Nearly everytime I wander through the discussions on this forum about issues from yeast (dry vs. liquid, starter vs. no starter) to fermentation temps and whether to use a secondary fermentor, I wonder "Did ancient Egyptians or medieval monks worry about this?" Don't get me wrong, here. I love this site and waste too much time at work surfing beer discussions, but I have to think that sometimes we overanalyze. I know I do.
Are we overanalyzing?
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Christian
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I wouldn't call it over analyzing, i would say it's just more of an obsession. We all love what we do and want to know as much about it as possible.
Laughing_Gnome_Invisible
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The analysis is there in the threads to help us decide what works for us personally. If the chosen method ends up being mashing in the bath with the dogs and fermenting in a used condom, well, that's fine. In the end, you takes yer info from the site and make it work for what you want out of your beer. 
Edit: I'm not being snarky by the way. 'tis the truth!
Edit: I'm not being snarky by the way. 'tis the truth!
Hound_Dog
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I understand your point, but somehow I don't think that the ancient Egyptians made beer that was anywhere as good as what we get today. Through over analysis we are able to find the ways that help us make the best beer that we can brew.
Yes, most new brewers do over analyze, and worry and stress. And some of the really hard core scientist types like the kaiser's of this forum, who have the unlimited brain capacity to understand all that stuff the rest of us get lost trying to understand.
But I think a lot of us on here, realize that this is a hobby, and it is supposed to be fun. And it can be as detailed or as easy as we choose to put into it....But we don't need to lose sleep over things.
And I think that with experience you also realize that you are not in charge of this ride, the yeast are. And like you said they've been doing it since before the pyramids, and it's worked out okay.
And despite our worries and the idiotic stuff we do to it, beer still gets made.
And I think you get to a point where you realize that none of the -vs- things matter, there is no "correct" method of doing things...they ALL make beer, and all that the only preferred method that truly matters is what works for you.
flyangler18
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I always seem to get my knickers in a twist over statements like this, because I geek out on brewing history; it is a historiographical blunder of the highest degree to that ancient peoples were somehow ignorant blithering idiots who didn't know what the hell they were doing. It's just poor methodology.
To the OP, I'm guilty as charged - entering into long drawn-out discussions over minor trivialities like the one I just quoted above, but I enjoy the discourse.
Jason
Then you probably haven't tried Midas TOuch or any of the historic recreation brews based on the evidence left behind..they were pretty damn good.
This idea that somehow the beer of ancient times was somehow worse than ours is today always rankles me...it's like the ethnocentric bias, or cultural relativism that led to the native people of this world being sent away to schools to have the culture ripped from them. That somehow their religion, their ideas, their language, their beliefs were somehow "sub par."
And despite the doomsayers who say that ancient beer was consumed young because it would go bad, they forget the fact that most of those beers were usually HOPLESS, and that the biggest reason hops were placed in beers was for it's antisceptic/preservative function.
Or that it was somehow "sub par" compared to today.
So even if the beer had to be consumed young, it still must have tasted good enough to those folks most of the time to survive culturally for 4,000 years, and not go the way of pepsi clear or new coke. I'm sure even a few hundred or thousands of years ago, people were discerning enough to know if something tasted good or nasty...
I hate when people make that argue....because we humans, no matter whether it was 40 million years ago, or yesterday, can choose what they like and dislike. And the stuff that we dislike, often dissapears from our awareness and our culture.
So I'm sure that King Midas wasn't drinking bongwater....we know that his food in the temple was pretty damn good (most middle eastern food that we eat today hasn't changed much since the time of the ancient islamic people, or Jewish people, or Spanish, or Italian or Greek, or any culture that traces itself back to ancient times even.)
SO if their food managed to taste damn good, do you really think that their chosen drink would taste like infected a$$?
To me that is a biased and ridiculous notion.
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I have no doubt that the beers of yore were as tasty as a pint today. they may have even perhaps been more flavorful and inspiring if you read much into how many prefer a cask served beer over a keg draught anyday.
Methinks the ONLY thing thay has evolved from times of yore is long term stabilty and aesthetic clarity. Flavor and character I expect may have been better in those days as many of those brewers had their hands in nearly every aspect of the product. meaning if they didn't grow it themselves they didn;t have it.
Methinks the ONLY thing thay has evolved from times of yore is long term stabilty and aesthetic clarity. Flavor and character I expect may have been better in those days as many of those brewers had their hands in nearly every aspect of the product. meaning if they didn't grow it themselves they didn;t have it.
The monks controlled temperature to some extent and I know that in grape growing regions the monks took detailed records of temperatures.
They brewed with the best information and processes available at the time. Just because we have access to more information now doesn't mean it is over-analyzing. We're just trying for the best product possible from our processes available to us.
Now excuse me, I need to get back to sketchup and my dream temp controlled walk-in conical fermenting room. Toodles.
ohiobrewtus
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I always seem to get my knickers in a twist over statements like this, because I geek out on brewing history; it is a historiographical blunder of the highest degree to that ancient peoples were somehow ignorant blithering idiots who didn't know what the hell they were doing. It's just poor methodology.
To the OP, I'm guilty as charged - entering into long drawn-out discussions over minor trivialities like the one I just quoted above, but I enjoy the discourse.
Jason
Wait, you wear knickers?
To the OP - I think that you are correct for the most part. We all have certain aspects of the brewing process that we place more importance on and usually defend when questioned. There are times when some threads go on way too long around here, and I'm probably guilty of being involved in more than a few of them over the years.
I don't think alot of thing produced today taste good, so I'm also assuming things back then didn't either.
Remember they added poison to absinthe and gin.
Ever read The Jungle?
Remember they added poison to absinthe and gin.
Ever read The Jungle?
freddyb
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Just to over-analyze here, there were no ancient Islamic people. Islam was founded in the Middle Ages. :cross:
You've given me an idea. Why not try to brew as they did back then? I'm tempted to brew a batch, do the no chill method, leaving it outside. Then rack to primary and let it ferment outside at whatever the weather gives me.
They hardly had the high tech means of temperature control and sanitation that we have now. Yet they made great beer. Anyone ever tried this?
They hardly had the high tech means of temperature control and sanitation that we have now. Yet they made great beer. Anyone ever tried this?
Then you should use some sort of bag made out of an animal's stomach. For authenticity, of course.
flyangler18
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Just for arguments sake, those of you that feel that ancient beer was somehow ahead of its time and as good as possible today, replace beer with surgery.
Food preparation is a technology with appropriateness for it's time. I would choose today's beer over beer over any period of time. Hand washing was not practiced before Pasteur.
Food preparation is a technology with appropriateness for it's time. I would choose today's beer over beer over any period of time. Hand washing was not practiced before Pasteur.
arturo7
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flyangler18
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The challenge is to treat brewing practices and recipes from yesteryear on their own terms as examples of that particular time's knowledge and practices. I've really only begun my research into medieval and colonial brewing over the past year, but I can tell you that medieval brewers were held in high regard and brewing was protected knowledge, often by the Church.
I'm not saying that they are not worthy of replication, study and so forth. I think that's a worthwhile endeavor. I think the odds of getting a non-phenolic sourish beer are more left to chance than today and would be a rarity.
SFBEER
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To the OP - A very wise man once said anything worth doing is worth over doing. Annalzing included.
alcibiades
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The reason we overanalyze is to "professionalize," or legitimize, a hobby that can be seen as indulgent. By taking it as more of a science, we get rid of some of the guilt associated with doing something for pure pleasure....
(i personally don't mind doing things for pure pleasure....but I'm just offering a theory)
(i personally don't mind doing things for pure pleasure....but I'm just offering a theory)
Synovia
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But thats brewed with modern brewing practices. I have to imagine that the egyptians had temperature control issues and such.
Now, some societies were fermenting in caves underground and such, but i have a hard time believing that we haven't improved on their methodologies.
SpanishCastleAle
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My first thought was; "You bet they worried about stuff like this." (although the exact stuff they worried about was different). They pretty much had to rely on their own experience and observations...building upon the experience and observations of those before them. In some ways they were probably more 'in-tune/in-touch' with their beer because they didn't have hydrometers, sanitizers...or even know about yeast per se.
I guess I just figure that there must have always been brewers that were passionate about what they did and were always trying to learn about and improve their beer.
flyangler18
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Good idea, go ahead and post to it!
carl spakler
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Yes.
You can make good beer without sweating the details, but the details are what changes beer from good to great IMO.
You can make good beer without sweating the details, but the details are what changes beer from good to great IMO.
I would have to agree with the OP on the belief that ancient brews were likely not as good as our own. But by that I mean what we expect is good by our standard of today. Over the millenia we have built upon our knowledge of everything in the cause of improving it. I'd like to think that most things are better today.
However, back then, they probably had a very different idea about what was tasty, and what was not. They likely enjoyed a different array of flavors than we do today.
If we gave them an IPA, I'd bet they would spit it right out!
Who knows whether or not the ancient peoples drank uninfected beers! Maybe they were a bit tart, and maybe that's the way they liked it! I'm willing to bet that the average brewer probably could not, or did not know how to, sanitize their equipment after each batch.
However, back then, they probably had a very different idea about what was tasty, and what was not. They likely enjoyed a different array of flavors than we do today.
If we gave them an IPA, I'd bet they would spit it right out!
Who knows whether or not the ancient peoples drank uninfected beers! Maybe they were a bit tart, and maybe that's the way they liked it! I'm willing to bet that the average brewer probably could not, or did not know how to, sanitize their equipment after each batch.
agusus
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To those who think ancient beer was just as good as today's beer - okay, the beers they made may have been good, at least the ones for the upper class that weren't the 3-4% ABV ones. But you can't deny the fact that we're going through a beer renaissance today. Never in history have there been so many styles, so many experimental and creative methods. The Egyptians didn't have IPAs, or triple-dry-hopped Randall'ed IIPA's. Raspberry stouts, oatmeal stouts, etc... many styles are recent inventions. I think we probably have more diversity of styles now, partly due to globalization (read "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman). We've taken all the styles of the world and made them available to everyone.
You can even look back just to the 1900's and the beer styles in America fell into a pretty narrow range - mostly light lagers and light pale ales. Of course, Belgium has been doing good beers for quite a while, but they still didn't have the technology we have today.
Probably the biggest technological advance we have in brewing today is the ability to have consistency. Large breweries can have computer monitored temperature, lab equipment for measuring wort properties, etc. This allows them to put out a brew with consistent taste year after year. If Red Hook wants to produce their ESB every year for 10 years with nearly identical taste, they can get pretty close to that.
So for many of the techniques we do now that seem like over-analyzing, I think many of them are simply techniques for achieving consistency. To achieve consistency you need to control and record all the little variables. The beer will probably still come out fine if you decide not to be analytical, but you sacrifice the ability to replicate the recipe.
While the monks of Belgium did monitor many of these things and kept careful records, they didn't have mass spectrometers and other technology that macro and microbreweries can use today, so their brews likely varied a little bit more year to year.
You can even look back just to the 1900's and the beer styles in America fell into a pretty narrow range - mostly light lagers and light pale ales. Of course, Belgium has been doing good beers for quite a while, but they still didn't have the technology we have today.
Probably the biggest technological advance we have in brewing today is the ability to have consistency. Large breweries can have computer monitored temperature, lab equipment for measuring wort properties, etc. This allows them to put out a brew with consistent taste year after year. If Red Hook wants to produce their ESB every year for 10 years with nearly identical taste, they can get pretty close to that.
So for many of the techniques we do now that seem like over-analyzing, I think many of them are simply techniques for achieving consistency. To achieve consistency you need to control and record all the little variables. The beer will probably still come out fine if you decide not to be analytical, but you sacrifice the ability to replicate the recipe.
While the monks of Belgium did monitor many of these things and kept careful records, they didn't have mass spectrometers and other technology that macro and microbreweries can use today, so their brews likely varied a little bit more year to year.
Really?!?!?! Not the America who's beer history I have read about.
Again, that's sort of a cultural relativisitic bias that the past is somehow "inferior" to the present.
America like most of the world had quite an extensive array of beers available prior to the German Invasion of brewer's which later introduced the light lager. They pretty much had the "brewing culture" of all the countries that people immigrated from...Most English beer styles..you know Porters, Stouts, Partigyles, stuff like that. As well as mostly heavy German Styles of beer. Not to mention people from Scotland, Ireland, Russia and other places where beer was drank.
Remember up until then, beer was food.
In fact thew whole history of the light lager is the American populace's (not the brewer's) desire to have a lighter beer to drink, which forced the German brewers to look at adding adjuncts like corn and rice...not as the popular homebrewer's myth has been to make money by peddling and "inferior commercial product" by adding adjuncts, but in order to come up with a style of beer that the American people wanted.
Maureen Ogle proved that in Ambitious Brew it actually made the cost of a bottle of Budweiser cost around 17.00/bottle in today's dollars.
When AH released Budweiser with it's corn and rice adjuncts in the 1860's it was the most expensive beer out there; a single bottle retailed for $1.00 (what would equal in today's Dollars for $17.00) this was quite difference when a schooner of beer usually cost a nickel.
The American populace ate it up!
It wasn't done to save money, it was done because heavy beers (both english style Ales and the heavier Bavarian malty beers) were not being drunk by American consumers any more. Beer initally was seen around the world as food (some even called it liquid bread), but since America, even in the 1800's was a prosperous nation compared to the rest of the world, and americans ate meat with nearly every meal, heavy beers had fallen out of favor...
And American Barley just made for heavy, hazy beer
Bush and other German Brewers started looking at other styles of Beers, and came upon Karl Balling and Anton Schwartz's work at the Prague Polytechnic Institute with the Brewers in Bohemia who when faced with a grain shortage started using adjuncts, which produced the pils which was light, sparkly and fruity tasting...just the thing for American tastebuds.
So the brewers brought Schwartz to America where he went to work for American Brewer Magazine writing articles and technical monographs, teaching American brewers how to use Rice and Corn...
The sad moral of the story is....The big corporate brewers did not foist tasteless adjunct laced fizzy water on us, like the popular mythology all of us beersnobs like to take to bed with us to feel all warm and elitist....it was done because our American ancestors wanted it.
Listen to this from Basic Brewing;
So again I wouldn't go saying that American's choices were limited to Light lagers and Light ales.....They really had everything that was available to any sea faring culture, especially the culture and styles of the countries they came from.
I could add that the use of sugars in beer was also a costly proposition until very recently. English brewers used sugar in their IPAs, not because it was cheaper, but because of the flavors. During WW2 rationing, 10-15% sugar could easily double the price of a pint.
Brewers in the way back probably made good beer and certainly obsessed about the process. Consider the level of experience needed to hit your mash temperatures, when you didn't have a thermometer. One recipe I've read talks about how the surface of the water would shimmer when it was the correct temperature.
More to the point: It's a hobby. If brewing, as a hobby, couldn't support a continuum of interest, analysis, effort and equipment, it wouldn't remain a hobby. There's room for the can-kitters and the people who raise and malt their barley.
Brewers in the way back probably made good beer and certainly obsessed about the process. Consider the level of experience needed to hit your mash temperatures, when you didn't have a thermometer. One recipe I've read talks about how the surface of the water would shimmer when it was the correct temperature.
More to the point: It's a hobby. If brewing, as a hobby, couldn't support a continuum of interest, analysis, effort and equipment, it wouldn't remain a hobby. There's room for the can-kitters and the people who raise and malt their barley.
Check out Orfy's method of brewing these days... He doesn't really measure anything, doesn't time anything etc. I've done those brew days a few times, brewing with leftover ingredients or just throwing together 'beer' for friends. It's fun.
Hound_Dog
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I didn't say that they were idiots who didn't know what they were doing. Even you must admit that brewing practices and technology today, however necessary or unnecessary, allows you to make more consistent beer that can be made to a more specific desired flavor profile. Yet again, I'm not saying that ancient beer wasn't able to be brewed to a better flavor profile, but the variety of grain or knowledge of malting practices were not known 3000 years ago, nor were as many options available. My statement of this age having better beer is based on a simple question, would you rather drink the beer of today's age or exclusively that of the egyptians.I always seem to get my knickers in a twist over statements like this, because I geek out on brewing history; it is a historiographical blunder of the highest degree to that ancient peoples were somehow ignorant blithering idiots who didn't know what the hell they were doing. It's just poor methodology.
Jason
Well IMHO Midas Touch is awful. I didn't say that their practices were sub par, that's just putting words in my mouth. As for your statement about undesired foods not being made anymore, consider how large of a market there is for ancient beers today. If the basis for how good it was is by how it lasted through time than ancient beer styles dissappeared for a long time until curiosity brought them back, not a longing for the taste. Even with that Midas Touch or other ancients aren't really comparible to the true ancient beers, because they too are brewed with the knowledge and technology of today. The egyptians and others may have known what they were doing, but I think it's a fair assesment to say that we know more today. At least this is my perception about this.
Medieval and colonial brewing were still more advanced than that of early civilizations, and I think that in all ages more was known about brewing practices than anyone realizes today. I think your statement about comparing the end product to the practices and technology of the time is precisely what I meant by saying that better beer is made these days.
This is what I imagine about truly ancient beer.
jkarp
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The scary part of brewing this way is IF you brew a truly wonderful, slap your mamma it's so good beer, you've got zero chance of reproducing it.
boredatwork
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"Overanalyzing beer and brewing" equals "something to do at work when I am bored". It is very worthwhile and I would not do without it.
Yeah, I have noticed your nickname....why the heck do you think I have such a high postcount? My highest amount of posting are between the hours of 8:30am to 5pm.....
MMW
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Yeah, I have noticed your nickname....why the heck do you think I have such a high postcount? My highest amount of posting are between the hours of 8:30am to 5pm.....
Only time I log on during nights and weekends is when SWMBO is out of town...
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