Lecture #5 PRE-INDUSTRIAL BEER AND BREWING IN EUROPE TO ~1600AD.

lecture #5

PRE-INDUSTRIAL BEER AND BREWING IN EUROPE TO ~1600AD

Brewing around the western world before ~1400AD

Before ~800AD, Northern Europe largely a wilderness backwater

-many small, distantly separated settlements, some remnants of Roman cities, but in disrepair

-Vikings roamed the rivers and coastlines, raiding towns

Independent origins of brewing in Northern Europe

Some cross fertilization with middle eastern tradition through Roman empire

Mesopotamian no kilning, clay pots Celtic kilning, coopering


The Holy Roman Empire

-Charlemagne- Frankish king who conquered Italy in 774, crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800

-unified Europe, spread Christianity and the Carolingian Renaissance- development of Latin, art

-increased settlement of Europe

-promoted proto-urban development

-promoted “the rule of St. Benedict” and the building of monasteries

-beginning of modern European brewing tradition


Benedictine monks:

-live as St.Benedict (~500AD) did, by the Rule of St. Benedict

-founder of monastic tradition?

-peace, work, and prayer

-live in a self sufficient community through their own labor

-offer hospitality to travelers and needy

-beer was important as a food, a beverage, a medicine


Constance

St.Gall monastery, founded 612AD in Constance

-expansion plans of 820 and 1092 survive

-820 earliest known example of a “large” institutional brewery in Europe

-connected to the bakehouse

-would produce roughly 350- 400 liters per day, 500 liters per person per year

-similar breweries spread quickly throughout Europe, by 1100 in Bergen Norway, 1380 in Sweden

1092


“here let the beer for the brothers be brewed”

820 plan for St.Gall


~1200, Monk tasting brew in the cellar, note the keys

~1425, brewing at a small Monastery, perhaps 20 gallons


Most monasteries, like St.Gall, were able to brew three beers at a time with the equipment being of different capacity, brewery forpilgrim and guests was half the size of brewery for monks

-beer for guests, noblemen, officials etc.

-the best beer made only of wheat and barley

-beer for the monks

-made mostly of oats

-beer for pilgrims and the poor

-weak beer, made from oats

Professionalization

Brewing 400 liters per day in 800 was a lot of beer

-100 gallons per day or about 3.3bbl (31 gallons/bbl) = 6.6 modern kegs per day, 1200bbl per year (2400 kegs)

Monasteries, great estates, military victualers, some of the biggerurban brewers approached this size

-1333- Lady Clare’s estate brewed about 800bbl = 1600 modern kegs

Otherwise people brewed in their homes to supply their family

-each person needed one quart per day (conservative, soldiers got 1 gallon a day )

-family of 5 = 8 ¾ gallons per week

= 14.5bbl/year = 29 modern kegs per year

Professionalization

This type of brewing, even in the biggest monasteries, was reallya “domestic” activity

-no special equipment needed (although it helped)

-little special training needed (although it helped)

-just one more task that the household had to perform like baking bread, cooking food, doing laundry etc.

The biggest commercial breweries before the 1400s were only in the largest cities and brewed at most a few thousand bbls per year

-not a very specialized trade

-earliest linguistic record of professionalization came in the 1100s on the continent when special words for brewery became common

-before this the brewery was just the kitchen

Hopped beer

First records of hops used for brewing, or at least associated with brewing, come from 768 AD when there is a record of a brewing monasterygrowing them in their garden

-hops were a common medicinal plant since the ancient Greeks, Pliny the Elder, 79 AD

In 822 there is a record specifically describing brewing with hopsfrom a monastery near Tours France

By 1200 most beer brewed on the continent was hopped

Professionalization

On the continent in 1400, breweries in Hamburg Germany were brewing2500bbl/year of hopped beer

modern nomenclature:

beer

ale lager

Nomenclature in England before ~1700:

ale (unhopped, common before ~1600)

(gruit on continent)

beer (hopped, common after ~1600)

yeast makes the difference,both are hopped

nomenclature

Professionalization

~1300- Bennett’s “by-industrial” brewers

-ale was commonly brewed for the family by women with few full time dedicated breweries even in the cities, families brewed 10-20 gallons at a time

-families would sell their extra ale or would brew extra some weeks if they needed extra money, 1 out of 2 families brewed for profit at least once a year in rural areas, 1 out of 15 in the cities

-profits were low, but higher in cities than in towns

~1600- beer was mostly brewed in purpose-built breweries by men hundreds of gallons at a time, profitable business

1. What does Bennett mean by “alien trade”? Who were the aliens? What did they bring and eventually brew? How were they

different from the brewsters in England and how did this affectthe brewsters? (p.79-83)

2. How was beer different from ale? Why? How did this effect the businesses of ale and beer brewing? (p. 84-88)

3. How did changes in the business of brewing affect brewsters?(p.89-92)

1. What does Bennett mean by “alien trade”? Who were the aliens? What did they bring and brew? How were they

different from the brewsters in England and how did this affect the brewsters?

Brewsters to brewers

population growth (from Immigrants and the Industries of London 1500-1700 by Lien Bich Luu 2005)

LONDON

1500- 50,0001550- 80,0001580- 100,0001600- 200,0001650- 400,0001700- 575,000

large numbers of immigrants in 1600s


Hops come with some of the earliest immigrants to England from the“low countries”, i.e. present day Belgium, Netherlands, Northern Germany, Northern France, Luxembourg

Hopped beer came first, imported in the late 1300s

Earliest known beer brewers in England were early 1400s and were immigrants

-1409 Shrewsbury-1416 York

-1436 London brewers file official complaint to government about “aliens nigh to the city dwelling [who] brew beer and sell it to retail within the same city” (p.80)

Up to this time, the vast majority of the ale brewing in England wasdone by women as a domestic task



It was men who brought beer brewing to England

-very few women immigrants at all, let alone brewsters

-early beer brewing was done by aliens who were all men

-beer brewing was new technology, it was not a domestic or craft skill in England as ale brewing was

-it was something that needed to be taught and the alien beer brewers were not about to teach their new technology to women

-beer breweries were much larger...

2. How was beer different from ale? Why? What did this mean for the business of brewing?

Hopped beer

Why did hops come to replace gruit on the continent and eventuallyale in England?

-driven by economical forces

-while hops weren’t cheaper than other spices, and in fact cost more to brew with because of longer boiling

times and higher labor costs, hopped beer was more viable as a commercial product

-hops helped preserve beer; this meant two things

Hopped beer

(1) Could brew weaker beer

-the principal thing that kept ale from souring was the alcohol content, but didn’t keep it from souring for that long, a couple days to a couple weeks for most ale

-because grain was the most expensive part of brewing, if you could brew more beer with the same amount of grain, you could make more profit

-hops kept even the weakest beers from going bad so you could brew more beer that would last longer and you could make more money

Reginald Scot wrote the first known book on hops in England in the late 1500s (also a famous book on witchcraft)

“whereas you cannot make above 8 or 9 gallons of indifferent ale out of one bushel of malt, you may draw 18 or 20 gallons of very good beer” (p.85)

Hopped beer

(2) Could keep beer longer than ale

-if you didn’t sell your beer one week, you could sell it the next, couldn’t do that with ale because it would sour

-so you could brew much larger batches to take advantage of good raw material prices, economy of scale

-could ship the beer longer distances, not only would it keep longer, but it stood up to shipping better

-India Pale Ale is an extreme example

Hopped beer

So it was hopped beer that led to an increase in the size of breweries

In London in 1574 there were 90 breweries, 58 making ale and 32 makingbeer (p.88)

20 ALE breweries used only 4-9 quarters of malt a week34 used 10-193 used 20-291 used 30-39

assuming 6.5 gallons per bushel or52 gallons per quarter, the biggestALE brewery made 3400bbl/year

the biggest BEER brewery made 8600 butprobably more because they probably got more than 6.5 gallons per bushel

2 BEER brewers used 20-298 used 30-396 used 40-495 used 50-596 used 60-693 used 70-791 used 80-891 used 90-99

3. How did changes in the business of brewing affect brewsters?


Bennett argues that when anything was professionalized, it became a man’s domain, as soon as brewing became a profession and not a domestic chore, men took over

-as we’ve noted, the continental breweries were already professional businesses, perhaps as early as the 1100s

-they were run by men

“Dutch and German beerbrewers already managed large, expensive, and profitable industrial complexes…it is scarcely surprising that German and Dutch beerbrewers were wealthy, respected, powerful, and male.” (p.82)


Beer brewing was big business

-women “lacked the necessary capital, they lacked ready access to foreign markets, and they lacked managerial authority.” (p.89)

-they were precluded from entering into large scale business because of cultural assumptions:

-not as smart as men

-bad with money

-a single woman who fraternized with men was probably a prostitute or maybe even a witch

-moreover, women couldn’t enter into contractual agreements as a matter of law: they were forbidden from doing so because they were women!

Introduction of hopped beer led to growth of brewing industry inEngland and thus to professionalization of it which led thento displacement of women from that industry

How did the demands of military victualing affect patterns of production?


The military needed a lot of drink

In 1340, English soldiers in the war against Flanders (Belgium) wererationed 1 gallon of beer per day, 1,510 sailors for 40 days = 60,000 gallons

-beer cost less than ale, kept longer than ale, transported better than ale- beer replaced ale for the military very early

-women didn’t brew beer and even if they did they couldn’t arrange the monetary and logistical resources necessary to brew and ship that much of it, they didn’t have those resources available to them as women

-also, the general thinking was that soldiers should not be in contact with women during war time, particularly women selling drink, “women and drink were a disorderly combination” (p.94)

-and the military’s brewers were often soldiers too- in 1522 it was noted that “brewers could also serve as gunners”

Lecture #5 PRE-INDUSTRIAL BEER AND BREWING IN EUROPE TO ~1600AD.

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Transcript of Lecture #5 PRE-INDUSTRIAL BEER AND BREWING IN EUROPE TO ~1600AD.