Archaeologists working in western Cyprus are raising a glass to the discovery of a Bronze Age ‘microbrewery’. The team excavated a two-metre by two-metre mud-plaster domed structure which it says was used as a kiln to dry malt and make beer 3,500 years ago.

Beers of different flavours would have been brewed from malted barley and fermented with yeasts with an alcoholic content of around five per cent.

The yeast would have either been wild or produced from fruit such as grape or fig, according to the researchers.

Lindy Crewe, from the University of Manchester, has led the excavation at the Early-Middle Bronze Age settlement of Kissonerga-Skalia, near Paphos, since 2007.

She said: “Archaeologists believe beer drinking was an important part of society from the Neolithic onwards and may have even been the main reason why people began to cultivate grain in the first place.

“The excavation of the malting kiln with associated sets of pottery types and tools left in place gives us a fantastic opportunity to look at Bronze Age toolkits and figure out techniques and recipes.” The oven discovered by the archaeologists was positioned at one end of a 50-metre-square courtyard with a plastered floor.

They found grinding tools and mortars which may have been used to break down the grain after it was malted, a small hearth and cooking pots made of clay to cook the beer gently. (PA)