Most college students would love to get an assignment like the one Madeline Ota recently received at Stanford University. She and her classmates were asked to make beer in their dorm rooms. But before you get too excited, you need to know that it was for a class called The Archaeology of Food. And the assignment was to make beer according to a 5,000-year-old Chinese recipe. “I think it was a bit different than beers that you would buy in the store because it only had a week to ferment, and I think that is one of the biggest differences that you would notice in taste. Because after only a week, alcoholic content isn’t very strong.” Ota and her classmates made two kinds of ancient beer, some of which are still being made by indigenous people today.