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As soon as they learned to stockpile and store grain or grapes they encountered spoilage and fermentation. The discovery of alcohol/ethanol followed. It probably happened in many places with grain and with grapes or fruit at different times. They liked it. I have seen birds get drunk on berries that have aged on the bush so it was a natural occurrence.
I think it's self-evident that drinks containing alcohol have a similar taste and the same effect on people, no matter what fermented fruit or vegetable substance they came from. So, I'm sure it's not possible to pinpoint exactly when people "realized" this. It was certainly in dim prehistory.
Alcohol comes from the Arabic word al-kuhul (al kohl). It referred to a fine black powder used as a dark eye-coloring cosmetic. Today, the word kohl still refers to a makeup used for outlining the eyes.
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Around the 16th century, the word was borrowed into English to refer to any fine powder, possibly by way of Middle Latin and French. The indefinite article “al” was thought to be a part of the word, so that one word, alcohol, was formed. Alcohol later came to refer to anything obtained through sublimation, and through distillation, including a fluid.
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Although knowledge of an inflammable “spirit” given off by wine is ancient, the discovery of pure alcohol is usually attributed to the Persian alchemist and physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Rhazes or Rasis). He was the first physician to use alcohol systematically in medical practice.
The fermentation of sugar into ethanol is one of the earliest biotechnologies employed by humans. Ethanol has historically been identified variously as spirit of wine or ardent spirits,[126] and as aqua vitae or aqua vita. The intoxicating effects of its consumption have been known since ancient times. Ethanol has been used by humans since prehistory as the intoxicating ingredient of alcoholic beverages. Dried residue on 9,000-year-old pottery found in China suggests that Neolithic people consumed alcoholic beverages.[127]
The inflammable nature of the exhalations of wine was already known to ancient natural philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 BCE), Theophrastus (c. 371–287 BCE), and Pliny the Elder (23/24–79 CE).[128] However, this did not immediately lead to the isolation of ethanol, even despite the development of more advanced distillation techniques in second- and third-century Roman Egypt.[129] An important recognition, first found in one of the writings attributed to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (ninth century CE), was that by adding salt to boiling wine, which increases the wine's relative volatility, the flammability of the resulting vapors may be enhanced.[130] The distillation of wine is attested in Arabic works attributed to al-Kindī (c. 801–873 CE) and to al-Fārābī (c. 872–950), and in the 28th book of al-Zahrāwī's (Latin: Abulcasis, 936–1013) Kitāb al-Taṣrīf (later translated into Latin as Liber servatoris).[131] In the twelfth century, recipes for the production of aqua ardens ("burning water", i.e., ethanol) by distilling wine with salt started to appear in a number of Latin works, and by the end of the thirteenth century it had become a widely known substance among Western European chemists.[132]
The works of Taddeo Alderotti (1223–1296) describe a method for concentrating ethanol involving repeated fractional distillation through a water-cooled still, by which an ethanol purity of 90% could be obtained.[133] The medicinal properties of ethanol were studied by Arnald of Villanova (1240–1311 CE) and John of Rupescissa (c. 1310–1366), the latter of whom regarded it as a life-preserving substance able to prevent all diseases (the aqua vitae or "water of life", also called by John the quintessence of wine).[134]
In China, archaeological evidence indicates that the true distillation of alcohol began during the Jin (1115–1234) or Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties.[135] A still has been found at an archaeological site in Qinglong, Hebei, dating to the 12th century.[135] In India, the true distillation of alcohol was introduced from the Middle East, and was in wide use in the Delhi Sultanate by the 14th century.[136]
In 1796, German-Russian chemist Johann Tobias Lowitz obtained pure ethanol by mixing partially purified ethanol (the alcohol-water azeotrope) with an excess of anhydrous alkali and then distilling the mixture over low heat.[137] French chemist Antoine Lavoisier described ethanol as a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and in 1807 Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure determined ethanol's chemical formula.[138][139] Fifty years later, Archibald Scott Couper published the structural formula of ethanol. It was one of the first structural formulas determined.[140]
Ethanol was first prepared synthetically in 1825 by Michael Faraday. He found that sulfuric acid could absorb large volumes of coal gas.[141] He gave the resulting solution to Henry Hennell, a British chemist, who found in 1826 that it contained "sulphovinic acid" (ethyl hydrogen sulfate).[142] In 1828, Hennell and the French chemist Georges-Simon Serullas independently discovered that sulphovinic acid could be decomposed into ethanol.[143][144] Thus, in 1825 Faraday had unwittingly discovered that ethanol could be produced from ethylene (a component of coal gas) by acid-catalyzed hydration, a process similar to current industrial ethanol synthesis.[145]
I know that there is a record of an ancient Egyptian king referring to the "fine beer made from grapes" i.e., wine; clearly understanding that it was similar in its value and effects.
I get nothing from alcohol except sleepiness/drowsiness and diarrhea.
alcoholic diarrhea is really a nuisance
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