Brewing 101 - THL Declan MacDockery

Monday, June 18, 2001

Beer History

Beer, the world’s oldest known grain beverage, has been produced continuously for over 7,000 years. Like livestock and other marketable goods, beer has been used as currency as well as consumed for personal pleasure. In the ruins of Uruk in Lower Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq), clay tablets have been found dating back to the second half of the fourth millenium, many of which are commercial ledgers, showing beer used as currency in exchange for goods and services. The ‘Hymn to Ninkasi’, a cuneiform inscription from 2000 B.C., pretty much lays out the process of malting grain, making wort, fermenting – even filtering!

Songs, poems, and drawings of festivals and celebrations involving beer abound from ancient times (in Sumerian stories told to Gilgamesh) throughout our period (prior to 17th Century). In Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome the brewery trade prospered. The Greeks brought barley beer into central Europe, where it spread rapidly to Gaul, Spain, Illyria, Germania, and into the Celtic culture.

In the period from about 800 to 1600, monastic orders produced most of the beer for their local areas, although some municipal breweries existed as well. Many monasteries owned several breweries, where monks specialized in beer, ale, and wine recipes. The use of the word ‘beer’ comes from Latin “bibere” meaning “to consume”. The monks used the word ‘beer’ to differentiate from unhopped ale. Ordinary ale was unhopped; hopped beer was made by the monasteries after the late 8th century. The hops were added for medicinal purposes and to improve the beer’s appearance. As well as clarifying beer, hops also had a preservative effect, helping the beer keep much longer than ordinary ales. Also, Vitamin B in the beer staved off disease, the alcohol had the effect of killing pathogens, and the hops act as a very effective diuretic, all properties of which the medically inclined monks were aware.

There is no record of the first batch of beer, but it probably tasted very strange, since whatever wild yeast was in the air at the time actually produced it. Before the use of hops, beer was very cloudy, and Babylonian brewers liked to add flour to thicken the brew, producing something like “edible beer”. Different types of grains used to produce mash created different flavors of ales. Since ale did not keep for long periods, different types of preservatives were used before the introduction of hops. Some of these natural preservatives included such aromatic herbs as marjoram, sage, bay, pennyroyal, myrtle, clover, mint, wormwood, and oak bark, although the use of stimulants, including certain spices, was forbidden to both monks and laymen. Monks also began the practice of controlled cultivation of yeast, to aid in the consistency of taste and to produce different properties in their recipes.

In 1409, Jean Sans Peur (John the fearless, Duke of Burgundy) created the Order of the Hop. Its motto was “Ich Zuighe”, meaning ‘I savour’, in Flemish. What more needs to be said??

Talking notes

What is beer? The four elements (earth, wind, fire, water…not!)

Grain/Barley: starch to sugar; malting
Taste a little grain – pass it around
wheat, two row, six row
corn and rice added by u.s. brewers
* corn adds little or no color, leading to the light color of domestics

Hops: the power flower
Taste a tiny bit – pass em around
Smoke ‘em if you got em – related to Cannabis Sativa
Cultured for a long damn time
Hops for flavor
Bitter to offset the sweet
Can complement or clash
Hops for Aroma
Can be different than flavoring hops

Water
Mountain springs?
Water in the Middle Ages and ancient times
No pathogens in Beer, baby!

Yeast
The noble beast
Not known in the Middle Ages, or ancient times for that matter
Open fermentation
Leads to off flavors – metallic taste, occasionally colorful ‘floaties’
What’s that gunk on the bottom?
An excellent starter for next batch!!!
By reusing the flocculant, consistent flavors could be produced
Leads to cultured yeast strains
Ale versus Lager
Modern Lager yeast only a hundred or so years old – not period
Lager yeast used by commercial breweries

Reinheitsgebot: beer purity law in Germany
* note: they are allowed to add stuff for export

Time – the Fifth Element!

Wort
Fermentation
Settling
Aging/Conditioning
Casking (lost art)

What about carbonation?
Period carbonation was unintentional. Probably occurred as it was consumed while still fermenting
Homebrew carbonation occurs by reactivating yeast at the end of fermentation, then sealing the container(s)

Brewing Equipment and Technique

How it got started
Evidence of early period brewing with hops
Lots of recipes without hops
Reintroduction of hopped beer with Crusades: Pale Ale
All grain brewing versus extract
Adjunct grains for flavor production
Dry Malt versus extract

------------------------

Start with water and malted barley
Heat it and add hops
Boil it and add hops
Cool it down – careful sanitation!
Start the yeast for a higher ‘pitching rate’
Transfer the cooled wort to a fermentation vessel
Glass versus plastic
Fermentation lock
Siphon or pour?
Pouring splashes and can get a goodly amount of oxygen in; Good for aerobic phase of fermentation

Specific gravity reading
Pitch the yeast at an appropriate temp
Keep it cool and dark!
When it slows, transfer to another container
Sitting on the junk will cause it to reabsorb tannins (uncontrolled flavors)
Careful at this stage; no more oxygen (will cause metallic flavor now)
On to the final container(s)
Bottles
Kegging
Aging and drinking

Web Resources

http://www.hottobrew.com/- a shareware book on the web, great reference, resource, etc. Requests $5 if you like it.

http://www.morebeer.com – mail order brew store

http://hbd.org/carboy/ - Local brew club

[email protected] – send an email with ‘subscribe’ in the body

References:

A Short, but Foamy, History of Beer / William Paul and Rober Haiber; The Info Devel Press; 1993; ISBN 0-944089-09-7

A History of Food / Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, translated by Anthea Bell; Blackwell; 1996; ISBN 0-631-17741-8

Clone Brews: homebrew recipes for 150 commercial beers / Tess and Mark Szamatulski; Storey Books; 1998; ISBN 1-58017-077-3

The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing / Charlie Papazian; Avon Books; 1991; ISBN 0-380-76366-4

Alcohol in the Western World / Bert L. Vallee; Scientific American, June 1998

Back to Class Notes