Historic Sanitation Methods

While being really paranoid about sanitation in my nice clean, enclosed, modern kithcen I started wondering what brewers of old did about sanitation.

Anyone a "Beer historian" out there?

I have to imagine that for most of beer's history breweries were really dirty in comparrison to our efforts, but clearly they worked...

Are we just spoiled (No pun intended) with the ability to produce clean, pure beer most of the time?

I know the open fermentation allowed for many of the regional tastes to develop but I would love a source for some more info.

As modern brewers/drinkers would anyone hazard a guess if we would have even liked beer brewed 300 years ago?

Warm flat ale?

-Jeff-

How far back are we talking about? We have to acknowledge that for a good time they didn't even know why wort turned into beer. If you don't know about yeast, you don't know about wild yeast or any other microscopic organisms either.

Even after Louis Pasteur in the 1800's, I'd assume they thought a quick rinse was enough. I would venture a guess that concentration on sanitation got a boost after prohibition when everyone was after super light lagers. Contaminations would be so evident.

You also have to remember that virtually everything in the brewery came from the local area, where (generally) similar types of wild yeast lived. Especially in an established brewery, you'd pretty much have one strain that had outcompeted everything else, so you really still would have a consistent yeast going into your beer.

How far back?

How about colonial america?

Before Pasteur, so the true nature of yeast is unknown.

When Franklin penned his famous quote, what was the beer like?

Probbaly drifting out of "Sanitation" category... sorry.

-Jeff-

If you're interested, there are a lot of good "beer history" books out there. Just go to amazon.com and poke around. You can find anything from textbooks (a lot of historians believe that agriculture developed as a response to fermented beverages and not the other way around) to more mass-market histories.

As for the "sanitation" issue that you originally asked about, you have to remember that clean water was virtually non-existant once people started moving into cities and towns. So beer, because it was boiled, was the safest thing to drink. The beers weren't particularly alcoholic (maybe 3.2% ABV), so people weren't going around in a drunken stupor, but they were drinking huge tankards of ale each day.

Also, when Franklin said "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy," people didn't understand what caused fermentation. It wasn't quite "magic" but it was evidence of the devine [think of the Angel's Share in whiskey distillation].

Anyway, what I'd intended to be a "there are a lot of great books" post turned into a longer tangent than I'd intended.

Thanks for the info...

This whole thread is becoming a tangent, but interesting.

Jeff

Historically, brewers didn't sanitize. When wort was boiled, the nasties died. I suspect an effort was made by some to keep the equipment clean, but we are talking open air fermentation with wild yeast, unglazed pots and wooden barrels. Typically, beer was drunk shortly after fermentation stopped, because it started spoiling immediately (low ABV & no refrigeration). Hops became the dominate bittering agent when people noticed hopped beers lasted longer than beers made with other spices.

Anton van Leeuwenhoek invented the high-power microscope in the 1600's, but it wasn't until the mid-1800's than Louis Pasteur put out the idea the idea that microbes caused bad beer and diseases. Pasteur demonstrated that heating killed microbes (pasteurization) and the lack of microbes meant longer shelf lives for products. Heat damaged flavors (and drove off the alcohol), so people started putting effort into preventing contamination at every point in production.

I apologize for the long post.

I would suggest you read the blog of one of the authorities on historical brewing in England, Ron Pattinson, that could teach you from source materials rather than speculation based on the bias that we think we're so much smarter today.

Here's just one example from Ron's blog:
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2010/02/cask-cleaning-ca-1885.html

You can also read about how the Pilsner Urquell brewery, until very recently, lined their barrels with boiling pitch, to dispel the myth that brewers used bare wood and therefore, on that false assumption, had to be inviting invaders unknown to those poor ignorant bastards of yesteryear. (There is a Beer Hunter with Michael Jackson video on this very example you can find on youtube.)

I'll stop there because I don't want to speculate myself

I should also mention I've personally never used a commercial sanitizer; not even once. I have always used a sodium carbonate (washing soda) solution to wash my equipment. Though, I admit probably another reason I have never had a spoiled batch (after >70 batches) is because I only use steel and glass, no plastic gear, in my brewing process until there is alcohol present and a low pH (at transfer) and I've never seemed to be able to keep bottles of beer lying around more than a few months, so might just be lucky. I'm convinced though that those who still have infections using acid washes are probably victim to the super-bug phenomenon of killing off all of the bacteria/mold/yeast which could have potentially added interesting accents/character and should have overwhelmed the even less desirable super-bug that instead multiplied unchecked. Or maybe those people have a really dusty environment? On the other hand, lambic brewers are afraid to dust their environment to not disturb their little friends. I can only speculate Oops.

http://www.archive.org/stream/atreatiseonthebr35597gut/pg35597.txt This is a great article that someone on here linked. The fermentation vessels were often used like pouring wort onto a yeast cake so they didn't have to clean those every time. The cooling trays which were a series of low angle trays that emptied into the one below it were cleaned with quick lime and rinsed well. As mentioned above, these guys weren't idiots. I think people have known for a long time that boiling water made it more potable. Of course the boil sanitizes the wort. Why not boil any cleaning/rinse water. Hot water does a better job of cleaning stuff.