From prehistoric times we've been desperately preserving food and water with tons of spices, herbs, salt, smoke, vinegar, alcohol, or lactic acid dramatically altering their taste. Funnily enough we got used to these flavors and even when fresh products are available all year round, we still consume preserved goods regularly.
One of the added bonuses of fermentation is it "pre-digests" food which unlocks or creates more nutrition. For example, fermenting some things can add vitamin C. For Bread if you long ferment the dough it changes the structure of the starch.
Beer is often made with malted grain where the grain is allowed to start sprouting before being roasted and fermented, malt is created in that brief moment during the sprouting and the yeast that breaks down starch into alcohol does not touch the malt allowing the malt taste to stay.
Then we find in ancient containers used to brew beer a mix of malted grains and other things, some are medicinal ingredients, some are hallucinogenic, and we later find the bitter herbal mix known as gruit being used for Ale. Hops ended up being introduced through Germany and the low countries, Ale was the English name and Beer was the Germanic name so Hop brew became Beer while Gruit brew was Ale. This later changed again when cold/warm brewing was a thing and gruit fell off.
Anyway, I got into fermenting vegetables some 5-10 years ago and people really do get cravings for fermented food, taught my mom how to ferment since that knowledge didn't really get passed on from the grand parents, she has her own vegetable garden and the fermentation really improves the variety of flavor while also extending the shelf life of her veggies.
For anyone curious you do need to make sure you have enough salt in the fermenting vessel since lacto bacteria that makes the acid can tolerate salt better than toxic molds giving time for the bacteria to make the vessel acidic enough to be preserved.
Beer brewing is more tricky since you are not adding salt, so keep the container sterile and add in the yeast or else you will get acid produced as well making the beer sour.
