See my answer to this other post here about bread.
Civilization was most likely not formed in order to specifically produce alcohol. Instead, it was simply to have the security of a more consistent food supply. Instead of spending a lot of time and energy moving around as a hunter gatherer, it was more stable to settle down and start cultivating crops.
In fact, this was so successful that most cultures developed some form of surplus storage. It is assumed that somehow, grains were exposed to water and it was discovered that these grains were fermentable. This led to the development of beer and leavened bread.
However, beer is not widely considered to be the first fermented beverage. That honor is held by mead. There are wild yeasts and bacteria in the air, on plants, and on most things. Yeasts need a vehicle to access the starches and fermentable sugars found in many sources. Water is the main way that this occurs. Mead is made when honey is exposed to water and the naturally present yeasts are able to attack the sugar in the honey and make mead.
Since most fermentable grains were descendent from wild grasses, there wasn’t really ever enough grains compiled together and primed for accidental water exposure until societies had started farming and became efficient enough to have large surpluses. Compare this to bees who constantly gathering pollen during the warmer months. These bees stockpiled honey. It’s bound that many of these hives would have somehow been damaged and exposed to water and would have fermented to mead and humans would have found it and realized this was something different than honey.
While they would have understood it was different, they would have not understood fermentation or even what yeast was. Further more, they wouldn’t have understood that grains contained fermentable sugars. They might have also experienced slightly spoiled fruit and noticed intoxicating effects fermented fruit. But they would t understand why this change occurred.
In fact, yeast itself wasn’t actually known until relatively recently. You can look at the German purity law of 1516 (Reinheitsgebot) that stipulated that beer could only be made of water, barley, and hops. The law wasn’t amended to include yeast until recently.
My point is that the process of fermentation was not understood by hunter gatherers. They had no way of knowing that grains contained fermentable sugars. Honey and mead were likely the on their radar, but they had no way of knowing that if they gathered wild grains, planted them, planted the seeds from the best yields, and kept doing that, that one day they could ferment the grains and make alcohol.
No. The decision to settle down and become an agricultural based society instead of hunter gatherers was food based and not alcohol based. Alcohol production and other forms of controlled fermentation like bread baking and lacto fermentation (pickles- chop up some cucumbers, and submerge them in salty water for a week or two and you will have some lacto fermented pickles) were by products of having surplus food supplies that were exposed to water at some point.
Once people did start to understand fermentation and alcohol better, they likely would have started to use fermentation as a way to store part of the food surplus as it can extend the shelf life of some products. If you have a ton of grain and you don’t have room to store it all in your grain storage, you can make beer with it instead of throwing it out or letting it expire. Then you can drink your calories throughout the season/year instead of throwing away your extras or stock that might be close to spoiling soon.
As beer, wine, and spirits became more popular, it would only make sense that then you start to see crop production specifically to produce these ethanol. I think that the storage aspect of alcohol is one reason why you don’t see mead as being more popular today. You wouldn’t need to preserve honey by fermenting it. Properly stored honey can essentially last forever. Compared to grains or grapes that have a shorter shelf life.