"Liu, together with doctoral candidate Jiajing Wang and a group of other experts, discovered the 5,000-year-old beer recipe by studying the residue on the inner walls of pottery vessels found in an excavated site in northeast China. "

So the recipe was arrived at by reverse-engineering residues in pottery vessels, and not written down 5000 years ago. In contrast, the Hymn to Ninkasi, which contains an ale recipe, was written down in Sumerian on clay tablets 4000 years ago. Translation at http://www.piney.com/BabNinkasi.html

"The students first covered their grain with water and let it sprout, in a process called malting. After the grain sprouted, the students crushed the seeds and put them in water again. The container with the mixture was then placed in the oven and heated to 65 degrees Celsius (149 F) for an hour, in a process called mashing. Afterward, the students sealed the container with plastic and let it stand at room temperature for about a week to ferment."

The heat would have killed off any yeast in the wort, and sealing the container would have prevented any yeast getting in after the wort cooled, so this cannot be correct. The correct process is to boil the wort, let it cool down, and leave it outside (or open the windows) to allow wild yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and other microorganisms to blow in and inoculate the wort. This process is called spontaneous fermentation, and is still used in Belgium to produce Lambic. Spontaneous fermentation causes bacteria (Lactobacillus and Acetobacter species) to also settle in the wort, eventually turning the beer sour. In other beer styles, yeast is deliberately added after the wort cools.

"The ancient Chinese beer looked more like porridge and likely tasted sweeter and fruitier than the clear, bitter beers of today."

It's an ale rather than a beer. To be a beer, it would have had to contain hops, which give beer its bitterness and act as a preservative. Unless drunk very quickly, like Lambic it would have also gone sour.