Nicholson & Shaw's "Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technologies" has an amusing section on brewing. (In particular, one of the authors mentions at one point that one can still obtain descendants of these beers in the markets of Cairo, and that he sampled a great many as part of his research.) They set a date of 3000 BCE at the latest, based on written sources.

Wine was available in Egypt as early as 4000 BCE--we have both texts and direct archaeological evidence (jars with residue). This site has a good collection of sources and articles: http://www.wineofancientegypt.com/home/

You may also find Damerow's article on Sumerian beer interesting: http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2012/cdlj2012_002.html It suggests a date before 3200 BCE.

Note that these 4000-3200 BCE dates are getting us close to prehistory. In other words, alcohol production is likely to pre-date writing.

I know there is archaeological evidence of wine production dating back several thousand years more than the Egyptian date I gave above, but I don't have a good source handy. (Casual googling will yield you a few, but you're likely to do as well there as I. I see someone claims 8000 BCE, but I have not investigated the source.)

What is the earliest record of the large scale production of alcohol?

The oldest evidence of alcoholic beverage production is archeological. Almost by definition we will only find evidence of any alcohol production if it was large scale because this type of "industrial" production is what will survive to be dug up later.

We can speculate that the first ethyl alcohol consumed by humans happened pretty much as soon as they found and collected the "wild wine grape". The wild precursor to the domesticated wine grape had a couple of attributes that makes it extremely likely to be the first source of alcohol:

• High Sugar Content - Alcohol is produced by certain types of yeasts converting sugar into alcohol as part of their energy production chemical pathways. The wild wine grape has the highest sugar content than any type of plant material in the world.
• Yeasts - Despite what most people think, fermentation yeast is not airborne. It needs some type of vector to come to the sugar solution. Fruit in general and grapes in particular get inoculated with yeast by flying insects. Most often social wasps.
• High Liquid Content - Wild wine grapes are soft and have a very high water content. Its very easy to turn them into a sugar solution of some sort that can be fermented.

Since these wild wine grapes are the perfect self-contained alcoholic producing packages it seems extremely likely that early humans would collect some grapes, put them in a bag of some sort, neglect and squish them a bit and wind up with a strangely aromatic and intoxicating result. It wouldn't take people long to try and duplicate this process. The wild wine grape first comes into existence as long as 2 million years ago so pretty much as soon as hominids collected fruit and put into bags this process probably resulted.

While wine of some sort of probably the first alcohol produced by humans it would have been a rare and random treat. It would have only been available for a few weeks in the fall when the fruit could be found and collected. A more sustained and thus more reliable sort of high volume alcoholic production would have come from fermenting the sugars in cooked grain mush. All of the early alcoholic beverage evidence we have is either wine or a combination grain, honey and fruit. For the combo beverage, the fruit (likely grapes) would have been a yeast vector, the grains would have provided sugars after the starches were converted either from the natural malting process or from mold and honey would have provided more sugar and also flavor.

We find this type of alcohol production in places once there is settled agriculture. A short list of early alcoholic production is as follows:

• 9000 BC - Turkey - Grape (and other fruit) seeds are found in Neolithic settlements. Is alcohol being produced? No direct evidence but it is possible.
• 7000 BC - Jiahu China - Evidence of a fruit/honey/rice beverage made on a large scale
• 6000 BC - Georgia - Evidence of an alcoholic beverage that contained at least wine grapes. This is also around the time that the wild wine grape becomes domesticated and gains attributes to make it even better for wine production.
• 5600 BC - Iran - Wine production in the Zagros Mountains in Iraq
• 5000 BC - Iran - Earliest archeological evidence of beer. We are starting to get into the era of widespread domestication barely, rye and wheat.
• 4500 BC - Greece - Wine grapes found in Greece
• 4200 BC - Greece - Clear evidence of winemaking in Greece
• 4100 BC - Armenia - Clear evidence of winemaking in Armenia
• 3000 BC - Western Europe - This is around the time we start seeing evidence of alcohol production in western Europe.

I saw a discovery doc named "How beer saved the world" but the tone of it seemed a little too casual...they mentioned that a large part of the reason for the growth of early cities is that they had brewed alcoholic drinks. Is this true?

Enough people asked me about this show that I sought it out and watched it and found almost everything stated either flat out false, a wild exaggeration or at best a big stretch.

Regarding this particular claim I see no evidence for it and it doesn't really pass the test of basic reason. As a living creature, what is a bigger motivation for you: Eating and not dying or getting drunk? Perhaps the answer depends on if you are in college or not, but for most humans motivations that drive our social and technological progress are the basic need for protection and food in order to survive. That is what would drive our push to settled agriculture.

Ive seen some people argue that people made beer to preserve calories for future use but that doesn't make sense because dried grain can be saved for years and brewed primitive beer really has a shelf life of weeks at best.

Please feel free to ask for any clarifications or more detail.