history

I've been wondering about this recently, but how did past brewers carbonate/pressurize their beer? I hope this is the right sub forum, but I'm curious how brewers from medieval times to around the 1700s managed to carbonate beer. Like, did they bottle condition it? Crown caps are a relatively...

It wasn’t that long ago that if you had offered homebrewers and craft beer drinkers a low-impact, low-alcohol beer with approachable flavor, they would have scoffed. Real beer was meant to be big, bold, adventurous, and preferably have a sizable ABV (Alcohol by Volume). Oh, how times have...

The idea of sour beer is fairly simple; sweet wort undergoes a spontaneous fermentation when wild yeast is introduced into the mix. This then leads to the production of alcohol and a sour flavor (usually from lactic acid). We can announce this lovely fact today because thousands upon thousands...

I often find that when I am a launching into a project, it can be very helpful to know the background and history of what I’m doing. So I’ve decided to begin with various notes about mead, and the natural starting point should be the history. We’ll take a look at how we came across this beverage...

Italy continues to be known more as an interesting beer country and a home to many popular microbreweries. Less known maybe is the fact that Italy is also home to a flourishing homebrewing community. The sudden growth of Italy's craft beer industry, and it's homebrewing community, was unheard of...

At one point in time, home brewing used to be a chore equivalent to baking bread or sewing clothes. Thats right! Prior to the black plague, the trading and industrialization of ale was on the rise, but brewing remained a feminine household task in most of England up into the 1600s. In her book...

Beer is the answer. The answer to what? It turns out that beer has been the answer to many a question throughout history. Someone, somewhere, at some moment in history, picked up a random vessel filled with some funky liquid... "Hey, what is this?" "Beer." "Should I drink it?" "Beer." Okay, he...

I love beer (more on this later) and I love history. There have been many times I have gone down the rabbit hole that is Wikipedia and three hours later I find myself on some page about some obscure topic that I'm sure I'm the only one that's read it since the author wrote it. My 16 year old...