What is beverage crop?

Answer 1

Even stronger than the need to satisfy hunger is the need to satisfy thirst. Water has always been and will continue to be the prime thirst-quencher. But since the beginning of civilization, inquiring people have sought additives for water that might make it more tasty and zestful, or have turned to various juices and fermentations for their enjoyment as well as to satisfy their thirst.

The earliest "beverage" was probably juice sucked or squeezed from fruit. What with spores of wild yeast blowing everywhere about, it was only a small step further to the discovery that natural fermentation could convert these sweet juices into wines. Nor would it take a great deal of insight to discover that hard, dry grains, which must have been difficult and unpleasant to consume under primitive cooking conditions, could be softened by soaking, and that the resulting liquor would ferment to a pleasant and nutritious beer. (Sumerian tablets more than 5000 years old describe in detail the making of several varieties of beer.) These are still the basic techniques by which people make their Alcoholic Beverages, the products of fermentation; wines and beers are among the oldest and most cherished of beverages.

Unfermented fruit juices, of course, contain no alcohol. Modern "soft drinks" are, essentially, synthetic fruit juices, compounded of sugar, fruit acids, and other flavorings. But more universally utilized than these are coffee and tea, in which tasteful substances (including stimulating caffeine and related alkaloids) are diffused from plant parts steeped in water. Cocoa, or chocolate, is perhaps consumed less as a beverage these days than it is as chocolate candy, But in its ancestral American homeland, it was highly esteemed as a ceremonial beverage, and it is still much used in Hot Chocolate or chocolate sodas.

Almost any sugary or starchy substance can be fermented. Primitive tribes in various parts of the world have long used locally available substances for fermentation to alcoholic beverages-the potato in the Andes (for chicha), cassava in the tropical lowlands (manioc beers), palm toddy in the Eastern tropics, and various obscure plant materials "secretly" chosen by the shaman for ceremonial purposes. Some of these products are hallucinatory and even semi-poisonous. A few secondary beverage plants can be listed, but coffee, tea, chocolate, beers, and wines must serve here as examples of beverages derived from plant sources.

Answer 2

Beverage crops are crops that you can use to make beverages. Examples are malt barley for beer, or rye for whiskey.