Beer has had many names over the centuries. One of the earliest is Sikaru, from Sumerian. This can be translated as liquid bread. In 6000 BC, an inhabitant of Mesopotamia (now Iraq) had forgotten to take his barley bread out of the water. Thanks to fermentation and natural yeasts, the liquid fermented. This was the first beer, produced completely by accident.

There are many different ways of calling this alcohol in France and Europe. Before it was called beer, during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, it was referred to as bera, bier or bahre, in England or Germany in particular, but also as biber (drink in Latin).

It was not until 1435 that the French king Charles VII published an ordinance to regulate the trade in this drink. The word beer was then used for the first time and was to develop in the Kingdom of France. Learn how was called beer in the Middle Age !