orgenomescii
Member
I have an academic background in early medieval Irish history (about 600-1000AD) and one day, when bored, I started a little research project pertaining to textual descriptions of brewing based off of vocabulary specifically describing various elements of ale production ("mash", "wort", "ferment", even "hops" in vain, as we will see).
Ale in Medieval Ireland
Ale or beer was a staple good of the ancient Irish heroic sagas; references abound with ale-houses where warriors and kings feasted on roast pork while drinking cups of ale and mead. Beer has been brewed since the dawn of human civilization in Mesopotamia, and was brewed in Ireland presumably since the introduction of agriculture around five thousand years ago. This was long before the arrival of the Celtic Irish language and its distinct culture, which may have only arrived in Ireland from the continent about 2,500 years ago.
The evidence that we will examine comes from this later period, when Irish monks during the early medieval era (about 600-1000AD) compiled and wrote down the ancient laws, sagas and poems of Celtic Ireland. Unlike medieval texts written elsewhere in Europe, many of these documents were written in the Old Irish language instead of Latin, which gives us a better insight into the cultural practices and aspects of daily life of ancient Ireland. One of the most interesting genres of medieval Irish texts are the law tracts. These are compilations of ancient secular laws that in many cases pre-dated Christianity. Medieval Irish law was comprehensive and covered everything from debt to divorce and even regulated beekeeping. So it should be no surprise that the production of ale, its distribution and consumption is written about fairly often in these texts.
Irish Law, Malting & Kiln-Drying
While the 16th century Bavarian Purity Laws regulated ingredients, medieval Irish law actually regulated the entire process of brewing from the malting of barley seed, to its firing in the kiln, to the extraction of the wort and finally to the process of fermentation. This was because in medieval Ireland, coinage and currency did not really exist and food products or movable goods like cattle were used instead. In the Senchas Mor, a huge collection of assorted legal tracts, there is a detailed text called the Cain Aigillne which describes the rent that common tenants were required to pay their lord or king, which of course was in the form of food and drink. Irish law seems to have regulated the production of ale intended to be paid as “tax” or rent for lords to ensure that it was of sufficient quality to be consumed by aristocrats, though it is likely that beer or ale brewed for domestic consumption did not have to follow these regulations. This is the OG home brewing: if you were a medieval Irish peasant, you were legally obligated to homebrew to pay your rent/taxes.
Before harvested barley can be brewed into beer it must be malted. The purpose of malting is to trick the barley seed into thinking it’s been planted and ready to sprout a new plant, where the dormant energy inside the seed is transformed into sugars that can then be fermented into alcohol. But before the seed can actually sprout, the process is stalled leaving whole barley seeds full of fermentable sugar. The Cain Aigillne provides a fairly detailed description of the malting process that had to be followed to ensure that the barley malt used for a lord’s rent would be of good quality; it is called a “malt of three fortnights” and the process is fairly similar to modern malting techniques:
This process creates what we might call a “green malt”, which is ready to be further dried in a kiln. Modern malting basically follows the same steps, but in modern, temperature controlled malt-houses the drying process might only take 6 days. Anyone who has had to hang laundry to dry in a damp Irish house can commiserate with the medieval Irish brewer’s need to wait nearly a week and a half for his malt to fully dry.
Next, the Cain Aigillne describes the last essential step in malting: kiln drying the green malt:
Now that our ancient Irish barley has been malted and kiln-dried, we are ready to start brewing ancient Irish ale. However the laws become even stricter from this point on: early medieval Irish law actually required a brewer to perform quality controls at every step henceforth, and seems to imply that he was required to be accompanied by an assistant or other brewer as a witness to guarantee that he followed the rules properly in case he was accused of brewing bad ale by his lord, in which case he could be sued and forced to pay restitution.
Quality Control
The law is quite clear that every subsequent step requires a form of quality control, and if the tenant brewer has performed these tests in good faith before a witness who can testify in court, then he is not liable for whatever might go wrong with his ale during the fermentation process. Considering the lack of modern chemical disinfectants or food grade brewing sites, this is a very fair law given that any beer brewed outdoors in a wooden vat or clay pot was liable to become infected by any number of bacteria or wild yeasts; ruining the batch, a problem which still plagues many homebrewers. He would still be required to brew a new batch or pay a fine in other goods as restitution, but he wasn’t legally responsible for any contamination during the fermentation process if he dutifully followed the steps for malting, kilning, milling and mashing the grain.
The steps for quality control are listed clearly in the Cain Aigillne:
The text then states somewhat contradictory legal phrasing: that if a tenant performs these taste tests he isn’t liable for the failure of his product, but at the same time his lord can sue him for restitution if he isn’t satisfied with the final product. The law specifies that a tenant who brews a faulty ale according to these guidelines with a witness was not legally liable for its failure, but still had to pay this part of his rent; if his batch became contaminated, he still had to brew a new batch, buy good beer from somewhere else to give to his lord, or else work out some other kind of payment. The tenant was then given fifteen days to make the proper payment; enough time to brew a new batch of ale properly.
If a tenant brewed a good beer but didn’t follow these instructions or wasn’t able to prove it because he had no witness, he had to pay his lord a certain fine in either metals or livestock. If he brewed a bad beer, didn’t follow the instructions, and didn’t have a witness who could testify on his behalf, then he was required to pay double that fine, as well as being given fifteen days to get his hands on a good batch of beer.
Mashing & Fermenting
The Cain Aigillne doesn’t provide any further instructions as to the brewing process itself, just the steps for malting, drying and milling the barley grain. It mentions mashing at the end, where the brewer was required to taste the mash to make sure it was sweet and not sickening, ie. that the sugars in the barley grain had been appropriately malted and extracted for fermentation. However, we find a brief description of the mashing process in the Bretha Brigte – The Life of St. Brigit; a hagiography that describes that saint’s life story and the miracles she performed.
One such miracle performed by St. Brigit is actually a miraculous brewing session! Out of her generosity and benefaction, Brigit decides to brew ale to supply seven churches (eclasi – possibly monasteries) in her vicinity. However, her family home has only one single measure of barley and does not possess dedicated brewing vessels save two troughs, presumably made of wood or possibly carved of stone. Not only is she constrained by her materials, but she decides to donate this beer to the churches for Easter, a springtime holiday when beer was rarely brewed as barley was only harvested in the fall.
Nevertheless, Brigit manages to use these two troughs and one measure of malted barley to brew enough ale to supply all seven churches in time for Easter, as virgins carry her miraculously brewed ale from an unending wort. The text implies that brewing was done with two vessels; one to mash, or extract the malted sugars from the barley seed to create a fermentable wort, and another in which to ferment the wort:
So presumably malted barley was steeped in heated water in one tub and then transferred into a second container to ferment. There are no mentions of hops or even herbal additives made to this concoction. In fact, hops were almost certainly unknown in Ireland until the late Middle Ages, and even then their use may have been confined to the English settler colonies there. If no bitterants like hops, bog rosemary or yarrow were used in brewing, the resultant ale would be fairly sweet and perhaps even fruity compared to contemporary ales.
A similar beer is traditionally brewed in Finland using much the same methodology and also lacking any kind of bitterants. This drink is called “sahti” and is meant to be consumed fresh, as presumably was early Irish ale given the 15 day time limit to deliver it stipulated in the Cain Aigillne stated above. Sahti is similarly brewed in troughs or similar containers, traditionally by repeatedly dropping heated river stones into the mixture.
Given that Irish brewing vessels were presumably made of wood or stone as well, it is likely that they similarly employed an indirect heating method, probably the same. There are in fact archaeological features that dot the Irish countryside called fulacht fia which are large stone slabs with a basin carved inside, which some archaeologists believe were permanent vessels used for mashing malt given their proximity to fresh water sources. Because they could only heat the water indirectly and fairly inefficiently, the wort was likely never brought to a boil. This gives sahti and presumably early Irish ale as well a very heavy, substantial body, as the thickening proteins in the wort are not removed during the brewing process.
So what did early Irish ale taste like? It probably had a fairly thick, almost custardy texture with a raw cereal or grainy flavour, that would have been quite sweet given the presumed lack of bittering ingredients. Yeast also contributes to the final flavour, but it is impossible to ascertain what kind of yeast was used to ferment the wort into a finished drinkable product; the early Irish may have relied on spontaneous fermentation, cultivated dedicated brewing yeast over generations, or simply repurposed yeast used to bake bread for fermentation. The last type is used in brewing Finnish sahti, which gives the drink notes of banana or bubblegum flavouring on top of its sweet cereal body.
Its colour would depend on both the quantity of malt used per litre, and how long it had been toasted in a kiln. Literary references to ale often describe it as derg; red or ruddy. The same term is often used to describe blood, flame, gold or redheaded persons. Presumably then, Irish ale was darker in colour than contemporary commercial lagers or pilsners but lighter than stouts or porters. Like yeast, its potency is difficult to judge from these literary references alone. Ale can be brewed as weak as the drinker likes, or as strong as the yeast can withstand. Sahti, the comparable beverage, is usually brewed with a strength between 7 and 11% ABV and it’s not impossible that Irish ale was comparably potent.
However it’s not impossible that medieval Irish brewers used herbs to bitter or add extra flavours to this drink. There are references to professional or seasoned brewers who may have used locally available herbs such as wormwood, yarrow, rosemary, mint or marigold to add depth and flavour to their brew, as well as tempering the sweetness of the brew with some added bitterness. In the end, though, this could just be modern wishing – the ancient and medieval Irish may have simply preferred a thick, sweet ale that might not have tasted anything like our modern beers and ales!
While these texts specifically describe brewing in ancient Ireland, we could possibly extrapolate that beer brewing in other "barbarian" cultures was basically the same. Earlier Celtic people like the Gauls, whose word "curmi" is ultimately the origin of Spanish & Latin "cerveza", Germanic, Baltic & Slavic peoples most probably brewed ale in a similar manner but didn't record it for posterity.
Ale in Medieval Ireland
Ale or beer was a staple good of the ancient Irish heroic sagas; references abound with ale-houses where warriors and kings feasted on roast pork while drinking cups of ale and mead. Beer has been brewed since the dawn of human civilization in Mesopotamia, and was brewed in Ireland presumably since the introduction of agriculture around five thousand years ago. This was long before the arrival of the Celtic Irish language and its distinct culture, which may have only arrived in Ireland from the continent about 2,500 years ago.
The evidence that we will examine comes from this later period, when Irish monks during the early medieval era (about 600-1000AD) compiled and wrote down the ancient laws, sagas and poems of Celtic Ireland. Unlike medieval texts written elsewhere in Europe, many of these documents were written in the Old Irish language instead of Latin, which gives us a better insight into the cultural practices and aspects of daily life of ancient Ireland. One of the most interesting genres of medieval Irish texts are the law tracts. These are compilations of ancient secular laws that in many cases pre-dated Christianity. Medieval Irish law was comprehensive and covered everything from debt to divorce and even regulated beekeeping. So it should be no surprise that the production of ale, its distribution and consumption is written about fairly often in these texts.
Irish Law, Malting & Kiln-Drying
While the 16th century Bavarian Purity Laws regulated ingredients, medieval Irish law actually regulated the entire process of brewing from the malting of barley seed, to its firing in the kiln, to the extraction of the wort and finally to the process of fermentation. This was because in medieval Ireland, coinage and currency did not really exist and food products or movable goods like cattle were used instead. In the Senchas Mor, a huge collection of assorted legal tracts, there is a detailed text called the Cain Aigillne which describes the rent that common tenants were required to pay their lord or king, which of course was in the form of food and drink. Irish law seems to have regulated the production of ale intended to be paid as “tax” or rent for lords to ensure that it was of sufficient quality to be consumed by aristocrats, though it is likely that beer or ale brewed for domestic consumption did not have to follow these regulations. This is the OG home brewing: if you were a medieval Irish peasant, you were legally obligated to homebrew to pay your rent/taxes.
Before harvested barley can be brewed into beer it must be malted. The purpose of malting is to trick the barley seed into thinking it’s been planted and ready to sprout a new plant, where the dormant energy inside the seed is transformed into sugars that can then be fermented into alcohol. But before the seed can actually sprout, the process is stalled leaving whole barley seeds full of fermentable sugar. The Cain Aigillne provides a fairly detailed description of the malting process that had to be followed to ensure that the barley malt used for a lord’s rent would be of good quality; it is called a “malt of three fortnights” and the process is fairly similar to modern malting techniques:
This process creates what we might call a “green malt”, which is ready to be further dried in a kiln. Modern malting basically follows the same steps, but in modern, temperature controlled malt-houses the drying process might only take 6 days. Anyone who has had to hang laundry to dry in a damp Irish house can commiserate with the medieval Irish brewer’s need to wait nearly a week and a half for his malt to fully dry.
Next, the Cain Aigillne describes the last essential step in malting: kiln drying the green malt:
Now that our ancient Irish barley has been malted and kiln-dried, we are ready to start brewing ancient Irish ale. However the laws become even stricter from this point on: early medieval Irish law actually required a brewer to perform quality controls at every step henceforth, and seems to imply that he was required to be accompanied by an assistant or other brewer as a witness to guarantee that he followed the rules properly in case he was accused of brewing bad ale by his lord, in which case he could be sued and forced to pay restitution.
Quality Control
The law is quite clear that every subsequent step requires a form of quality control, and if the tenant brewer has performed these tests in good faith before a witness who can testify in court, then he is not liable for whatever might go wrong with his ale during the fermentation process. Considering the lack of modern chemical disinfectants or food grade brewing sites, this is a very fair law given that any beer brewed outdoors in a wooden vat or clay pot was liable to become infected by any number of bacteria or wild yeasts; ruining the batch, a problem which still plagues many homebrewers. He would still be required to brew a new batch or pay a fine in other goods as restitution, but he wasn’t legally responsible for any contamination during the fermentation process if he dutifully followed the steps for malting, kilning, milling and mashing the grain.
The steps for quality control are listed clearly in the Cain Aigillne:
The text then states somewhat contradictory legal phrasing: that if a tenant performs these taste tests he isn’t liable for the failure of his product, but at the same time his lord can sue him for restitution if he isn’t satisfied with the final product. The law specifies that a tenant who brews a faulty ale according to these guidelines with a witness was not legally liable for its failure, but still had to pay this part of his rent; if his batch became contaminated, he still had to brew a new batch, buy good beer from somewhere else to give to his lord, or else work out some other kind of payment. The tenant was then given fifteen days to make the proper payment; enough time to brew a new batch of ale properly.
If a tenant brewed a good beer but didn’t follow these instructions or wasn’t able to prove it because he had no witness, he had to pay his lord a certain fine in either metals or livestock. If he brewed a bad beer, didn’t follow the instructions, and didn’t have a witness who could testify on his behalf, then he was required to pay double that fine, as well as being given fifteen days to get his hands on a good batch of beer.
Mashing & Fermenting
The Cain Aigillne doesn’t provide any further instructions as to the brewing process itself, just the steps for malting, drying and milling the barley grain. It mentions mashing at the end, where the brewer was required to taste the mash to make sure it was sweet and not sickening, ie. that the sugars in the barley grain had been appropriately malted and extracted for fermentation. However, we find a brief description of the mashing process in the Bretha Brigte – The Life of St. Brigit; a hagiography that describes that saint’s life story and the miracles she performed.
One such miracle performed by St. Brigit is actually a miraculous brewing session! Out of her generosity and benefaction, Brigit decides to brew ale to supply seven churches (eclasi – possibly monasteries) in her vicinity. However, her family home has only one single measure of barley and does not possess dedicated brewing vessels save two troughs, presumably made of wood or possibly carved of stone. Not only is she constrained by her materials, but she decides to donate this beer to the churches for Easter, a springtime holiday when beer was rarely brewed as barley was only harvested in the fall.
Nevertheless, Brigit manages to use these two troughs and one measure of malted barley to brew enough ale to supply all seven churches in time for Easter, as virgins carry her miraculously brewed ale from an unending wort. The text implies that brewing was done with two vessels; one to mash, or extract the malted sugars from the barley seed to create a fermentable wort, and another in which to ferment the wort:
So presumably malted barley was steeped in heated water in one tub and then transferred into a second container to ferment. There are no mentions of hops or even herbal additives made to this concoction. In fact, hops were almost certainly unknown in Ireland until the late Middle Ages, and even then their use may have been confined to the English settler colonies there. If no bitterants like hops, bog rosemary or yarrow were used in brewing, the resultant ale would be fairly sweet and perhaps even fruity compared to contemporary ales.
A similar beer is traditionally brewed in Finland using much the same methodology and also lacking any kind of bitterants. This drink is called “sahti” and is meant to be consumed fresh, as presumably was early Irish ale given the 15 day time limit to deliver it stipulated in the Cain Aigillne stated above. Sahti is similarly brewed in troughs or similar containers, traditionally by repeatedly dropping heated river stones into the mixture.
Given that Irish brewing vessels were presumably made of wood or stone as well, it is likely that they similarly employed an indirect heating method, probably the same. There are in fact archaeological features that dot the Irish countryside called fulacht fia which are large stone slabs with a basin carved inside, which some archaeologists believe were permanent vessels used for mashing malt given their proximity to fresh water sources. Because they could only heat the water indirectly and fairly inefficiently, the wort was likely never brought to a boil. This gives sahti and presumably early Irish ale as well a very heavy, substantial body, as the thickening proteins in the wort are not removed during the brewing process.
So what did early Irish ale taste like? It probably had a fairly thick, almost custardy texture with a raw cereal or grainy flavour, that would have been quite sweet given the presumed lack of bittering ingredients. Yeast also contributes to the final flavour, but it is impossible to ascertain what kind of yeast was used to ferment the wort into a finished drinkable product; the early Irish may have relied on spontaneous fermentation, cultivated dedicated brewing yeast over generations, or simply repurposed yeast used to bake bread for fermentation. The last type is used in brewing Finnish sahti, which gives the drink notes of banana or bubblegum flavouring on top of its sweet cereal body.
Its colour would depend on both the quantity of malt used per litre, and how long it had been toasted in a kiln. Literary references to ale often describe it as derg; red or ruddy. The same term is often used to describe blood, flame, gold or redheaded persons. Presumably then, Irish ale was darker in colour than contemporary commercial lagers or pilsners but lighter than stouts or porters. Like yeast, its potency is difficult to judge from these literary references alone. Ale can be brewed as weak as the drinker likes, or as strong as the yeast can withstand. Sahti, the comparable beverage, is usually brewed with a strength between 7 and 11% ABV and it’s not impossible that Irish ale was comparably potent.
However it’s not impossible that medieval Irish brewers used herbs to bitter or add extra flavours to this drink. There are references to professional or seasoned brewers who may have used locally available herbs such as wormwood, yarrow, rosemary, mint or marigold to add depth and flavour to their brew, as well as tempering the sweetness of the brew with some added bitterness. In the end, though, this could just be modern wishing – the ancient and medieval Irish may have simply preferred a thick, sweet ale that might not have tasted anything like our modern beers and ales!
While these texts specifically describe brewing in ancient Ireland, we could possibly extrapolate that beer brewing in other "barbarian" cultures was basically the same. Earlier Celtic people like the Gauls, whose word "curmi" is ultimately the origin of Spanish & Latin "cerveza", Germanic, Baltic & Slavic peoples most probably brewed ale in a similar manner but didn't record it for posterity.
Some of the earliest documented instances of using of hops for brewing in Europe were recorded by Celtic monks. And, not long ago, the first wild lager yeasts were isolated from woodland soil in Ireland. So quite possible the Irish were even brewing heavily-hopped Pilsners a fews years after the ice sheet retreated from Ireland, after the last glacial maximum waned. On a more serious note, though, I think it would be very odd for any European nation not to have a long history of brewing. The published descriptions in the literature seem to be more shared cultural practices than unique to any one nation. And, if we're honest, brewing probably predates European history (delayed significantly by the ice age) and was most likely a culture that arrived with those who colonised much of Europe after the Neolithic Revolution in ancient Mesopotamia. Otherwise we'd still be throwing rocks at each other. Genetics suggests an ancient link between Ireland and the peoples from the Fertile Crescent and Eurasian Steppe too. Bulk production (farming) of cereals like barley were grown in Neolithic ireland too. So not surprising at all that the Irish were most likely the first craft brewers in Europe. 
