LIAISONS and MISSIVES BEEr BrEwINg EtyMOLOgyF E A T U R E A R T I C L E

As A brewer, I have long delighted in the archaic, distinctive language of brewing. We talk about it using the same basic vocabulary they had in England in the 12th, 13th, or 14th centuries. It’s the words around the brewing terms that have changed. Even making the most modern of recipes, if you talk about the process of brewing and the beers and meads we make, you use terms that are old, old, old, some as old as English itself! You hear them and know it; there’s been no influence strong enough to separate the English speaker from his fermented drink. I decided some time ago to dig a little to see what I could find about their history. I had two questions: how old is the word, and how long has it been in use in English? If it didn’t start out in English, how did we get it? I have been richly rewarded. Almost all brewing words have been in the language so long we can’t find a beginning-point for them. They are indubitable, inextricably English!

For those of you for whom English is neither your native nor your favorite

tongue, please forgive a native speaker’s hopefully understandable fascination. I find it delightfully rich and complex.

Interestingly, as flexible as English is, the vocabulary of brewing is remarkably consistent through the centuries. I started looking into etymologies. Etymologies are not definitions; they’re histories: what our words meant and how they sounded reaching as far back as possible. Linguists go through a great deal of sifting and sorting to compare and reconstruct what language must’ve been like, in another time and place, and to guess at how words and pronunciations travelled and changed.

But wait, we have a fewmysteries, it seems. Just a few,but they’re good ones.

For example: because my barony has been hosting demos at the National Geographic Society’s Staffordshire Hoard exhibit, I’ve been looking into Anglo-Saxon brewing with particular interest. In Anglo-Saxon, there are four

words for fermented beverages, and lots and lots of descriptions of what happens when one gets drunk. The four words look so much like modern English that they’ve been translated into the apparently parallel words for over a hundred years: ealu/ale, beor/beer, medu/mead, and win/wine. It seems perfectly straightforward. It turns out not to be so simple. For example, the word beor disappears from English entirely around 1066, the time of the Norman Conquest.

The word bier, from the Continent, is imported three or four hundred years later. It turns out we don’t have a description of beor itself, only of what happens if one drinks too much of it. So beor could have been anything intoxicating. It closely resembles the root word for bee, ‘beo-‘ (Beowulf means “bee-wolf”). Was beor honey-based, like a mead? Or did it stinglike a bee? The modern word in Normandy, France (local dialect) for cider is bère, but we have reason to think Anglo-Saxon beor was not cider. So what was it?

Volume 1: strike to CArboy

Or

Anglica Brewtannica

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There are so many words, and so much history, that I ended up breaking the research into several different segments: beer, mead and cider. I found so much material on beer alone that even that was divided. This entry takes beer from strike to carboy (see the note on that word in the vocabulary). A later segment will take the brew from carboy to drinking, the end of all good beer.

For you language lovers who are not also brewers, putting some of these words in context may help. Here’s a short process description:

To make beer, one strikes – adds hot water to – grist, which is ground malted – sprouted, then dried – grain, to make the mash. Then one sparges – pours more hot water over the malted grains to get the last usable bit of convertible starch out of them. The grain is then lautered, or separated from the wort, or liquid. The wort is boiled, and hops (or sometimes other herbs) are added for aroma and flavor. The wort is then cooled down and poured into a carboy so yeast may be pitched. The draff, or spent grains, can then be used for baking, composting, or feeding animals.

In the carboy, the yeast’s activity should generate barm, also called krauesen, or a foam, on top of the wort. After a while the wort is racked off the lees or trub, or poured off the layer of dead yeast cells that has formed. Eventually the wort, now drinkable beer or ale, was kegged or casked (though nowadays, it is most often bottled). At last the cask would be broached and the hole stoppered with a bung. A spile was used to keep the bung in place as the cask’s gas pressures changed.

Beer Brewing Word derivations

Always English (as far back asthey go):

Ale Barm BrewGrist Malt MashMashing Pub Trub

Common European Derivations:In Old English, Old Norse, Old Frisian, Old High German, Old Saxon (all around the same times)

Beer Draff or druffSparge Wort

DutchGruit Gyle Spile

GaulishLees

SpanishCask

Old NorseBung (into English via Middle High German or Middle Dutch)Keg

PersianCarboy (first recorded in English in 1718)

Yet to be identifiedLauterLiquorKrauesen or krausen

You see what I mean?Brewing has been a large, well-

regulated, taxed and tariffed industry for at least five thousand years, complete with warehouses and middlemen. It should be no surprise that we have such a well developed vocabulary for it. What does surprise me is that the vocabulary has changed so little. Much of it is as old as English itself.

This research encompassed a number of sources. I often found the same records in several sources, so where I can, I have referred to the sources in the text. I have not tried to footnote them, since in many cases it’s not clear who had the record first, or which source is quoting which.

I have referenced the records of a number of brewing historians, particularly Dr. Patrick McGovern, Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the university of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, author of many books and papers on the topic of ancient fermented beverages; Martyn Cornell, noted British beer historian and writer, author of Zythophile blog; and Patrick Kelly of the Dublin Institute, scholar on ancient Ireland and translator of ancient Irish laws.

For “classic” etymology comparisons, I used the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which records the oldest known incidence of a word being used in writing in English; the American Heritage Dictionary, with its excellent etymologies; and The English Companions, with their in-depth scholarship into Anglo-Saxon England, including language.

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Brew – The American Heritage Dictionary’s first definition is “1. To make ale or beer from malt and hops by infusion, boiling, and fermentation.” (American Heritage Dictionary, 1975, p. 164) Definition 2 says it can also mean “To make a beverage by boiling, steeping, or mixing various ingredients” (which is undoubtedly why cordials are included in SCA brewing events, I think, even though sweet sipping cordials made purely for pleasure did not exist in SCA period). “3. To concoct or devise.” According to the OED, first text reference using this word is by King Aelfred in 893 CE in Aelfred Orosius. (Oxford English Dictionary, p. 273).

THE TrAIL: A Common Teutonic word that gave cognatesto Old English, Old High German, Old Saxon and Old Norse. Old English breowan; see bhreu- in barm. Middle English brewen.

CarBoy – a large bottle, usually 5 to 6.5 gallons with a narrow neck at top. A word so common to brewers that I feel I must mention it – brewers, I know you’ll ask if I don’t – but almost unquestionably post Society period. A newcomer, its earliest textual use is not until 1718. In SCA period, beer and mead appears to have often been “tunned up”, or made in large quantities in tun barrels, a phrase often seen inSociety-period sources such as Gervase Markham and Sir Kenelme Digbie.

THE TrAIL: Persian qaraba from Arabic qarraba, a large flagon.

Grist – OED says the earliest meaning ‘the act of grinding’ is obsolete, and has given way to the current noun for malt or grain that has been ground, or a quantity of grain to be ground. From Amber Gold & Black: “ground malt, ready for mashing” (Cornell, 229). The OED says the verb shows up in Aelfric of Eynsham’s writing circa 1000 CE, the noun in 1430, referring to crushing or grinding any kind of grain.

THE TrAIL: From ghren- to grind, this word is straight-up Old English: grindan/grist, Middle English: grind/grist, to grind.

Gruit – an herb mixture used by continental brewers for flavoring ale before hops became the standard flavorant in beer. Gruitrecht was the bestowed right to make gruit. Gruit was slowly replaced in beer recipes by hops, as Europe acquired a taste for the more bitter flavor over several centuries. Gruit was taxed, controlled in many ways and closely and creatively regulated. The Carolingian government asserted that dispensing gruit was a specific Imperial right, as outlined here by unger:

“The rule was able to establish a royal right to power over unexploited land and it was uncultivated land from which bog myrtle came. Thus the emperor was the ultimate source of gruitrecht. The emperor considered the monopoly

of trade in gruit to belong with his other major regal rights, and could grant use of such lands to counts, bishops, or towns. Over time, grants were made to laymen (thirteenth century Flanders). Once granted gruitrecht rights, the holder had the power to control the sale of gruit; they could essentially levy a tax on beer production, a lucrative and jealously guarded power. In Holland, Flanders, and other countries in the Low Countries, in Westphalia, the rhineland, and the lower rhine region like Liege and utrecht, there were several forms the power to control the sale of gruit took, but all amounted to levying a tax on beer production. Counts would try to tax the use of gruit throughout their dominions, and perhaps insist that all makers of beer use gruit supplied by them or their agents or those who had bought the right of distribution from them. The monastery of Saint Trond was granted gruitrecht in 1045, the monastery was empowered to build a house in which the gruit would be prepared, and from which it would be distributed. In renewing the grant in 1060, the granting Bishop said that before the beer had been bad but under the new arrangements it was much improved.” (unger 32)

Gruit recipes were generally held in secret and jealously guarded, making it interesting to try to reconstruct recipes today. Gruit is not so common a modern brewing word, but one dear to those interested in medieval brewing.

THE TrAIL: Dutch word for “dregs”. It’s not clear this word ever did come into English.

Lauter, LauterinG – to separate grains from sweet wort by straining. removing spent grains and hops from wort, usually with a strainer, and additional quick rinsing (sparging) of the caught spent grains with hot water.

THE TrAIL: I couldn’t find one. Even the OED doesn’t have record of this word.

Lauter tun – vessel for wort separation using the spent grain as a filter medium.

Liquor – the beer brewer’s word for water.

THE TrAIL: None of my sources recognize this use, though it shows up in modern brewing books frequently.

MaLt – grain, usually barley, that has been partially germinated so it begins to sprout, in order to encourage the production of sugars from the starches in each barleycorn or wheat grain, and then dried to stop germination before all the sugar is used up by the growing plant. Sugars, soluble

Beer Brewing VocaBulary

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starches, and starch-converting enzymes are developed during the malting process. First textual use circa 706 CE.

THE TrAIL: Old English mealt, Middle English malt.

Mash – mixed grist and liquor.

THE TrAIL: The earliest use of the word is in terms of brewing. It shows up in Old English circa 1000 CE.

MashinG – treatment of malt with hot water to allow enzymes to hydrolyze the starch to sugar. Sustain a grain and water “soup” at a certain temperature for a period of time in order to convert grain starches to fermentable sugars. The preferred material for a mash tun was copper. Can also be used to mean crushing or grinding. Middle English mash, Old English masc. Indo European gave us the Latin miscere, mix (also “promiscuous”). Possible Germanic form maisk – meaning mashed or malt. Also: Mixing the grist with hot liquor to extract the fermentable sugars. One of the challenges of mashing has always been to separate the liquor from the draff, or spent grains. Some mash tuns had false pierced bottoms to separate the grains out; the liquor would be tapped or pumped out of the bottom of the vessel without interference from the draff. These existed in England in the 14th C, if not earlier. Dutch brewers used straw in the vat as a strainer, but in the course of the 16th C replaced straw with false bottoms.

THE TrAIL: Earliest text 14th C.

sparGe – to wash wort from a bed of grain with hot water. See lautering. To spray or sprinkle. Spraying hot water over the mash tun at the end of mashing to maximize extractionof sugars.

THE TrAIL: Lots of cognates all the way along from Latin spargere, all meaning to sprinkle or scatter; even the Old Norse word for freckles (freknur) is related. In the definition that refers to the act of sprinkling or splashing – one of two original meanings, the other being to plaster or rough-cast – the OED gives the earliest reference as 1590 in a criminal proceeding, quoted in Robert Pitcairn’s Ancient criminal trials in Scotland (1488-1624), which was published in 1833. In 1839 it’s used specifically about sprinkling malt with hot water.

strike – to add water to grist to begin mashing. This word has been used in so many different meanings, and is so easily confused with words of similar spellings, it took some sorting to find the ones brew-related. The word entry takes up eleven pages of the OED, which is saying something. This word has craft-specific meanings in trades as disparate as shipbuilding and soapmaking, theater and transportation. Most of the modern uses of this word have to do with suddenness and/

or impact, but it can also indicate leveling or smoothing; a “strickle” is an instrument used to level off grain or other material in a measure, or a foundry tool used to shape a mold in sand or loam.

THE TrAIL: Before the 16th C, a strike could indicate a dry measure equivalent to a bushel (1384). It can be a unit proportion of malt in ale or beer. Also an indicator of the highest strength in ale (1610).

wort (pronounced wart or wert) – solution of sugar and soluble starch from grain, usually malted, prior to fermentation, or “a lovingly prepared liquid that will ferment to homebrew” (Papazian, 320). Before boiling, the wort is called “sweet wort”, after boiling with hops it is called “bitter wort”. Wort is also an herb, and the deep etymology that I could find all had to do with herbs and plants.

THE TrAIL: The herb is in Old English, Old High German, old Saxon, and Old Norse. By 1000 CE it refers to the solution from malt or grains that becomes beer, and is mentioned in Ags. Leeched. unusually, the OED does not give the author’s name, which leads me to guess they’re citing Bald’s Leechbook, part of King Aelfred’s educational reforms, written circa 1000 and compiled (according to a colophon at the end of the second book) by one Cild. c

PrImarY BIBlIograPhYA complete bibliography is available from SCA Member Services (membership@sca.org).

Cornell, Martyn. Beer: The Story of the Pint – The History of Britain’s Most Popular Drink. London: Headline Press, 2003. Print.Cornell, Martyn. Amber Gold and Black: The History of Britain’s Great Beers. Stroud: History, 2010. Print.Kelly, Fergus. Early Irish Farming: A Study Based Mainly on theLaw-Texts of the 7th and 8th Centuries AD. Dundalk Co. Louth, Ireland: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dundalgan Press Ltd, 2000. Print.Morris, William ed. American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1975. Print.Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford, England: Oxford university Press, 1971. Print.Palmer, John J. How to Brew. Boulder, CO: Brewers Publications, 2006. Print.

author

ElspEth paynE medals in brewing internationally, in beers, meads, and wines. She teaches and writes about brewing whenever possible. She works for The Man as a proposal writer, the natural outgrowth of organizing activities during a misspent youth. Her website, mostly about brewing, is in beta: elspethpayne.com. Home is currently in Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC.sorcha crowE (bAroNess) is an Anglo-Norse woman living in the 8th C, north of Jorvik, later known as York, in England. She hopes the Danes will not raid as far as her holding this year…

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