My BMC point is that, tastes did change.
modern vs. medieval ale
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Very informative Revvy. As of now, that book is on my to-buy list...
Here's where I'm getting my ideas, and I remember reading this but I don't remember where (so perhaps it's not true). I *thought* the dominance of BMC was largely an effect of prohibition, where the biggest breweries were able to survive selling animal feed and other industrial grain products, and the smaller ones all went out of business. Fast forward to WWII, suddenly there is a growing number of women who drink beer proportional to the men, a new market opens up, plus it's the 40's so marketing is really taking off on a national scale, and the big breweries all want to create the one "perfect" and perfectly-marketable brew that appeals to the most number of people. Am I supposed to assume they kept the recipe the same? I haven't read the book, someone fill me in. Prohibition has wiped out the competition, and it won't be back for some time to come... now we have a situation where the big breweries are only competing amongst themselves, and only in one or two styles of beer that are the most profitable to make.
So what if those beers have been around for a while and people like them because they are light, and eminently drinkable. I cannot believe that in those 40 years of utter market dominance, the tastes of the American public did not change a bit to prefer the only available and affordable beer. There is obviously a desire in people for more choice (hence the popularity of craft beer and its rising market share), and that is something that BMC denied the public for a long time.
However I was wrong about them being a function of cheap corn and marketing. I eat my words.
Here's where I'm getting my ideas, and I remember reading this but I don't remember where (so perhaps it's not true). I *thought* the dominance of BMC was largely an effect of prohibition, where the biggest breweries were able to survive selling animal feed and other industrial grain products, and the smaller ones all went out of business. Fast forward to WWII, suddenly there is a growing number of women who drink beer proportional to the men, a new market opens up, plus it's the 40's so marketing is really taking off on a national scale, and the big breweries all want to create the one "perfect" and perfectly-marketable brew that appeals to the most number of people. Am I supposed to assume they kept the recipe the same? I haven't read the book, someone fill me in. Prohibition has wiped out the competition, and it won't be back for some time to come... now we have a situation where the big breweries are only competing amongst themselves, and only in one or two styles of beer that are the most profitable to make.
So what if those beers have been around for a while and people like them because they are light, and eminently drinkable. I cannot believe that in those 40 years of utter market dominance, the tastes of the American public did not change a bit to prefer the only available and affordable beer. There is obviously a desire in people for more choice (hence the popularity of craft beer and its rising market share), and that is something that BMC denied the public for a long time.
However I was wrong about them being a function of cheap corn and marketing. I eat my words.
You will actually find a similar story in many countries even without prohibition, just without all the local breweries going out of business (with regard to the food vs light beer thing). Beck's is still the most popular beer in Germany, with light, regional beers following the Macro. Heine and Amstel light from Holland, Eastern European lagers like the Urquell and Staropramen.
The fact that these beers are cheapest is merely a factor of their popularity (combined with some non-expensive ingredients).
OK, now get back to the medieval stuff, very entertaining.
Also, I should really add (just so we are clear on the BMC bashing) that I like Budweiser, and also often order Blue Moon at the bar. The first beer I ever liked was Killian's Irish Red. And I hear American Ale is pretty good too, though I haven't gotten around to trying it. All BMC products. Not that this changes the fact that I'm a beer snob. Their "light" versions all taste like piss to me.
Since we are talking medieval VS modern, hops is a strong key. Medieval beers were a food, water purification and taste was not as strong of a factor as need. I have tasted midas touch and several beers brewed with wormwood and gruit. The worst was the wormwood, it left a bitter taste you could not wash out of your mouth, horrendous. The gruit and midas touch were almost as bad. Todays beers are better even when you let BMC into this. Beer is cooking, cooking is science and science has progressed, why would you think beer has not progressed? I am not 500 years old but some days I feel like it.
Who brewed them and what was the recipe? Do they have an
authentic recipe? If you brew a beer and serve it four days after
pitching, it's going to have a yeast taste and a lot of residual sweetness
that balances the bitterness. Were those beers served that way?
I don't put too much trust in on person's perception of a beer. I can't
stand lambics but many people like them. Many Americans go to England
and report how bad the beer was - too bitter, too flat.
Jim
The wormwood and gruit beers were brewed by fellow homebrewers that have made good conventional beers. I have no idea of the recipes as they were not something I would ever want to recreate. The Midas Touch was Dog Fish Head, and by all reports an accurate recipe. Still not one I would want to recreate.
No you should not take one persons word on it. I think you need to experience the effect of wormwood for yourself. It pretty much ruined the taste of every beer afterwards for that night and made morning OJ taste like crap also.
No you should not take one persons word on it. I think you need to experience the effect of wormwood for yourself. It pretty much ruined the taste of every beer afterwards for that night and made morning OJ taste like crap also.
Nyxator
Well-Known Member
Here's some more food for thought. It's been speculated that Medieval English brewers did not boil the wort after mashing. Bennett, in the book Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England, wrote that due to the extra costs of fuel and the apparent cloudiness of medieval beer (evidenced from sources like poems and songs), medieval brewers wouldn't bother with a post-mash boil. If it's being consumed within 4 days, then the bacteria in the husks of the grain wouldn't have time to spoil the ale. While I think there's some merit to that, I don't think cloudiness is evidence of a lack of boiling when you're drinking beer 4 days old with tons of suspended yeast.
And to get back to the smokiness, here's a Cornish rhyme from 1540 cited in the book Beer (A History of Suds and Civilization from Mesopotamia to Microbrews):
Maybe it was smokey stuff after all!
And to get back to the smokiness, here's a Cornish rhyme from 1540 cited in the book Beer (A History of Suds and Civilization from Mesopotamia to Microbrews):
Maybe it was smokey stuff after all!Midas Touch is an attempted clone of a "beer" that archeologists found dried remnants of in a 2700 year old tomb tomb of a king, I wouldn't necessarily accept it as a medieval brew, especially not one that was widely available to the public. It was brewed with saffron, the most expensive spice in the world.
I was simply trying to posit the idea that beer 500 years ago may have held striking similarities to beer nowadays given that their food wasn't so different either. It's just an idea, and maybe their food was very different. However, even if you consider that the general taste of people around the world is gravitating towards lighter beers brewed with less barley and more corn, pilsners are still very similar to other beer styles (they are still obviously beer, not champagne, not wine, not mead). Not to mention that the proliferation of lighter beers obviously haven't completely eliminated heavy beers from the human diet. Even though we eat a lot more dense nutritious food (and perhaps prefer light beers more often because of it), there are still plenty of options for darker, heavier beers. That's because we still like them.
I would guess that there are a few styles still around that are pretty close to beers that would have been available in the middle ages. Don't forget that they had table beers made from the second or third runnings of the sparge (or possibly from a lighter grain bill, I'm not sure). These were 2-3 percent beers the likes of which are still brewed in monasteries to be consumed in house by the monks.
If we are talking about gruit beers, then there is nothing like them nowadays unless you choose to brew one yourself. They are obviously out of fashion now, but hops have been around long enough that you could have found a hopped beer pretty easily after 1500 for sure. I'm sure beer has progressed since then, the question is would we recognize ancient beer as beer if we could taste it now? Would we enjoy what they made back then?
I have an interesting counter example to my own theory. In the middle ages they used to torture animals before killing them because they thought that pain and fear made the meat taste better. Now we know that it actually releases toxins into the meat and poisons it.
I was simply trying to posit the idea that beer 500 years ago may have held striking similarities to beer nowadays given that their food wasn't so different either. It's just an idea, and maybe their food was very different. However, even if you consider that the general taste of people around the world is gravitating towards lighter beers brewed with less barley and more corn, pilsners are still very similar to other beer styles (they are still obviously beer, not champagne, not wine, not mead). Not to mention that the proliferation of lighter beers obviously haven't completely eliminated heavy beers from the human diet. Even though we eat a lot more dense nutritious food (and perhaps prefer light beers more often because of it), there are still plenty of options for darker, heavier beers. That's because we still like them.
I would guess that there are a few styles still around that are pretty close to beers that would have been available in the middle ages. Don't forget that they had table beers made from the second or third runnings of the sparge (or possibly from a lighter grain bill, I'm not sure). These were 2-3 percent beers the likes of which are still brewed in monasteries to be consumed in house by the monks.
If we are talking about gruit beers, then there is nothing like them nowadays unless you choose to brew one yourself. They are obviously out of fashion now, but hops have been around long enough that you could have found a hopped beer pretty easily after 1500 for sure. I'm sure beer has progressed since then, the question is would we recognize ancient beer as beer if we could taste it now? Would we enjoy what they made back then?
I have an interesting counter example to my own theory. In the middle ages they used to torture animals before killing them because they thought that pain and fear made the meat taste better. Now we know that it actually releases toxins into the meat and poisons it.
I have an interesting counter example to my own theory. In the middle ages they used to torture animals before killing them because they thought that pain and fear made the meat taste better. Now we know that it actually releases toxins into the meat and poisons it.
They just said it tastes better, not that it wasn't killing you slowly!
Laughing_Gnome_Invisible
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So all that waterboarding was just making terrorists more delicious? Interesting! :fro:
mpruett
Well-Known Member
I have an interesting counter example to my own theory. In the middle ages they used to torture animals before killing them because they thought that pain and fear made the meat taste better. Now we know that it actually releases toxins into the meat and poisons it.
Another counter to your theory is the fact that back in the day (pre-refrigeration), "well hung" meat was aged in the open air, often to the point of smelling bad! They'd just cut off the rotted parts and go to town.
I think it's not unlikely that the meat produced by this method wouldn't be too palatable to today's consumers, even those who really love dry-aged meat.
This would point toward tastes changing over time to me.
Another thing to remember is that tastes change over distance; for example, in parts of Europe, people dig aperitif liqueurs like Aperol, Campari or Cynar. They're not so popular here in the US- people don't go for that type of bitterness (or we're not so crazy as to like a bitter artichoke liqueur) here.
I suspect that medieval beer was certainly infected by our standards, if it was kept for any reasonable length of time. However, like someone else said earlier in the thread, it was consistently infected with whatever was in the brewhouse, much like Lambics. The flip side is brewing constantly re-inoculated the brewhouse, so the microbial flora probably changed very slowly over time.
I bet that combined with much shorter shelf life guidelines (4 days!), would tend to make for a pretty consistent product, if the malt and other ingredients were also consistent.
I doubt that it tasted like today's beer, but it probably changed at a very slow rate, with watershed events like the invention of Pale Ale or Pilsner changing the landscape. For example, we can identify something like a Coors Light as having derived ultimately from the Pilsner style, especially if we backtrack through regular Coors and then the pre-prohibition pilsners that preceded it, all the way back to Pilsner Urquell.
When you are hungry, almost anything is palatable...
I don't doubt that beer back then was consistent at the same brewery. I imagine that the brewers used the same proven procedures each time. I highly doubt it was the same beer as we have today though. And I doubt it tasted as good in general (although I still don't see why people brew Lambics either...)
I don't doubt that beer back then was consistent at the same brewery. I imagine that the brewers used the same proven procedures each time. I highly doubt it was the same beer as we have today though. And I doubt it tasted as good in general (although I still don't see why people brew Lambics either...)
I seem to be waging a lost war here, but I still insist on playing devil's advocate.
What I wonder, is whether they prefered to eat meat this way, or where they doing it out of necessity? Without further reading I'm really not convinced that this proves anything. They didn't have refrigerators and I'm sure not everything could be smoked/salted all the time to preserve it, yet people still had to eat. If you peruse any medieval recipes, you'll find that their cooking wasn't so different from ours. A somewhat different combination of spices and flavors, but I can't imagine it would be gross to eat. Just look at the number of Middle Ages recipe books and the popularity of recreating food of the times. With beer, I think it's a little harder since there isn't as much out there to guide us. Check out this link: http://www.badger.cx/brewing/1503.html
The sources are from the early 1600's so we're out of the range of "medieval" by a bit, but instructions like this make me think they had a pretty good handle on the situation:
"Now for the brewing of ordinary beer, your malt being well ground and put in your mash vat, and your liquor in your lead ready to boil, you shall then by little and little with scoops or pails put the boiling liquor to the malt, and then stir it even to the bottom exceedingly well together (which is called mashing of the malt) then, the liquor swimming in the top, cover all over with more malt, and so let it stand an hour and more in the mash vat, during which space may if you please heat more liquor in your lead for your second and small drink; this done, pluck up your mashing strom, and let the first liquor run gently from the malt, either in a clean trough or other vessels prepared for the purpose...."
This is from Markham, G., The English Housewife, Best, M. ed., 1986 McGill-Queen's Press. (originally published 1615, 1623, and 1631.) It goes on to describe boiling with hops for an hour, cooling, straining the hops, and racking to a wooden barrel. I can only imagine that this technique would have resulted in something pretty close to a cask of real ale. Of course this is after hops and the advent of boiling the wort which became necessary for hops utilization.
Sure but we aren't talking about the US, we're talking about Europe in the middle ages. Which is still a pretty big area to be sure. I've read an argument that goes something like: beer was brewed primarily in areas where grape cultivation (and thus wine) was impossible. If that's true, then we are probably talking England/Belgium/Germany and a few of their neighbors.
I totally agree, but many infections take a long time to affect the beer, especially with a healthy culture of yeast in there competing with them. Then again, that time period is not known for its hygiene so maybe funky beers were the norm. Still, we have funky beers nowadays and many people still think they are delicious.
Wouldn't the failure to boil the wort after the mash mean that whatever water impurities and resulting diseases that the consumption beer was meant to avoid, may not actually have been avoided? Seems to me that the boil would have been a necessary process to ensure that the end product wasn't as "bad" as the water source it started from...
Nyxator
Well-Known Member
The water was boiled prior to mashing in, so it was still 'safe' even without a post mash boil.
Also, my recollection from somewhere was that brewing was a household process, done by the women along with other cooking for most of human history. Maybe a distinction in this thread needs to be drawn between commercial and household production.
In the old poem Piers Ploughman, written in the 1300's a little before
Chaucer, a corrupt priest says that he would have no more conscience about
taking silver than he would about taking a "drought of good ale". FWIW.
You could interpret that as meaning only that there was such a thing as
good ale, or it might mean that good ale was so rare that he would take
some without a thought.
Jim
In the old poem Piers Ploughman, written in the 1300's a little before
Chaucer, a corrupt priest says that he would have no more conscience about
taking silver than he would about taking a "drought of good ale". FWIW.
You could interpret that as meaning only that there was such a thing as
good ale, or it might mean that good ale was so rare that he would take
some without a thought.
Jim
Hmm, I don't know that a priest would think twice about drinking ale. Priests have always been allowed to drink, and I would imagine they did a lot of it back then, in fact a lot of brewing happened in monasteries. I would assume this just means he wouldn't think twice about taking silver, just as he doesn't think twice about drinking a "drought of good ale", meaning that it was available. Though this doesn't prove much, his definition of good may not be ours.
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