Pricing StrategyPricing strategies in the Beer IndustryIndustries

Beer is the oldest recorded recipe in the world. The invention of bread and beer has been argued to be responsible for humanity’s ability to develop technology and build civilization. In Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence of beer is believed to be a 6000-year-old Sumerian tablet depicting people consuming a drink through reed straws from a communal bowl. A 3900-year-old Sumerian poem honouring Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer recipe, describing the production of beer from bread made from barley. The ancient Egyptians first documented the brewing process on papyrus scrolls around 5000 BC. These first beers were brewed with things like dates, pomegranates and other indigenous herbs and were probably quite harsh by today’s standards. The Egyptians used beer for religious ceremonies, with the pharaoh directing the brewing schedule and distribution to the masses. All they left behind were malted barley scraps and bowls with beer-like residue (and they called themselves brewers!). This residue was probably the remnants of a grain porridge that had fermented naturally with wild yeast, imparting an intoxicating effect to the consumer, who, therefore, repeated the process. In China, residue on pottery dating from around 5000 years ago shows beer was brewed using barley and other grains (Wikipedia 2020). Modern beer was born in Europe in the middle age. Brewers had been using malted barley as the main source of fermentable sugar for hundreds of years, but the use of hops as a bittering and flavouring agent did not become common until around the twelfth century. Before that time, many different herbs and spices were used to balance the sweet malt flavours in beer; everything from spruce boughs to dried flowers to bitter roots had found their way into brew kettles. Around 1150, however, German monks began commonly using wild hops in beer and the ingredient quickly caught on. Brewers found that hops added a very pleasing, thirst-quenching bitterness and, as an added benefit, the hops acted as a natural preservative extending the life of their beers. During the Industrial Revolution, the production of beer moved from artisanal manufacture to industrial manufacture, and domestic manufacture ceased to be significant by the end of the nineteenth century. The development of hydrometers, thermometers and cooling machines changed brewing by allowing the brewer more control of the process and greater knowledge of the results. Today, the brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant multinational companies and many thousands of smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries. More than 133 billion litres (35 billion gallons) are sold per year, producing total global revenues of about $300 billion in 2020 (Wikipedia 2020).