Beer History Sites

[Revvy]

binkman has a link to the Syllabus for his "Archeology of Beer" course that he taught at John's Hopkins. It's got some interesting sources. Syllabus

Here are the slides. I converted them all to PDFs for the sake of compatibility. I made the original files on a mac and apparently mac and pc power point files don't cross-over very well. The PDFs should chew up less RAM anyway.

Lecture 1 - Introduction to Archaeology and Beer
Lecture 2 - The Psychological, Physiological, and Sociological effects of Alcohol
Lecture 3 - The Multidisciplinary Search for Ancient Beer
Lecture 4 - Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia
Lecture 5 - Beer in Ancient Egypt
Lecture 6 - Beer in Pre-Columbian Americas

The course focused first on defining beer in relation to other fermented beverages, then demonstrating what sorts of roles alcohol consumption and production plays in our society and other societies. Then a case by case study of brewing and consumption in three different parts of the ancient world: Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Americas.

Because the course was only three weeks long and I was jamming a LOT of information in there, a lot is left out, too. Also, the final class revolved around the relationship between beer and civilization. There were no slides for that class, it was a kind of end of the course discussion section for people to react to all this information.

 

[Gear101]

need to start reading all of these.. nice post

 

[Airborneguy]

Been reading a lot, but most of my assignments are academic journals which can only be accessed via the university library.

Here's tonight's readings:

Microscopy Investigation of Egyptian Brewing and Baking Methods:
http://ancientgrains.org/samuel1996science.pdf

Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet II:
http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/tab2.htm

 

[Revvy]

I don't have much Canadian stuff on here, but these are cool.

My sweetie forwarded me links to some collections of vintage Canadian beer labels on Flickr. I thought these might be of interest here.

Quebec and Northern Ontario

Ontario

Oldest items in the collection

Enjoy!

 

[Piratwolf]

FWIW, I'm working on a Master's in History and taking a class on Maritime History. I was reading about ship design in the Netherlands in the 15th century and came across a very interesting section about gruit beer, hopped beer, taxation, and other stuff. Don't have any e-resource for it, but it's the last chapter in...

Unger, Richard W. Ships and Shipping in the North Sea and Atlantic, 1400-1800. Brookfield, VT.: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1997.

 

[The_Professor]

...Microscopy Investigation of Egyptian Brewing and Baking Methods:
http://ancientgrains.org/samuel1996science.pdf...

I've seen this one before and it seems to have some good info.

But I don't understand what the author means by:
...ancient Egyptians brewed using a two-part process of coarsely ground, well heated malt or grain and unheated malt...The process does not resemble modern brewing...

Is mashing or boiling meant by "heated"?
Maybe one set of malt was mashed/boiled and then poured through a second set of malt?

 

[Airborneguy]

In other readings, it seems like it is generally agreed that the Egyptians created a half-baked loaf, then wet it and mixed it with fresh grains when it was time to brew. Maybe this is what he was getting at or he misinterpreted some of the research?

 

[The_Professor]

I have seen a lot that suggest the bread thing but a few that say that is a misunderstanding of the original sources. Like some suggest spelt rather than emmer.

 

[Airborneguy]

I'm actually reading about Greco-Roman brewing right now (prof. sent me a PDF, can't post it).

According to this source, emmer was #1 for the Greeks and Romans followed by millet then eikhorn. This author believes that barley beer was considered inferior to wheat beer to ancient Greeks at least.

 

[The_Professor]

...emmer was #1 for the Greeks and Romans...

I believe there was a period of time that the Roman army marched on emmer.

 

[Airborneguy]

Here's a good one:

http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.com/pdf/13/9780199693801.pdf

 

[Revvy]

Our own Chris Bowen Demoing Colonial Brewing.

 

[unionrdr]

It's always enjoyable to see how it used to be done. Reading's ok,but a visual is always more enjoyable.

 

[Revvy]

The recent recovery of yeast from jars of fermented chicha in Equador. What is surprising is that it is a new species of yeast.

http://io9.com/5886505/researchers-resurrect-new-species-of-life-from-ancient-andean-tomb

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-species-resurrected-ancient-andean-tomb

 

[The_Professor]

The recent recovery of yeast from jars of fermented chicha in Equador. What is surprising is that it is a new species of yeast...

More or less...

In fact, two of the strains were a new species entirely, and beonged to the genus Candida, many species of which are known to cause skin and vaginal infections.
So how could a long-lost yeast strain show up simultaneously on opposite ends of the world? "I don't think this is a beverage-related yeast, I think it is a human-related yeast,"

 

[PanzerBanana]

I will definitely be making my way through the links in this thread. I've got in my bookmarks

Zythophile and Shut Up About Barclay Perkins

I especially enjoy Zythophile. Martin's a guy that actually studies dusty old books and newspaper clippings centuries old to find beer facts.

I'm keen on trying to capture some historic traits in my beers. And after having read some of the things Martin's unearthed about Porter that pretty much shoots down what everyone's been going by for a couple hundred years.

 

[Airborneguy]

Another interesting read, short too:

http://people.stfx.ca/rphillip/Iron Age Beer.pdf

 

[Revvy]

Awesome post. FYI the last link on Post 1 might be interesting to you, it's on Bronze age celtic brewing. Might be something to share with your instructor.

 

[Airborneguy]

Just read it. One of my other readings mentioned their experiment. I really wish I could post everything here, but most of it comes from the school's library. Some of the readings on the Classical Period were awesome. I don't think too many beer snobs would be happy to read Pliny's opinion of beer... My professor corrected me a few times during our conversation by the way. Apparently it's Plin-E, not Pline-E!

 

[Airborneguy]

Here's the article I'm reading tonight:

http://breweryhistory.com/journal/archive/117/bh-117-039.html

The main site seems to be a wealth of information:

http://www.breweryhistory.com/journal/

 

[gbx]

I'm still reading through the thread and checking out the links but I wondered if anyone has seen any info on early west coast brewing? It came up in a discussion with some other homebrewers about a week ago that there wild hops growing in an area of town (vancouver, bc) that had several breweries before prohibition. As hops generally aren't native to here they likely are descendents of hops grown by the brewers or from seeds from hops they used. It got me thinking: wouldn't it be cool to brew a historic recipe from one of the old breweries with these hops? This put me and a couple other people on a google quest for the last few days. The holy grail of this quest would be a brew log from one of the pre-prohibition breweries. We've found out a lot of cool things about beer history in Canada and about general Vancouver history but nothing close to the details I'm looking for. Does anyone know anything about Vancouver or British Columbia or even just westcoast brewing history? Most brewing history I found focuses on the corporate side with very little details about the actual beer. They will mention what company bought out who but won't mention what they brewed: was it ale, porter, lager, etc? The only thing I've found so far that gives any details of the beer is this http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2009/05/beer-in-1890s-canada.html awesome but it only deals with eastern canada. From what we've read, it sounds like the 19th century breweries in British Columbia had more contact with San Francisco than the rest of Canada. Does anyone have any info about what they were brewing in SF, Oregon or Washington 100 years ago? I have plans to hit up the city archives but that can't happen without skipping work someday. Anyone else in Vancouver want in on this quest? Has anyone else tried to research a long defunct local brewery? How did you go about doing it?

 

[Airborneguy]

This is a treasure trove, especially if interested in English Brewing:

http://www.breweryhistory.com/journal/archive/index.html

 

[Airborneguy]

http://www.breweryhistory.com/journal/archive/112/bh-112-031.html

 

[Revvy]

Couple of links I just stumbled upon.

A history of Brewing in Huntington West VA.

An Article on a Pennsylvania Brewing Presentation. Beer expert lays out history of breweries

I don't know if I posted this before, but here is the link for the American Breweriana Association, which I finally got around to joining. I've found the best way to learn about the existence of old breweries has been by finding the ephemera and swag from the old ones.

 

[Airborneguy]

Just wanted to say that I'm about ready to quit beer history for the rest of my life! This class has confirmed what I always say about "going pro": the best way to ruin something you love is to make it your profession (or in this case, take a college course about it). I'm reading 200-300 pages of beer history a week, and I'm just totally burnt out. This is the most intense class I've ever taken.

 

[Revvy]

Just found some viking beer articles.

Vikings , Making the Brew !

 

[unionrdr]

Interesting story. I'd like to try some of that viking yeast to see what the flavors are exactly.

 

[Bithead]

Found a small article regarding the Trenton Brewing Company in NJ. No recipe or ingredient info.
http://www.hmdb.org/Marker.asp?Marker=4386


Also bottle pics
http://brucemobley.com/beerbottlelibrary/nj/trenton/trenton.htm

Trade & product names for that location
http://www.taverntrove.com/brewery.php?BreweryId=929

 

[mrbowenz]

Thought I would share a link to a recent tasting with friends in west London , the beer history geeks where out in full force for this tasting circle..


http://zythophile.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/an-1875-arctic-ale-tasting/

 

[Revvy]

stamandster just posted this comprehensive site of brewery history sites.

Although expensive, check out the pre-prohibition beer glasses for sale.