Beer, the breakfast of Champions
There are few more iconic drinks of the Middle Ages than beer, and like all things iconic to that era, it is a lot more complicated when you look at it closely. This is a skimming of that complication.
To Get You Up To Speed
Beer first appeared in Mesopotamia in the 5th century BC. (Have I mentioned how obnoxious I find the whole negative years thing? This has to be translated to be appreciated: The first beers were mentioned roughly 4000 years ago.) Early samples of beer from the same time period have been found in China as well.
This was not what you would expect from today’s Heineken, however. It was a thick slurry you drank with a straw.
It wasn’t made the same way either. The Egyptians and Sumerians took barley or partly germinated barley, made patties of it with water, then smashed up the cakes and dumped them in water. This fermented and gave them the frothy stuff.
Ancient Greeks were fine with this, but the Romans pooh-poohed it. They also noted that Saxons and Celts did something kind of similar to make ale.
By Medieval Times
The Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, and Celtic beers were not the thick gruel an Ancient Egyptian ate for breakfast, but it did make an excellent breakfast drink. It was served warm and generally had bits of herbs floating in it.
It was made differently as well. In the start of the Middle Ages, beer was made from something called fermentum. This could have been bread originally, but it became a collection of herbs people eventually called gruit.
Now, ‘gruit’ actually has two meanings. I’ll get to the second meaning in the next section, but in this context, it is a collection of herbs and malt. What herbs? Rosemary, coriander, yarrow, milfoil, and straw that probably carried the yeast. Some places added Myrica, Ficaria, and Iris which are mildly psychotropic and kills bacteria.
Hops didn’t arrive in Europe until Charlemagne’s time, seeming to come from China. The Norse were using it in Haithabu, and the Wends, a group of people that lived in Germany early in the Middle Ages, brought hops to places like Lubeck when they were prisoners.
These herbs would mostly go into oat malt until Germans concentrated on using wheat and barley in the 1300’s and 1400's. This was the group that also switched from top-fermentation to bottom-fermentation and made large copper kettles, replacing the wooden and iron vessels that couldn’t hold more than 600 liters. At first these huge kettles would be bought by the whole town and neighbors would pass it around to whoever’s turn it was to brew. Then things started getting industrialized and guilds bought dozens of giant kettles.
Nun Brew Better
Well, and monks too. I just couldn’t resist the pun.
In fact, the monasteries set up by Charlemagne became brewing centers because of the other meaning of ‘the Gruit.’
The Holy Roman Empire handed out the right to sell beer to big crowds to monasteries and other favored lords. This right was called a ‘gruit,’ and in practice it meant that a brewer had to buy the yeast and malt from the lord with the right to sell it.
To back up my pun, nuns in abbeys also got the Gruit. In fact, St. Brigid of Kildare was supposed to have performed beer-related miracles.
These monastic brewers, whether nun or monk, created monastery pubs, where they sold the beer to local nobles and travelers to fund their abbeys. As a charitable act, they would also hold ‘Church Ales’ where poor folks could get free beer.
This was the church talking out of both sides of their mouths in some ways. Church fathers regularly condemned beer and banned drinking in the church (which suggests that some people were coming to Mass prepared.)
Outside of the Holy Roman Empire, beer production was mostly a domestic side hustle, particularly for women, up until the 1400’s. (Honestly, I don’t know why alewives aren’t more celebrated as feminist icons.) Ale brewing and fermenting guilds developed later in England, and beer itself was a late arrival. Mead and ale were the preferred drinks before that.
Once beer drinking caught on, women would take it in turns to hang a wheat bushel over their door to advertise that they were selling beer.
The organization that took beer to the world was the Hanseatic League. The Hanseatic League was a loose collection of German towns and merchant communities that banded together to protect their trade (a bit like a lobbyist group only loosely defined.) The merchants of the league made beers with enough hops to survive journeys, and this meant that they could brew it in massive quantities and sell it across borders. This led to cities that were part of the league building whole furnaces to make the stuff.
Brewing Up The Rules
First, it was important that local brews weren’t poisonous, priced too high, or generally sucky. That’s where the ale conner or ale taster comes in, whose job it was to test the beer and bring bad beer makers to court. This was sometimes the only office that women could get elected to, though there were districts where the ale conner was a guy. The ale conner in London is a man.
Local governments always had rules against adulteration and bad business practices, but the most famous rule concerning beer purity was an unimportant note from the Diet of Ingolstadt, issued in 1516. This was the ‘Reinheitsgebot,’ which mandated that beer made only with hops, barley, malt, and water. This rule is still on the books, and it also set the price of the beer and ensured that there would be enough of it to go around for always.
Beers Get Lager
In some ways, the introduction of the lager beer is the end of medieval brewing period. It appears in the 1600’s, also known as the Early Modern period.
Around 1602, a hybrid yeast called Saccharomyces pastorianus appeared in Bavaria. There is a hypothesis that the initial yeast contaminated a wheat brewery there. Wherever it came from, it kicked off the lager beer craze, thus proving that crossing the genes of different species can make good things happen.
It had ceased by then to be women’s work since guilds had always restricted women’s involvement in guilds and the guilds had taken over the industry. Combined with the need for big upfront investments, the home brewer basically disappeared.
Instead, the industrialized, frigid, and often bland beer of massive corporations has taken over, and craft brewing is what your yuppie aunt does for fun.
She probably doesn’t use gruit, though.
Sources:
Scientists discover secrets of medieval beers — Medievalists.net
Lager Beer was first brewed in 1602, study finds — Medievalists.net
Medieval Beer with Noëlle Phillips — Medievalists.net
Beer | Definition, History, Types, Brewing Process, & Facts | Britannica
Hanseatic League | Definition, History, & Facts | Britannica