The Archaeology of Beer 89
cold fjord writes with an excerpt from The Atlantic's profile of Dr. Pat McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, who has what sounds like a fascinating job: decoding ancient clues about what (and how) humans in the distant past were brewing and drinking.
"'We always start with infrared spectrometry,' he says. 'That gives us an idea of what organic materials are preserved.' From there, it's on to tandem liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, sometimes coupled with ion cyclotron resonance, and solid-phase micro-extraction gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. The end result? A beer recipe. Starting with a few porous clay shards or tiny bits of resin-like residue from a bronze cup, McGovern is able to determine what some ancient Norseman or Etruscan or Shang dynast was drinking." The article points out that McGovern has collaborated with the Dogfish Head brewery to reproduce in modern form six of these ancient recipes.
Re:Did Civilization Create Beer? (Score:2, Informative)
tfa claims that ancient beer used a wide variety of base ingredients. All that ended about 500 years ago when the German beer purity law came in and the ingredients were limited. pre-Godwin??
Beer shaped history (Score:5, Informative)
Don't knock this as Homer Simpson level work, beer has shaped history for thousands of years. From the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock [straightdope.com] to the establishment of trade routes beer has always had it's place.
The idea of beer as somehow being sinful is a bit like the diamond ring, it's essentially a modern invention. Monks in Europe brewed beer for centuries as a bonafide way to make money for the monastery to live on. Any number of religions have brewed and used beer for their religious purposes all over the world, it is literally a mark of civilization. When water was historically often filthy and unfit to drink, it's use as a stock drink for the masses wasn't anything to mess about with. When the colonies were established beer was one of the first priorities for the colonists.
Re:Beer shaped history (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Did Civilization Create Beer? (Score:4, Informative)
I would say Beer did help create Civilization.
Fermentation was one of the earliest ways to preserve food.
Many locations were too wet to dehydrate your food. Grains would rot and get moldy and fill up with stuff that isn't good for human consumption.
Fermentation is a good way to preserve the calories so you can hold on to your food in times of famine. Allowing people to gather more than they need. Allowing for sharing, trading, creating rules to insure fair trading, having a large stock of food that can last seasons means people can stay in one location, build better stronger buildings, which then can give people time to figure out how to grow their own food, manage livestock. When then keep on adding up.
Re:But ... (Score:5, Informative)
Fermented mare's milk is a national drink in Kazakhstan.
That is Kazakhstan [wikipedia.org], the real country [youtube.com] that is tormented [youtube.com] by Sasha Baron Cohen's [youtube.com] fictional character, the "journalist," Borat [youtube.com].
Kazakh national cuisine [iaea2012.com]
Kazakh documentary film "Kieli Meken" - Discover Real Kazakhstan [youtube.com]
MEET THE STANS [youtube.com]
The actual Kazakhstan national anthem [youtube.com], the "Borat" parody [youtube.com], and an unfortunate incident [youtube.com].
Re:Sorry but American beers are shite (Score:4, Informative)
Saccromyces pastorianus (aka "effing lager yeast") IS a bottom-fermenting yeast. It was discovered by brewers who put their casks of beer in cold mountain caves, in the days before refrigeration.
Learn something on the subject, beer-snob wannabe.
Re:Beer shaped history (Score:4, Informative)
Early beer wasn't intended for getting drunk and wasn't as strong as the beer of today is. It was intended as a day in, day out workaday drink for the masses.
You've also got to remember that people back then didn't understand basic hygiene (Queen Elizabeth likely only bathed a couple times in her life) or why things like boiling water would be beneficial. Principals that today are widely understood simply weren't known back then. Even things as simple as washing your hands before surgery are very recent developments (more soldiers died from infections from wounds in the Civil war than were killed on the field).
What people did know was that people that drank beer didn't get sick like the people that drank water. They also knew that it tasted better than water and they were raised up on it as generations prior had been. It was likely cheaper to buy beer than the firewood to boil your own water if you lived in a city, it was also certainly less hassle when you consider that many households didn't have kitchens. In short there was simply no reason to go through the effort of boiling water.
Re:Beer shaped history (Score:5, Informative)
A quick bit of Googling brings up this:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2013/05/21/medieval_europe_why_was_water_the_most_popular_drink.html [slate.com]
Contrary to what is found all over the Internet on the subject, the most common drink was water, for the obvious reason: It's free. Medieval villages and towns were built around sources of fresh water. This could be fresh running water, a spring or, in many cases, wells. All of these could easily provide fresh, disease- and impurity-free water; the idea that water from these sources would be the causes of disease and so had to be made into ale or beer is fanciful.
Where water was more likely to be contaminated, largely by tanning, slaughtering, or dying facilities, was in larger towns. But since medieval people were not idiots, they dealt with this in several ways. There were ordinances on where tanners and dyers could operate so that water for domestic use could be drawn from rivers and streams in the town to ensure the water was clean. And there were fines for contaminating areas of streams used for household consumption.
In larger cities, water-supply infrastructure was built to ensure public access to clean water. In medieval London, for example, the City Council began construction on what was called "the Great Conduit" in 1236. This was a complex of pipes that brought water from a large fresh spring at Tyburn to a pumping house with cisterns at Cheapside. This fed local cisterns all over London.
Wealthy Londoners could apply to have a private pipe or "quill" run from the conduit system to their house, giving them running water. This was expensive, and citizens who illegally tapped into the conduits were severely punished. Most people either drew their water from the nearest conduit cistern or paid a "cob" or water-carrier to bring them their day's water supply in three-gallon tubs, which they carried through the streets on a yoke. Public celebrations, such as the return of Edward I from Palestine or the coronation of Richard II, saw the city stop the water flow and fill the conduits with wine for the day, with people able to drink as much as they wanted.
People did drink a lot of ale and beer, but not because their water was so bad. The brews in question were much weaker than their modern equivalents but had the effect of providing much-needed calories to laborers and farmers, as well as being thirst-quenching and re-hydrating in hot weather or when working hard and losing sweat. Given the long days medieval workers put in, ale and beer were a major and necessary part of a laborer's daily energy intake. This should be seen as something like the medieval equivalent of drinking Gatorade.
Wine was the drink of choice for the upper classes and anyone who could afford it. It was produced all over medieval Europe and, due to the Medieval Warm Period that prevailed over western Europe until the 14th century, the climate meant it could be produced as far north as northern England. Wine was expensive and buying a small barrel was beyond the means of most people. But taverners bought it in bulk and sold it by the cup, so for a penny or even a halfpenny, an English peasant could enjoy a Bordeaux red.
In medieval England, the wine drunk most was red wine from Bordeaux and Gascony. Rhenish white from the Rhineland was twice as expensive and favored by the upper classes. Spanish white wines such as Lepe and Osey were cheaper and sweet wines from Greece, Crete, and Cyprus such as Romonye and Malmsey were popular after dinner.