Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Richard W. Unger

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780812219999
• eBook ISBN: 9780812203745
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The beer of today—brewed from malted grain and hops, manufactured by large and often multinational corporations, frequently associated with young adults, sports, and drunkenness—is largely the result of scientific and industrial developments of the nineteenth century. Modern beer, however, has little in common with the drink that carried that name through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Looking at a time when beer was often a nutritional necessity, was sometimes used as medicine, could be flavored with everything from the bark of fir trees to thyme and fresh eggs, and was consumed by men, women, and children alike, Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance presents an extraordinarily detailed history of the business, art, and governance of brewing.During the medieval and early modern periods beer was as much a daily necessity as a source of inebriation and amusement. It was the beverage of choice of urban populations that lacked access to secure sources of potable water; a commodity of economic as well as social importance; a safe drink for daily consumption that was less expensive than wine; and a major source of tax revenue for the state. In Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Richard W. Unger has written an encompassing study of beer as both a product and an economic force in Europe.Drawing from archives in the Low Countries and England to assemble an impressively complete history, Unger describes the transformation of the industry from small-scale production that was a basic part of housewifery to a highly regulated commercial enterprise dominated by the wealthy and overseen by government authorities. Looking at the intersecting technological, economic, cultural, and political changes that influenced the transformation of brewing over centuries, he traces how improvements in technology and in the distribution of information combined to standardize quality, showing how the process of urbanization created the concentrated markets essential for commercial production.Weaving together the stories of prosperous businessmen, skilled brewmasters, and small producers, this impressively researched overview of the social and cultural practices that surrounded the beer industry is rich in implication for the history of the period as a whole.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Understanding the History of Brewing

Beer at the start of the third Christian millennium has little in common with the drink that carried the same or variant names through the European Middle Ages and Renaissance. It is true that beer was and is an infusion of germinated grain, made to ferment after being cooled, and then by some means clarified before consumption. This definition shares some features of that given by Louis Pasteur, the great chemist and one of the fathers of modern brewing, writing in the 1870s. He, however, placed much stricter limits on what could be called beer.¹ The word is generally used for any undistilled, fermented malt beverage of relatively low, but widely varied, alcohol content. Not even malt, or for that matter grain, is absolutely necessary as a principal component of the raw materials for beer. During Pasteur’s lifetime beer became a more standardized product, and as a result of his own research, it was to become even more consistent throughout Europe and ultimately the rest of the world. Little consistency existed in the Middle Ages.

Nowadays beer is associated with inebriation, young adults, sports, and student life. It is typically produced by large, often international corporations. It is placed in the same category as all alcoholic beverages as a source of altered behavior and potential danger. The image of beer, the drink that is beer, and the methods of production are all products of the nineteenth century. The great transformation of the brewing industry depended first on its industrialization, the extensive use of machinery, and nonmuscle power to do work in the brewery. Second, the transformation depended on the adoption in most of the world of what was known as Bavarian or Pilsner brewing which relied on a specific type of yeast to get a lighter, clearer drink. Third, the transformation depended on the scientists’ invasion of the brewery. Louis Pasteur started a trend when he took up research on beer in Clermont where he was exiled by the Franco-Prussian War. His work, which continued after his return to Paris in midsummer 1871, led to the use of microscopes in breweries to examine yeasts for infection. His book on beer, first published in French in 1875, took up many questions about effective brewing and led in time to each brewery having its own laboratory, testing the beverage at each stage of the production process, measuring a series of variables, and experimenting with different chemicals to produce desired results.² A by-product of the scientists’ invasion included institutes and university departments devoted to the study of beer making and the training of students in the skill. Fourth, the transformation is linked with the rise of and changes in the temperance movement. As early as 1851 the state of Maine outlawed the sale and distribution of beer, lumping it with all other alcoholic beverages. The extreme Maine position did not prevail and for much of the nineteenth century brewers were the close allies of temperance forces. More beer consumption was expected to cause a fall in the drinking of spirits. A change from drinking gin and whisky to drinking beer was one favored by most temperance supporters for health as well as social reasons. By the early twentieth century, though, beer had lost favor and it was classed with all dangerous alcoholic drinks.

The precision of modern scientific brewing, the ability to produce, preserve, and distribute beer in massive quantities, and the popular, public reaction to the drink are simply not relevant for the centuries before 1700. Medieval brewing and the medieval drink were a world apart from the modern industry. Though it is difficult to escape contemporary ideas about beer and brewing, it must be done in order to understand what beer meant to the people of medieval and Renaissance Europe. Production units were of a different scale, yet production levels were still impressive. By the 1980s worldwide annual commercial beer production reached close to 100 billion liters.³ Though estimates for earlier periods are notoriously inaccurate, the figure is more than ten times the production of all types of beer by all types of brewers in Europe in the fourteenth century. Certainly the amount of beer brewed in the twentieth century is much greater than that of any previous period, but contemporary brewing supplies a much larger population and a much wider geographical area. Consumption per person has gone down significantly since the sixteenth century. That late medieval brewers could reach even 10 percent of production at the close of the second Christian millennium is astounding, given the very different technologies and levels of investment. What makes it even more surprising is the difference in the character of the production units. Most beer in the Middle Ages was made at home in small quantities. Even the largest commercial brewers shared many of the practices of domestic brewers. Those thousands of brewers together were able to supply a smaller public with what were massive quantities of beer.

Alcohol in general, and beer in particular, “was the ubiquitous social lubricant; every occasion called for a drink” in medieval and Renaissance Europe.⁴ Drinking was a social activity looked on by people of the day with neither suspicion nor awe. The society did not know about alcoholism. The concept simply did not exist. People thought alcohol therapeutic and a normal part of life, that is except for the very poor. Excessive drinking did exist and was frowned on, but moralists complained about overeating in the same sentences that they complained about too much alcohol. It was a society in which food was far from plentiful, so drink, especially beer, was perceived as an integral part of the diet, a source of nutrition and good health, rather than as a drug taken for recreation. Beer often had a low alcohol content and was taken at meals which consisted of sizeable proportions of carbohydrates that would have slowed absorption of alcohol and also mitigated its effects. Among alcoholic drinks beer was the standard beverage for breakfast. People drank at home and in public places, from morning throughout the day until well into the evening. In fact alcohol consumption was so normal that society depended on it to maintain cohesion and so function effectively.⁵ It was a standard drink for all who could afford it from the laboring poor to the richest. Beer drinking went on throughout Europe, though the extent of the region where beer was the preferred drink moved and shifted over time with changes in brewing methods and changes in taste.

Brewing in medieval and Renaissance Europe went through a transformation. Although it was not on the same scale as that of the nineteenth century, it made the process of making the drink and selling it very different from the past. The medieval developments created an intermediate phase, a type of industry typical of the early modern period and one which offered a foundation for much of the development of the Industrial Revolution. Understanding the history of brewing is important because it affected the lives of many Europeans both as producers and consumers. The development of brewing is also important as a stage in the long-term development of industry. It passed through a series of phases in which production methods and organization were mixed, old ways continuing on in the presence of new ones. Its development is a mirror for the development of a broad range of other economic activity. The history of brewing, finally, is important as an indicator of the character of the social structure and social order in Europe up to and through the seventeenth century.

Making Beer

Historically the terms used to describe different drinks made from grain have been less than precise. Moreover, the purposes and uses of the names have varied and have often changed meaning over time. That makes following the history of brewing difficult but also indicates that brewing technology was far from static. The drinks brewers produced had varied purposes, names, definitions and were of different types. Brewers, through experience, learned of different ways to influence the nature and character of the final product. Despite all the possible permutations in the process there were certain steps in brewing which always remained the same. Well before there were even written records of any sort brewers knew that making beer involved a series of distinct, essential, constant, and unchanging stages to get to a drinkable final product. The first stage is to malt the grain and then grind it very coarsely. The second is to pour hot water over the malt to create the mash. Wort is the liquid extract taken off from the mash. The second stage can be repeated creating even more wort albeit with a lower concentration of vegetable matter. In the third stage the wort is boiled, usually in the presence of some additive or additives. In the fourth, after clarification and cooling, the boiled wort is fermented by yeast. In the fifth and final stage, after maturation and clarification, the beer is packaged for delivery in anything from a simple bowl for immediate consumption to a truck to be pumped into another vessel some distance away.⁶ The changes in the biochemistry of the complex solution that is beer are many and varied and it is precisely those changes that all brewers have to try to promote and control.

To malt the grain, germination is started by spreading the grain out over a floor at a depth of about 10–15 centimeters and then covering it with water, which is then drained off after twelve to twenty-four hours. The temperature of the grain is then kept in the range of 15–25°C. Under those conditions the grains open and grow small rootlets. To get uniform growth, the malt is turned at regular intervals using wooden shovels and thrown into the air in a process called forking or raking. Water is sprinkled on the grain as needed to maintain the pace of growth. The malter stops germination by drying the modified grain in a kiln. Moisture content in kilning drops from 45 percent to 5 percent or less. The process uses low temperatures at the outset so that enzymes do not get destroyed, but once moisture content is down to around 12 percent, temperatures can rise to 38°C or higher. After curing, the malt has a moisture content ranging from 2 percent to 5 percent.⁷ The malt is dried so extensively that it takes up moisture rapidly. If the level gets above 5 percent problems arise with grinding. The solution is to grind the malt immediately. The optimal time between drying and using malt turns out to be about three weeks,⁸ one of many facts that medieval and Renaissance brewers would have been able to discover through experience. The miller tries not to break the husks, so the grist he makes is gritty. Too fine a malt becomes thick and spongy during mashing. If the husks are the right size, they go to the bottom of the mashing vessel. Then it is easy to draw off the wort, the husks acting as something of a filter in the process. If they are too small, they can clump at the bottom of the vessel and make it hard for the wort to flow out.⁹

For the second stage, mashing, the grist goes into a vessel and is covered with water already heated to about 65°C. Soft water is, in general, better for extracting vegetable matter; but a number of elements and compounds are included in any water, and they can add to or inhibit the mashing process. Brewers have always known that the quality of the water mattered to the quality of their final product, but it is only in the last 150 years that they have been able to identify the components they want and do not want. During mashing, various enzymes gradually make soluble some of the vegetable matter that is in the ground malt. The wort, when it is drained off at the end of mashing, is rich in carbohydrates and nitrogenous material. Repeated mashings lower the carbohydrate content in the resultant wort, and at some point concentration is so low that it is not worth continuing. At the end of mashing there are two products: wort—a colloidal solution of sugars and proteins—and draff—spent grains and about 80 percent water. The nutrients left after mashing are typically saved by feeding the draff, typically in a dried form, to animals. Animal feed has often been an important by-product of brewers, and into the nineteenth century piggeries were a common feature of even big urban breweries like those in London. In late eighteenth-century Paris brewers’ leftovers went to feed dairy cows, while in London the operation was so large that brewers and distillers combined to fatten something on the order of fifty thousand pigs and cattle each year. The quality of the meat may have been poor relative to that of animals fattened from other sources, but costs were lower.¹⁰

Brewing, that is boiling the wort typically in the presence of additives, stabilizes the wort, sterilizes it, and stops enzyme action. The longer the boil, the less water is left in the solution. The wort is boiled in a kettle often called a copper since, though virtually any material can be used for the kettle, copper has long been preferred. The volume of the copper has to be the same as, or slightly more than, the volume of the fermenting vessels where the beer goes after boiling. The mash tun, on the other hand, can be a bit smaller than the kettle. In some cases, especially in the early Middle Ages, the same vessel was used for both mashing and boiling.¹¹ Since the fifteenth century the standard additive for beer has been hops. Boiling serves to extract hop resins, their principal function being to keep beer from contracting diseases. The type of hops and the quantity used have profound effects on taste and aroma. Though hops were used as an additive for centuries during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, there were competitors. Beer was often made with other herbs which gave it a very different character and taste and even a different name.

The next stage, fermentation, depends on yeast, a plant which cannot survive at temperatures over 40°C. The wort has to be cooled rapidly since it is vulnerable to infection before yeast is introduced. The growth of the yeast plant produces carbon dioxide and alcohol. Though the absence of air is not necessary to get the desired result, less exposure to air creates a stronger beer. Yeast is a living culture and runs the risk of invasion from a wide range of microorganisms. For example, if beer is exposed to air in the presence of acetic acid bacteria, it turns to vinegar. In some cases that was a desired result but most often an unfortunate and expensive accident.¹² There are some 350 species of yeast which fall into two large categories: one type floats on top of the wort during fermentation and the other falls to the bottom of the vessel. The latter type, while known in the Middle Ages, was used only in a highly restricted region in and around Bohemia. It produced Pilsner, which was to be the dominant type of beer in the twentieth century. Bottom yeast requires a lower and more consistent temperature to function than the other type of yeast, and until mechanical refrigeration became practical in the 1870s, its use was restricted to colder seasons of the year and regions where cooler temperatures could be expected.

Fermentation can take place in vessels and then be clarified by adding finings to coagulate the yeast and any remaining protein particles, which then settle out of the beer. The rate at which the yeast settles out of solution depends on the variety of yeast and on the reaction between the yeast and the composition of the wort. Some yeast needs to stay in the beer to carry out a secondary fermentation and convert any remaining fermentable matter. That secondary fermentation also diminishes the chance of the beer being infected by some bacteria.¹³ At its most simple, the final processing of beer can mean simply delivering it straight from the fermenting troughs to consumers since it is ready to drink. The use of additives before delivery, things such as finings, along with other actions, such as filtering, can produce a higher-quality product with a longer shelf life. Isinglass, the dried swimming bladders of sturgeon, was and is popular for clarifying beer, at least from the sixteenth century on when Dutch traders brought the good from Russia. It replaced a similar dried substance from codfish. Getting the right combination of finings to work effectively with the yeast has always been difficult. Filtering, instead of using finings, eliminates many such problems and has the advantages of no loss of carbon dioxide, no oxidation of the beer, and little danger of infection.¹⁴ The traditional package for beer was a wooden cask of which oak was known to be the best wood. Brewers often coated the interior with a thin layer of brewers’ pitch so that the beer did not come in contact with the wood, thereby reducing chances of infection. Another way to prevent infection was to wash the casks with hot water before reusing them. Though they might be the best vessels for shipping and keeping beer, wooden casks were expensive, took up space, and required a large number of strong people, relative to the number of other brewery workers, to handle them. The final packaging stage might present the fewest biochemical problems to the brewer, but presented and continues to present a number of difficulties which translate into a significant share of the costs of operation.

Sources for the Study of Brewing

Knowledge of medieval and Renaissance brewing is based on a surprisingly large body of information. It is often repetitive and seldom gives direct answers to tantalizing questions about techniques or the economics of brewing. Nevertheless, the sheer quantity of material guarantees some understanding of what happened in breweries. It was not until the seventeenth century that writers put down on paper what they knew about the technology of brewing. Incidental information does predate 1600. The earliest recipe for beer making in the Low Countries, for example, comes from fourteenth-century Ghent. The first treatise which discussed how to brew did not appear until well into the sixteenth century, rather late considering the antiquity of the industry. Even eighteenth-century works on brewing were few and more practical than theoretical. In all cases, no matter date or place of origin, the works on beer show contemporary thinking about brewing but unfortunately do not necessarily describe the practice.

Anthropological studies of brewing technology have problems as well but of a very different sort. Odd Nordlund ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Tables
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: Understanding the History of Brewing
• 2 Early Medieval Brewing
• 3 Urbanization and the Rise of Commercial Brewing
• 4 Hopped Beer, Hanse Towns, and the Origins of the Trade in Beer
• 5 The Spread of Hopped Beer Brewing: The Northern Low Countries
• 6 The Spread of Hopped Beer Brewing: The Southern Low Countries, England, and Scandinavia
• 7 The Mature Industry: Levels of Production
• 8 The Mature Industry: Levels of Consumption
• 9 The Mature Industry: Technology
• 10 The Mature Industry: Capital Investment and Innovation
• 11 Types of Beer and Their International Exchange
• 12 Taxes and Protection
• 13 Guilds, Brewery Workers, and Work in Breweries
• 14 Epilogue: The Decline of Brewing
• Appenendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index