History of the Week

Alcohol History Links October 7 - 14
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Observations in a town with no pub

A summary of the (nonexistent) pub observations chapter in the Exmoor Village, published in 1947.
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Experiments in brewing

Thinking through how and why ancient brewers would not filter the mash and use spent grain during the fermentation process.
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Magic of Malt

Part 4 of Merryn's summary of malting.

​"There's a story that ancient Egyptians, around 3000 years ago, may have made their malt by putting grain into baskets, then lowering the basket into a deep well. The basket could be raised and lowered, effectively steeping the grain. It would germinate in the basket and was shaken at regular intervals to prevent the rootlets from matting." 
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Calvert Brewing Family

​A history of the elusive Calvert family tree and how they entered into the brewing world by purchasing two of the largest porter breweries in 19th century London.

“Under Feast the brewery thrived: he was called “a great Brewer in White Cross Street” in 1716, when he gave away 400 chaldron of coals – around 570 tons – to “such poor people that he found were great Sufferers, and were hindered from Working by the hard Frost.” The Peacock pub, the brewery tap in Whitecross Street, was called a “House of Humming Stingo” by Ned Ward in his London pub guide of circa 1718, the Vade Mecum for Malt Worm. In 1723 Feast was elected one of the two Sheriffs of London, and, as was usual with sheriffs, he was knighted by the King, in January 1724.”
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Transitions to pure yeast culture

An analysis of the British switch to pure yeast cultures and the works of H. Lloyd Hind

“Hind stated that one or two brewers used mixed strains composed of selected pure yeasts, but even that was a distance from what Hansen urged of English brewers. Most stuck with their old system. This had its risks with the seeming oddity – it depends how you look at it – that at different times of the year the strain would differ in composition. This implied the beer was better at some times than others. All this resulted from ancestral methods of yeast “management” and that most plants then were not sterile in the modern sense. Guinness for example didn’t change to fully sterile  plant until after World War II.”
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Grog

A brief and light hearted summary on the history of grog.

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In other news
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Bread

​Five main ways bread would have been different in Anglo-Saxon era England compared to the modern era.
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The English Garden

A look at recipes found in medical texts from the high middle ages.

"One such instance is found in the herbal Anglicanus Ortus (“The English Garden”), written by Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon in England, around the year 1135. His herbal is arranged in six books, which contain a total of 160 different herbs and spices, all described in Latin verse (usually with one poem for each herb)."

LInks which passed under the radar
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Cyprus Brewery

The dig at Kissonerga village have announced the possibility of a brewery from Bronze Age Cyprus.

Cannabis in China

A recent excavation of a man who died roughly 2,800 years ago showed that he was buried with a shroud made of cannabis.