Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer Viking Funeral (2500 year old braggot)

[Sigvaldi]

Recipe Type

Extract

Yeast

Wyeast 1728 (scottish ale)

Batch Size (Gallons)

1

Original Gravity

Not yet started

Final Gravity

Not yet finished

Boiling Time (Minutes)

60

Color

Unknown. Probably a golden to amber

Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)

7-10 days most likely. 70 degrees

Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)

14-20 days. Same temp

Tasting Notes

Probably won\\'t be great to the modern palate. But I wanna try anyway.

This is an attempt to recreate a 2500 year old recipe, the oldest I have been able to locate. Of course, "recipe" is kind of a stretch, as I only know the ingredients, and nothing about the amounts nor process. My original source can be found here .

Tl/dr: viking warrior's grave had a cauldron that once held a concoction of barley, honey, meadowsweet, mint and yeast.

Knowing only that it contained these five ingredients, I have decided to try my darndest to make it anyway. I don't have a setup for mashing, so, while all-grain would probably be better, I will use Munton's light dme (made from 100% barley malt) as the barley part of this recipe.

Ingredients

3 lbs Munton's light DME
2 lbs honey
Water to 1 gallon
2 oz meadowsweet
2 oz mint
1/4 package scottish ale yeast (wyeast 1728)

1. Bring water to boil. Take off heat, stir in malt extract and honey. Return to boil. Add .75 oz meadowsweet. Add another .75 at 15 minutes left, and the last .5 at 1 minute. Cool wort. Pitch yeast. Transfer to carboy, add mint and allow to ferment.
2. When fermentation slows, rack to secondary and off the mint and allow to continue fermenting/conditioning.
3. Since this was served in a cauldron, I will probably split the batch, preparing some in wine bottles, with no priming sugar added. To the other half, I will add about .25 lb honey (to half a gallon of braggot) and bottle as a beer.

This is my idea. Any input would be greatly appreciated. I have not yet started this batch and I'd like to have as best an idea how to go about it before I start.

 

[stonebrewer]

You may want to email Dr. Pat McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania as he is a well known historian of ancient beverages. Cheers!

 

[WarBeard1980]

I would LOVE to try this.

 

[TheMadKing]

Not trying to be a dick or anything, but just a small correction: there was no such thing as vikings 2500 years ago, and this recipe was found in southern Germany. The man in the burial was most likely a participant in the Le Tiene culture normally associated with the "celts" but who later became the Burgundians, Goths, and Gauls, and he probably spoke some form of the Lepontic Celtic language.

As for the recipe, what inspired your yeast choice? I would think a wine yeast might be a better choice since that's more likely what they were using back then.

EDIT: I find ancient recipe's fascinating, so I started digging. I'd never heard of Meadowsweet before, it's alternate name is Mead Wort (which consequently made me realize the connection between the words Mead and Meadow.. meadows have flowers, flowers make honey, honey makes mead?) This is 100% speculation, but given that the name of the plant has "mead" in it, shows that it was an important ingredient in the drink. Based on that alone, I would conjecture that the amount of meadowsweet should be relatively high (though I don't know what it tastes like), and the amount of mint lower by comparison. Meadowsweet also contains aspirin, and can induce asthma symptoms in some people , so be careful with it.

 

[honeycon]

Love reading about attempts at historical recipes. Please let us know how this turns out. As far as yeast choice, one would be as good as another. People did not even know what yeast was back then. What ever was indigenous was what fermented the brew.
What type of mint are you using?

 

[TheMadKing]

As far as yeast choice, one would be as good as another. People did not even know what yeast was back then. What ever was indigenous was what fermented the brew.

Not entirely accurate. You are, of course correct that they had no idea that yeast was a micro-organism. But they knew SOMETHING was changing their drinks, and how to manipulate and reproduce it. I've done historical recreations of bronze age beer in Cyprus as part of an archaeology course, and based on those findings, they MUST have had a way to inoculate their beers/meads. Of the 5 batches we made, one 1 was remotely drinkable and it was still very sour. The rest had mold, buteryc acid (puke flavor), and other nasty smells. They would waste a huge amount of precious grain unless they could reproduce the fermentation process.

We don't know how they did that, but some of the leading theories are:

-a "magic stick" that was infected with yeast from a good batch, that is then used to stir all subsequent batches
-Fermenting in the same vessel after a good batch happens by accident
-Saving some of a good batch and adding it back to the new batch
-addition of a fruit such as dates, apples, or grapes with naturally occurring yeast on their skin that is relatively reproducable (this seems the most likely to me, hence my suggestion of a wine yeast).
-Chewing portions of the grist with wood ash and spitting then into the fermentation chamber. This is done in Africa for some forms of honey beer. I don't know what the bacterial make-up of the end product, but at least its reproducable. The wood ash neutralizes the acidity in the mouth.

 

[Sigvaldi]

How do you delete a post? Double posted accidentally

 

[Sigvaldi]

Not trying to be a dick or anything, but just a small correction: there was no such thing as vikings 2500 years ago, and this recipe was found in southern Germany. The man in the burial was most likely a participant in the Le Tiene culture normally associated with the "celts" but who later became the Burgundians, Goths, and Gauls, and he probably spoke some form of the Lepontic Celtic language.

As for the recipe, what inspired your yeast choice? I would think a wine yeast might be a better choice since that's more likely what they were using back then.

EDIT: I find ancient recipe's fascinating, so I started digging. I'd never heard of Meadowsweet before, it's alternate name is Mead Wort (which consequently made me realize the connection between the words Mead and Meadow.. meadows have flowers, flowers make honey, honey makes mead?) This is 100% speculation, but given that the name of the plant has "mead" in it, shows that it was an important ingredient in the drink. Based on that alone, I would conjecture that the amount of meadowsweet should be relatively high (though I don't know what it tastes like), and the amount of mint lower by comparison. Meadowsweet also contains aspirin, and can induce asthma symptoms in some people , so be careful with it.

I actually very mich appreciate the historical correction. I came on to change the name that I had chosen by popular vote among my friends, but I find the new name may still be inaccurate. I'll do more research and come up with a proper name.

And I hadnt done a lot of research as to what type of yeast to use, and other recipes I saw used this yeast. I figured some kind of beer yeast might be most accurate to history, but you seem to have an idea as to what is found in history. Also, research into other recipes show using a wine yeast is not unusual.

As for your notes on meadowsweet, the amount I chose is heavy, as near as I can tell. When making tea, you would use about 2 grams for 8 oz. 2 oz is 56 cups of tea, or 224 oz. I will be maiing 1 gallon or 128 oz. Thus, it would equate to a very strong tea's worth of meadowseet.

 

[honeycon]

Not entirely accurate. You are, of course correct that they had no idea that yeast was a micro-organism. But they knew SOMETHING was changing their drinks, and how to manipulate and reproduce it. I've done historical recreations of bronze age beer in Cyprus as part of an archaeology course, and based on those findings, they MUST have had a way to inoculate their beers/meads. Of the 5 batches we made, one 1 was remotely drinkable and it was still very sour. The rest had mold, buteryc acid (puke flavor), and other nasty smells. They would waste a huge amount of precious grain unless they could reproduce the fermentation process.

We don't know how they did that, but some of the leading theories are:

-a "magic stick" that was infected with yeast from a good batch, that is then used to stir all subsequent batches
-Fermenting in the same vessel after a good batch happens by accident
-Saving some of a good batch and adding it back to the new batch
-addition of a fruit such as dates, apples, or grapes with naturally occurring yeast on their skin that is relatively reproducable (this seems the most likely to me, hence my suggestion of a wine yeast).
-Chewing portions of the grist with wood ash and spitting then into the fermentation chamber. This is done in Africa for some forms of honey beer. I don't know what the bacterial make-up of the end product, but at least its reproducable. The wood ash neutralizes the acidity in the mouth.

Great reply and thank you for the clarification. Of course they knew something was working to get a repeatable brew. And the idea of fruit being the source seems likely. The other plants used will all have their own yeasts coming along for the party as well. The ancient brewers must have had some fairly refined methods. Just guessing, but I doubt they had the same tasting stuff with each batch.

 

[TheMadKing]

I actually very mich appreciate the historical correction. I came on to change the name that I had chosen by popular vote among my friends, but I find the new name may still be inaccurate. I'll do more research and come up with a proper name.

And I hadnt done a lot of research as to what type of yeast to use, and other recipes I saw used this yeast. I figured some kind of beer yeast might be most accurate to history, but you seem to have an idea as to what is found in history. Also, research into other recipes show using a wine yeast is not unusual.

As for your notes on meadowsweet, the amount I chose is heavy, as near as I can tell. When making tea, you would use about 2 grams for 8 oz. 2 oz is 56 cups of tea, or 224 oz. I will be maiing 1 gallon or 128 oz. Thus, it would equate to a very strong tea's worth of meadowseet.

Awesome! I'm really excited to hear back on this one, and I might try making something similar myself.

I wonder if they actually used barley grains to initiate fermentation too, barley grains are host to natural yeast and lactobacillus, but I have no idea how that would behave in a honey environment.

 

[TheMadKing]

Great reply and thank you for the clarification. Of course they knew something was working to get a repeatable brew. And the idea of fruit being the source seems likely. The other plants used will all have their own yeasts coming along for the party as well. The ancient brewers must have had some fairly refined methods. Just guessing, but I doubt they had the same tasting stuff with each batch.

Oh absolutely agree, but I think the variation was similar to what we see on the homebrew scale or maybe slightly more.

I read a description of a pub beer somewhere (I can't remember where). It said that this pub's beer in the 1600's were "not the least bit sour" by a firsthand account, which implies that they were aware that beers could be sour, and that they were also aware of how to make non-sour beers (and preferred them).

That tells me that they had somehow isolated sacc yeast and were using it to produce beer before the invention of the microscope, and were actively preventing infections. Really interesting

 

[Sigvaldi]

Awesome! I'm really excited to hear back on this one, and I might try making something similar myself.

I wonder if they actually used barley grains to initiate fermentation too, barley grains are host to natural yeast and lactobacillus, but I have no idea how that would behave in a honey environment.

Honey has its own natural yeast too. If I were a patient man (being a brewer I ought to be but am not) I'd let the natural yeast work. But results are too unpredictable. Honey its easy enough, barley I'd have to get real fresh barley, as the malting and many curing processes would likely end in the death of any naturally occuring yeasts.

 

[Paps]

Sorry that i don't have a link nor do i remember exactly where i read this but...
Brewers of olde supposedly threw "leaven of bread or leaven of beer" into batches to start fermentation.
"Leaven of bread" was probably freshly risen dough not yet cooked or actively rising dough.
"Leaven of beer" i'd bet is pretty on par with modern day "top cropping"

IMHO it is arrogant for our generation to think that because of our modern technology that our and our generation alone made quality products. (this includes so much more than just beer)
Perhaps "on average" we are brewing better than those in the past, but just like today, there are/were good/bad/middle of the road beers and cost of ingredients i'm sure played a role on quality back then as it does nowadays.

 

[AntonioMartins]

But they knew SOMETHING was changing their drinks, and how to manipulate and reproduce it. .

Brazilian Indians from Amazon jungle brew a "kind of" beer (a fermented alcoholic beverage).

They use large clay pots for fermentation. When they get a new pot, they put it together the old pots already used, then they say the old pots "teach" the new pot how to make the "beer".

They preserve and reproduce the good yeast by this way.

 

[Sigvaldi]

Sorry that i don't have a link nor do i remember exactly where i read this but...
Brewers of olde supposedly threw "leaven of bread or leaven of beer" into batches to start fermentation.
"Leaven of bread" was probably freshly risen dough not yet cooked or actively rising dough.
"Leaven of beer" i'd bet is pretty on par with modern day "top cropping"

IMHO it is arrogant for our generation to think that because of our modern technology that our and our generation alone made quality products. (this includes so much more than just beer)
Perhaps "on average" we are brewing better than those in the past, but just like today, there are/were good/bad/middle of the road beers and cost of ingredients i'm sure played a role on quality back then as it does nowadays.

I'm not saying at all thay my stuff is better. Just that I want to be able to recreate it the same way that I did in future batches. The easiest way to do this is to use a fresh packet of yeast.

And in truth, the things produced back then probably were better than our own. Carpenters cared about the lumber they used. Even going back only 100 years, you can see the difference. Go look at a 100+ year old house. Then, look at the wood and try to find a knot. You won't. Mass production has severely affected the quality of what we make. But for those that care, the tools and processes are available to make high quality items with much more ease than in times of old.