For that matter, what about the alewife of yore? What equipment did she use? What quantities did she brew? I’m guessing she didn’t have an aquarium pump…
Way back when, some farmers used streams themselves to lift, move or perform other work. There are still some old watermills around the countryside if you look, probably how alewives and yores did it back then especially doing large batches? Old windmills too, but none of those would help for this subject.
Interesting topic and idea.
I’m not saying I have a definitive answer or anything, but pumps have been around much longer than the brewing industry.
However, beer has been around a lot longer than many technologies, including pumps (and has been attributed with fostering the creation of new technologies and processes–even agriculture). I wasn’t sure about water wheels, but from what I’m reading, beer goes back to the 6th millennium BC, while water wheels are just barely pre-BC.
True, even today some places still practice methods to make beer that we would probably be a bit squeamish trying… using spit versus yeast to ferment with. I would assume that is a bacterial fermentation rather than yeast fermentation? Uughhh!.. we would call it an infection. :o 
CP wrote an article about the changes in brewing a few months back, the one about personalizing a brew really got me… now after reading my previous post… I think the spit would pretty much do it. ;D