beer ice cold, michella milava.
I love these sort of play on words, Like when you think about where words come from. I find that so interesting. So even the word comes from the Roman goddess of agriculture, Cetus. So Cetus the strength of Cetus. So the strength of agriculture is is is the goddess? We we right, Yes, this is the goddess.
Yeah, because that's where cereal comes from as well. Exactly the exactly goddess of cetis oh comes from.
Very interesting, so many interesting things.
Beer's older than wine. Correct, Beer is.
One of the most ancient fermented beverages. Like we don't know exactly when beer was first fermented, but it was probably at least four thousand BC when we first see evidence of beer preparation in the Near East, So it goes back a very very very very very long time.
I know, we don't know exactly when it started, but who did it and when did it become like popular, that's a good question.
We don't know exactly who did it first, and it's probably something that was discovered, not necessarily something that was invented. So the first evidence of beer dates to you know, the Fertile Crescent, this area stretching from modern day Egypt, the Mediterranean to Turkey, Iran, Iraq, these whole areas that we started to study in fourth grade. Basically we see the evolution of beer starting when people moved from a hunting and gathering society to becoming sort of sedentary and
growing wheat to bake bread. So it probably just happened and this sort of fermentation that were probably making dough for bread and it was fermented, So we start seeing beer for the first time. So that goes back even like ten thousand BC, but the first evidence is around four thousand and there's this image from ancient Mesopotamia on modern Iraq that's a little pictogram of two figures drinking beer from a straw. So it's this container and then
two figures drinking beer from it. So this is the first evidence of sort of sharing a drink becoming a symbol of hospitality and a symbol of friendship.
But beer was consumed by everybody, rich, poor men, women. It wasn't like the quila, which was like for the gods or the royals. Right, everybody consumed.
Everybody consumed beer. It was the drink for everybody. Yes, rich, poor men, women, you know, elderly children. Everybody was drinking beer. So it's very different than a lot of other you know, ancient beverages and even you know today we have so many different varieties of beer. This is something that has always been around. I mean, the ancient Egyptians had at least seventeen different kinds of beers, and they had different names. You know, they had names ranging from the beautiful and
the good, the heavenly, the joy Bringer. But you mentioned like the Geyland, you know, or Bulkeh and Maya Weel and all of these ideas of We talked about this a little bit with when we did our tequila episode and also with the wine episode that drinking and getting a little bit buzzed connecting us to the gods. So this is the same with with beer. Right, This whole idea of beer's ability to intoxicate and inducing a state of you know, alter consciousness was something that was magical.
It was like it was a gift from the gods. I think I stole that from you that every time I drink wine, I go, I'm just connecting to the gods. Don't mind me, don't mind me. But yeah, it was like it seemed magical. It was like a magical experience. And you know, talking about our wine episode, you know, I had read that beer was easier to make because grapes were seasonal. Wine couldn't be stored without pottery, and
pottery really didn't emerge until six thousand BCS. So beer could be stored like in leather bags or animal stomachs or I mean, like really stone vessels. Like it wasn't It was a very low maintenance alcoholic.
Absolutely, it was very low maintenance. And because of this, eventually it becomes a drink of the lower classes because it wasn't wine, and we start seeing this shift, whereas for millennia, it was the drink for everybody, especially you know, the ancient Greeks and the Romans, they started creating this division even though everybody was still drinking beer because it was accessible, it was easy, it was enjoyable.
So yeah, but yes, I love that beer. Like in in original writings, like the earliest collections of written language, beer is one of the most familiar words that was written down because of tax purposes, and so they were obviously taxing it, but it was like one of the most common words, one of the earliest and most common words that was like recording.
Yeah, I find that so interesting, especially like writing was originally invented to record the collection and distribution of grain, beer, and bread, these three things. That's why writing. The earliest you know, documents in cuoning form basically were about bread, beer, and gray, which is so interesting to me.
But they would use it like medicinally too. Sometimes sometimes saffron and beer massaged into a woman's abdomen and was prescribed for labor pains.
I was like, okay, yeah, it's like okay, that's interesting. Yeah, And this comes from a document where it's called the ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical text from around fifteen fifty BC with hundreds of different examples of beer. Another one is half an onion mixed with beer is set to cure constipation.
Oh, I gotta try that. That does not sound appetizing to me, not.
At all, not even a little bit. It's so funny though.
Yeah, but the olive, the olives, the olives with beer cured indigestion. So I just think people were very, very innovative, and the specifically the Egyptians. They also thought in the afterlife that a good after life depended on having an adequate supply of bread.
And I wonder what that means, Like, what is adequate? What would be adequate to you if it were wine? Or it would be.
Adequate to you, Oh, it would be bottomless, like bottomless mimosas, but bottomless bottomles. Thats of why.
I love it.
Don't go anywhere. We've got more on the history of beer when we come back.
I think what I find the most interesting about beer in general is that traditionally brewers were women. What for many women sort of fermenting beer was a household you know, task, It was an important thing. And ancient Sumerian women double just priestesses. They fermented beer for religious purposes, to honor their goddess Nicassi, who they believed gave beer to humans
and brought peace and well being to society. So for thousands of years, women had extensive knowledge of plants associated with curing ailments, cooking, brewing, and also witchcraft.
I love this story. This is my favorite story. I'm obsessed with the Middle Ages and all of that Renaissance England, and during the Middle Ages, in Renaissance England, women transported their beer brews in cauldrons so that they would make it in their house in these big cauldrons, and then they would go to market. But when they went to market, the markets were so crowded they had to wear pointy hats so people could spot them and know where to
find the beer. So this is where the term which is brew comes from, or the word brewery, which I found so funny. But also the fact that this led to some religious movement that, you know, just as women were like establishing their mark not only in beer, but like in the economy. I don't find it ironic that religion was like, oh, hang on, hold on a minute,
women are getting too far ahead of themselves. The religious movement made it more strict for women to make beer and condemned witchcraft which was like associated with brewery, and then the male brewers saw the opportunity and to reduce competition, and so some of those male brewers would accuse female brewers of witchcraft and being witches and they were brewing
up spells and potions instead of the beer. And that was it, like the rumors took over, and then over time it just became dangerous for women to practice brewing beer for the fear of being misidentified as a witch. Like what it's insane.
Yes, because of the whole Reformation movement that was okay, no, no, no, we can't have women in the economy, we can't have powerful women.
The fact that to date, to date, men dominate the beer industry and all these beer companies you know, really positioned beer as a male drink. And it's really you see, you can connect the dots of history and go, oh, that's words saying no, it's.
So it's so fascinating. It's that blows my mind. This whole which is with the pointy hats making beer. They were just you know, they were just trying to make a living. And another part of that story, some of the women had their shops, but maybe they worked with their husbands and had their shops. So they used to have cats to keep mice away from their grains that they were using to make beer. So that's a whole other thing that Pointy had, and that's.
A whole added, a whole added story. Let's talk about the history of beer in Mexico because you know, I covered this and searching for Mexico when I was in No Boleon and there's a huge beer movement in Leon.
Uh.
And I got to go to a couple of beer factories, breweries and solve the whole process and how they make it. And there's like this huge artisanal movement.
So is the artisanal beer Is it the same as a craft beer movement? That's different from like say that but that I'm drinking. But it's the chartro that You're right, that's this is like this.
Yeah, Chad beer. Yeah, chard is a craft beer. Yeah, it's a it's a premium Mexican pilsner.
Uh.
And it's definitely made differently.
And these are also these artisanal you know, craft beers are much smaller batch beers, like much much smaller production. It's not the millions and millions and millions of gallons that are produced. They're much more thoughtful.
Yeah, you don't even want to know how much water goes into making one bottle. Really, it's a little wow. It's a lot of water. I mean from from beginning to end. I mean from how much you have to water wheat and barley and the crops to fermenting it, dumping that out, for mending it, dumping that out, boiling it, dumping that out like, it's a lot of a lot of gallons per bottle. So beer is beer the most consumed alcoholic beverage. It is or one of it is right, it is the most.
It is the most. So barley and wheat were brought to Mexico, New Spain early on between fifteen twenty one and fifteen twenty three, and beer was first May the summer of fifteen forty two, so really early on by a man named Alfonsorera. He was a member of Ernancortes's expedition, and he established a European style brewery near Mexico City, on the foot of the volcanoes around Mexico City. And
this is an area known for its water. You just mentioned how much water is needed, so there was a lot of water there and he was making amazing beers, but three fourths of the profits had to be sent to Spain, so and then Spain didn't like that local beer was competing with the sale of imported wines, so the brewery closed after a couple of years. And for centuries, beers were imported from Europe, you know, primarily from Germany
and Belgium, alongside beer and other liquors. But because of this, beer was super expensive, so the locals, you know, population, they couldn't afford it, or much of the population couldn't afford it, and they preferred the native bulke, which is another fermented you know drink. And then after the before the revolution with when Portfitio thes President Porfidia Diaz was in power in the late eighteen hundreds, he started cracking
down on drinking. He started imposing regulations on on buque, which was very popular among the indigenous population, because he wanted Mexico to be seen as more modern and European. So these European brewers that it started opening up breweries around Mexico, started spreading rumors that pukea was dirty, that pulke was written with feces, stigmatizing Pulque and its producers, and by the nineteen fifties, beer had overtaken Pulque and many of Mexico City's bulgarias closed.
Just like the railroad network built in Mexico allowing the importing of that of all this machinery forced Mexican brewers to compete against North American beers, and that's how we started this mass distribution throughout Mexico. And I thought that was interesting, like the railroad brought the access to the machinery, because you know, I've been through that with in Central America.
I visited so many farms in Central America on Luras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and the thing that holds them back is lack of tractors. They don't have the technology to be a force, but yet they have the soil and the climate. And so you're like, wait, you know, this is crazy. This is something as small as a tractor, but it's not that small. It's like it's a big deal, and we uh, the charity I was with took down some tractors that were going to change the lives of some
of these families. So it's interesting when I saw that, I was like the importing of machinery from the US allowed Mexican brews to compete.
Yeah, to grow otherwise, Yeah, it makes it makes perfect sense. Otherwise, how are they gonna how are you going to get it from one place to the other. So then we start seeing by the end of the nineteenth century, we start seeing brewery on a large scale.
And then how did prohibition affect beer?
Prohibition? US prohibition in the nineteen twenties, Americans couldn't drink. Americans cross the border to drink. And this was in the nineteen twenties. They already had the machinery in the railroads and this really helped propel the brewing industry, Mexico's brewing industry. And by nineteen twenty five, the beer industry
was thriving. And we started seeing you know, glass industry, the bottle cap industry, advertising industry, so ice, ice, ice, everything just really started to grow around that time in the nineteen twenties.
Wow. And then this, I mean it's a pro US provision really forced Americans to travel south to drink. I mean that helped tequila, that helped spirits, that helped rum, that helped everything.
When we come back carmin Belasco Favela of Mochere's brew House sends us a message stay with.
Us, Welcome back to the show. Muheta's brew House is a southern California brewery that is redefining gender and race in the craft beer industry. Plus it's an all female run Latina owned brew house. Amen here's Carmen Velasco Favela, one of the founders to tell us more about this incredible business.
My name is Carmen Velasco and I was born in San Diego. I'm the first generation of parents from Sinaloa and Sonora, and I am the founder and owner of Muhetta's Blue House. Some Muhitdah's brew House actually started as a beer club back in twenty nineteen. It was a six month series to basically educate and empower Latinas in the craft beer industry. So we started with the history of craft beer all the way to making a beer
together with the girls and from an idea. It turned out that we had over fifty women show up on our first class and that was really the beginning of this project which has now become its own brewery which is now Mooheads brew House that opened up during the pandemic. We had built so much momentum with the girls that doing zoom and other things was just not an option. So there had been a vacant brewery in the community, and so we reached out to them. We said, hey,
we've got all these women. We would love to use your space to continue our education further. And one thing led to another. Here we are two years later, and we have Muheada's brew House that is all operated by women and basically dedicated to women. A lot of the recipes we come up with, they, you know, some of them are true to style. So we have a straight
West Coast ipa. And then we have beers that are like Lahfa it's a ta Marino Belgian with and we incorporate some of the flavors that I grew up with as far as being Latina Mexican into our beer, and people really love to see that.
They enjoy that.
Not only do we make beers with some of the ingredients we grew up with, but also we make micha lavas that I'm from Sinaloa, so I'm a Marisco girl and I love my Micha lava. And so those are things that we've incorporated in our brewery that celebrate what we grew up with as latinx or as Mexican. I'm just so proud of my team, all the girls that have come this far to be part of this project and to represent because it's not easy. Anytime you go
into an area that's now male dominated, it's intimidating. But you know what, at the end of the day, if your heart, if it's speaking to you and that you need to do something, you can do it. And so I just recommend that for any woman in the craft beer industry or in any other business it's male dominated, to move forward.
Why the craft beer is the original beer.
The craft beer is the original beer. Absolutely, it is the original beer. And there is a company in Mexico craft beer movement in Mexico called imp Do you know about this. It's a group of women, it's a it's an it's a Mexican craft beer movement, you know, by women, and it's all of these women that are getting together and making craft beer and their proceeds go to women organizations. So that is very very cool. I haven't had that
many Mexican craft beers other than Chadro. Really, I don't think I've had that many Mexican craft beers.
I love Chad. I'm not a beer drinker, but Chardo's my my jam I really it's just smooth. And then I was like, oh, maybe I'm a pilsner girl like I. Chato brought me into beer, like to really experience it.
And like other things like wine and tequila, you have notes and you have like finishes, and you have oh yeah, you can smell the barley, you can taste the honey, and I'm like, I taste beer, but Chatro really, like a lot of the craft beers, really you have a better experience than the mass produced ones because you can really feel those those notes and the care and concern that is brewed in every bottle. You go, Okay, this
is like. I went to a bar in Monterrey that had ninety nine beers, which is funny play on ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall, but ninety nine draft beer, and one tasted like mango, one tasted like chocolate, one tasted like They had a really fun menu and it was really a really fun place. It's in the show Searching for Mexico, so you guys will have to check out.
I have to go up going to Monterrey in April for a wedding, so you have to give me, give me.
It's it's it's built. The restaurant is built out of old train box cars, so it's super cool. And the food like it's a bar, but the food, and they have brisket, They have a lot of Texas stuff. They have a lot of barbecue and stuff like that there. And I was like, oh my god. And they were so excited to serve me the brisket because I was.
That's awesome, and it wass and beer, briskets and beer.
It's like the best brisk I will say, I'm so proud that that, like even mass market Mexican beers are so good and very on par with the good European beer that really they were, that they were modeled after totally. I thought, I thought the evolution of beer in Mexico is something.
It is. I agree, and I love a good even though it's not the fanciest, it's not the you know, craftiest, there's just something very good about it. This sort of little sunshine in a bottle. Love it.
What a fascinating history, and there's so much more. I mean, we went down the lane of Mexico because that's who we are. But like, if you really did a deep dive of beer, it could take you down many family trees, many family trees of countries. And I was, I was, I like obviously having the lens of Mexico. But what fascinated me most is the women's involvement in the early evolution fear. You know, like all good things that are invented, it was invented exactly go invented, but but helped along
the way. Well, thanks everybody for listening. Cheers, I'm holding.
My beer up.
Cheer Cheers to everyone who has clicked and subscribed to our podcast. Keep listening. We'll have some more fun episodes coming up.
Thank you and cheers everyone.
I'm way for History is an unbelievable entertainment production in partnership with Iheart's my Kopura podcast network.
For more of your favorite shows, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.