IowaStateFan said:
Me too. Because of this thread I have decided to do another read of The Hobbit followed by the LOTR. I'll be keeping a close eye out for references to beer, ale, porter and any other beer styles. In the first chapter of The Hobbit, as has already been pointed out, some of the dwarves took ale, and others took porter. Since Bilbo supplied them, it would seem that both were brewed in Hobbiton so that porter is not exclusively a dwarvish style.
But Hobbiton was on the old Road toward the ancient Dwarf settlements in Ered Luin. Indeed, Thorin had made his dwelling there after wandering in the wilderness for years after Smaug drove the Dwarves out of the Mountain.
Unfinished Tales notes that trade existed between Hobbits and Dwarves, so it is entirely plausible that Bilbo's supplies of beer and porter were brewed by Dwarves in the Blue Mountains.
Pip's song, quoted above, is a Jackson invention and therefore (IMNSHO) inadmissible as evidence. Though I enjoyed the films, they are far from canonical.
Jens - I love it! Sounds heavenly!
O'Flannigan - your 1420 sounds "proper"!
I wish I found this thread earlier; I could have wallowed in Geekdom for
weeks! Let me establish my nerd cred.
Several posters have noted that the Hobbit culture is loosely based on Interbellum Britain. While on the face of it this makes sense, it is not exactly accurate.
The comparison to Interbellum Britain is perhaps relevant to the very end of the LoTR, after Sandyman's smoke-belching mill was pulled down. Before then, the only possible comparison is with pre-Great War Britain.
The Great War - and it was during and just after the Great War that the foundations for Middle-Earth were laid - severely injured the class system in England (it wasn't totally killed until post-WWII, but it was on life support). So many men of the middle and lower classes were affected by the Great War, and trench life so class-crossing, that after the Armistice it was impossible for British society to return to the
status quo. The proletariat had tasted the bitter equality of war, and no longer had the inclination to remain under heel. It took a long time for class distinction to die - these things are generally generational - but when one couples the pre-WWI generation dying off with another World War 1939-1945. When one combines that with the economic recession experienced by Britain until the 1960s - due to War damage to another generation of men as well as the loss of the Empire - the centuries-old class system extant in England evaporated.
I think JRRT's depiction of the Rape of the Shire in Volume III is a depiction of the destruction of Hobbit
society, and that is directly traceable to the polishing stages the Trilogy was experiencing at that time - mid C20, post-WWII.
Anyway what does that have to do with beer? Hobbit culture is, IMO, not-so-loosely based on English pastoral culture pre-1900. Small villages are the social base, not a large city far away which no local has ever even visited (Minas Tirith?). Every English village has a pub or two, and I needn't go into the tied-house schemes extant at that time.
Furthermore, I find that the descriptions of the Southfarthing just
scream "Kent". For me, that makes creating a Hobbit Ale simple - a fairly simple grain bill and lots of fresh hops.
In fact, I've a recipe for what I call
Southfarthing Special Ale that I haven't brewed in a while. Now that I can get Maris Otter extract, that's what I use.
6.6 lbs John Bull Maris Otter extract syrup
1 lb dry wheat extract
1 lb McCann's steel-cut oats (steeped)
2 oz Fuggles, EKG or Bramling Cross - 60
1 oz same - 20
1 oz same - flameout
Ringwood ale - Wyeast
I like Ringwood because of its overt fruitiness and estery profile. I prefer Bramling Cross because it's not as refined as Fuggles, much less EKG. The malts I chose because of the bucolic nature of farmhouse brewing.
Anyway, thanks for rekindling my interest in JRRT! I'm gonna go pull out my copy of
The Silmarillion.
Bob
