Changes

After completing campaigns against southern Gallic and Germanic tribes in 57 BC, Julius Caesar moved north and west to tend to a revolt from the Belgae Gauls living between the Senne and Rhine Rivers in what is now modern day Belgium and Germany. Caesar noted both the ferocity of the Belgians and their connection to the Germanic tribes he had just conquered. This close cultural and economic relationship also included a close connection to beer. Unlike the Mediterranean cultural centers, the Germanic and Gallic tribes viewed wine as an effeminate beverage and banned its import.<ref namerefname=Barbarian'sBeverage>Max Nelson, The Barbarian's Beverage: A History of Beer in Ancient Europe, 2005 </ref>

The Roman historians marching with the army at the time also noted the abundance of cereals growing in northern Gaul and that the Belgae themselves were using these cereals to make beer. The evidence from throughout the region, inscriptions referring to breweries near the modern day Belgian/German border and remains of breweries in Germany and the Belgian city of Namur also point to wheat as being the primary cereal used for brewing at the time. Indeed an inscription from a cup found near Mainz, Germany, which at the time would have been part of the contiguous northern Gaul territory, reads in part, “Waitress, fill up the pot from the good wheat beer!” Other inscriptions also note that there was a guild of beer makers spanning into the middle ages.<ref namerefname=Barbarian'sBeverage>Max Nelson, The Barbarian's Beverage: A History of Beer in Ancient Europe, 2005 </ref> <ref name=UncorkingThePast>Patrick McGovern, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages, 2010 </ref>

These fermented beverages, only precursors to modern day controlled fermentation beers, were most certainly spontaneously fermented in the same way that lambic wort is spontaneously fermented today, though with the brewers having little accurate knowledge of the process.