Drinkable History: Horrifying Authentic

Techniques for 3000 Year Old Hard Cider, 1500

Year Old Mead, and 1000 Year Old Ale
By Cassandra Cookson
Copyright 2012
Kindle Edition

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
FERMENT YOUR OWN YEAST
EARLY MAN’S HARD APPLE CIDER
VIKING MEAD
MEDIEVAL ALE
HOME MADE MALT
OLD ENGLISH ALEWIFE’S BREW
CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION
This is not a book about the artistry of home brewing. This is drinkable
history. It’s crude, rough, and primitive. If you’re looking for a modern,
refined beverage, you won’t find it in these pages.
These are some of the oldest human recipes for alcohol. The cider
predates the invention of steel. This means these recipes also predate
modern brewing. The ancients didn't have ways to measure specific
gravity or alcohol content. They were more concerned with keeping
bugs out and hoping their precious grains didn't rot before they
fermented. It's humbling to learn how our ancestors brewed before the
invention of fermenting chambers, airlocks, and all the modern
conveniences which let people brew clean, clear, precise beers today.
This book walks you through all the intimidating horrifying techniques
people used to make their everyday staff of life. They didn't just
survive on alcohol made using techniques that make modern home
brewers cry into their carboys - they thrived. Without primitive brewing,
modern civilization wouldn't exist. Water has always been dangerous.
The process of boiling combined with the presence of alcohol
transformed the potentially deadly water into safe, hearty hydration
with a nice buzz as an added bonus.

These aren't modern clone recipes used to create refined versions of

ancient brews. Instead, these are actual techniques used thousands
of years ago. Be warned - if you're a home brewer, these techniques
are downright horrifying. They'll make you appreciate the wonderful
supplies at your local homebrew shop and all the incredible science
that goes into modern beer.
This book is for foodies who wonder how people managed to make
the epic quantities of alcohol that fueled the growth of western
civilization. Most people from ancient times through the Industrial
Revolution drank morning, noon, and night. Babies went straight from
the breast to cider or ale because giving them water would kill them.
Brews were both weaker and more meal-like back in the day, so
people weren't actually walking around drunk all the time. That's part
of what made the invention of distilling so controversial - whiskey
existed just to get you drunk, not to slake a normal amount of thirst
and help replenish some calories and vitamins lost while working in
the fields. It's hard for modern people to wrap their brains around, but
the same folks who drank cider and ale all day just to stay alive
disapproved of public drunkenness and excess just as much as
people do today.
In these pages you’ll learn how our ancestors brewed the sturdy mead
enjoyed by Vikings, quick hard cider drunk by Eurasian nomads, and
downright chunky ale that was the liquid bread of Medieval serfs. You
won't find anything like these brews in stores today. That's probably
not a bad thing.
The recipes are designed so you can make these brews yourself - if
you dare.
If homebrew snobs turn up their noses at your efforts, remind them
this was what people drank morning, noon and night as they spread
across Europe and created western civilization as we know it - so shut
up, drink up, and show a little respect. Then have a nice glass of their
clear, beautiful, modern brew and thank your lucky stars you weren't
born 3000 years ago.
In the spirit of authenticity, you’ll not only learn how to make your own
hard cider, mead, and ale, but also how to make both yeast and malt
from scratch. If you're ever accidentally flung back in time you'll be
well equipped to console yourself with a hardy, fortifying drink. Here in
the present, grab a nice, cold modern beer and get ready to read
something that'll make you grateful to be alive today. This isn't
brewing. It's Drinkable History.
FERMENT YOUR OWN YEAST
Yeast is kind of miraculous. It was no doubt discovered by accident
countless times before people started harvesting it on purpose. Don’t
panic - but naturally occurring yeast grows on nearly all fruits and
grains. It won’t hurt you. It just hangs out there, hoping to snack on a
little naturally occurring sugar.
In order to make bread, beer, or any other fermented beverage, you
want to harvest tons of yeast and turn it into your workhorse. This is a
nice, symbiotic relationship. You’re going to feed the yeast more sugar
than it could ever find on it’s own and in return, the yeast is going to
gorge itself on the bounty and produce plenty of bubbly goodness as
an after-effect. Everybody wins.
There’s no harm in using this very basic yeast harvesting technique in
your own modern breads. It won’t significantly change the flavor, but
the source of your yeast will give the bread a faint aroma. A lot of
experienced bakers swear by bread made from yeast harvested off
strawberries. If you decide to get adventurous and experiment with
some home yeasts, remember to always buy organic, unwaxed
produce. The pesticides kill off naturally occurring yeast and waxes
stop the yeast from growing on the surface of your fruit. Go to a
farmer’s market and pick out something delicious and seasonal.
Unlike the rest of these ancient techniques, this is something well
worth trying. It makes a great science experiment for kids. Heck, it’s
also a fun party trick for adults. Bring a loaf of homemade bread to a
party and explain that you made it using stone aged techniques. The
cool people may scoff, but your geeky friends and home chefs will be
looking for napkins so they can scrawl down the recipe.
Luckily, it’s ridiculously simple. All you really need is a crate of apples,
something to juice them with, and a balloon. You can use the same
process on anything from strawberries to peaches and still end up with
a usable batch of yeast. Apples are cheap, easy, and have a high rate
of success for first timers. Plus, for our purposes, they're what early
brewers used to transform apple juice into hard apple cider.
The wild yeast you’re about to harvest isn’t as strong as the brewer’s
yeast you buy in packets at the grocery store or champagne yeast
from a homebrew supply store. On the other hand, making your own
yeast is a great way to really get a grasp on what everyday brewing
was like before you could buy hundreds of varieties of pre-brewed
beer.
To make all natural apple yeast you’ll need:
- 1 organic apple
- ½ gallon organic apple juice
- 1 bag of balloons (or a store bought fermentation lock)
You want an organic apple and organic apple juice because pesticides
will kill the naturally occurring yeast you’re trying to cultivate.
Step 1: Drink half your apple juice.
Step 2: Peel your organic apple. Shove the peel in the apple juice
bottle. Make sure your apple peel is completely submerged.
Step 3: Poke a hole in a children’s party balloon and wrap it around
the top of the juice bottle. If you don’t have any balloons, you can also
use a condom with a hole poked in the top. Either way, secure it in
place with a rubber band.
Store your yeast starter in a warm, dark place - your cupboard or
pantry should be just fine. Check on it once a day. You want to make
sure the balloon hasn’t come off (if so, replace it with a new balloon.)
The balloon acts as a cheap, easy fermentation lock. It keeps outside
bacteria and mold from getting in while letting gas buildup safely
escape.
Let’s be honest. Pre-Industrial people would’ve stored their apple
peels and juice in a big pot with a lid and hoped for the best.
Sometimes it spoilt, sometimes it worked. It was all at the whims of the
booze god. You can try it that way, but you’re likely to get a lot
skunkier final result. Feel free to to try it both ways just to taste the
difference.
In 2-3 weeks your yeast starter should start bubbling enthusiastically.
You've now created a natural yeast water which can be used for
anything from booze to bread. Congratulations! At that point, you’re
ready to make your first batch of cider.
A few words of caution - naturally harvested yeast can be tricky,
especially the first few times you give it a whirl. Try making 3-4
batches using different apples. That way you have a good chance of
success with at least one of them. When you do your daily check to
make sure the balloon is still in place and look for bubbles, give the air
a good sniff. It should smell like apples with a hint of wine. If it smells
skunky or spoiled, your yeast didn’t take. Clean out your containers
and start over.
You can use this natural yeast to make bread. However, this yeast is
weaker than the bread yeast you buy at the store. You’ll need to let
your bread rise for at least 4-6 hours and even then, it’ll be a little
flatter than you’re used to from store bought baker’s yeast. Your
homemade apple yeast water will also give the final bread a nice,
sweet aroma. Some people swear by it - especially in cinnamon rolls
and other baked goods.
If you use this yeast to make the hard apple cider recipe below, after
you make your first batch of cider you’ll find a thick sludge at the
bottom of the bottle. Save it. That stuff is valuable. It’s a combination
of apple sediment, juice, and precious yeast. Mix it with your
remaining apple peel based yeast water.
Keep the sediment and yeast water mix in a cool, dark place. From
now on, this yeast is your cider starter. Every time you use a half cup
of starter, replace it with half a cup of unpasteurized, organic apple
juice. Let it ferment for a week and your yeast water will be ready to
start a whole new batch of tasty alcoholic apple goodness.
A regularly used batch of yeast water tends to be good for up to six
months. After that, the yeast goes skunky, becomes less effective, or
both. The best way to make sure you always have starter ready is to
start a new batch every month.
EARLY MAN’S HARD APPLE CIDER
One of the great things about cider is that it practically makes itself.
This is almost criminally easy. All you need is:
- organic apple juice
- yeast water (or champagne yeast from a homebrew store)
Step 1: Either juice your own apples or buy some fresh, unpasteurized
organic apple juice from a local orchard or farmer’s market. Make sure
your apples aren’t coated in wax or swimming in pesticides, as those
will kill off the yeast and prevent your sweet, innocent juice from
fermenting into tasty booze.
Step 2: For each gallon of apple juice, add 1/2 cup of yeast water. If
you want to cheat, you can add ½ packet of champagne yeast
(available from homebrew stores) for each gallon of apple juice.
Step 3: Put the juice/yeast mix in a large, sterile container. Give it a
good stir in order to thoroughly mix the yeast in with the juice. This is
where sturdy glass bottles, such as a carboy, come in handy, but you
can also make it in a stainless steel or enamel stew pot, or even a
food grade five gallon bucket. (Don’t use aluminum or anything with a
nonstick coating.)
Experienced home brewers probably have a glass carboy and a
fermentation lock (both inexpensive and easy to find at homebrew
shops both online or in person.) If you have those on hand, use them.
If not, don’t stress. Those of you who don’t have a glass carboy with a
fermentation lock can keep it more authentic by just dumping your
apple juice and yeast water into a big pot and putting a lid on it. This
will make serious home brewers scream, but honestly, this is how it
was done hundreds of years ago. The people who created western
civilization didn't wait for the invention of glass (or even the invention
of soap) before they started fermenting apples.
Step 4: Now wait five days. Don’t open the pot (or mess with your
carboy). Leave it alone so the yeast can make the magic of
fermentation happen without any outside bacteria or competing nasty
yeasts trying to edge in on the party.
It’s that simple.
Five days later you’ll have a drinkable homebrewed hard cider.
The longer you let your cider ferment, the stronger and drier it’ll be. If
you want something that is both sweet and only mildly alcoholic, you
want to drink it young. At this point, you can pour the hard cider liquid
into clean, sterile glass bottles and store it for up to six months. The
flavor will continue to mature - which mostly means it gets drier over
time. Once you either drink the cider or pour it into bottles for storage,
remember to save the sludge at the bottom of your pot or carboy. That
gets mixed in with any remaining apple peel yeast starter along with a
fresh cup of organic apple juice for your next batch of yeast water.
Some people strain the cider to make it clearer and cleaner looking.
Just add a couple layers of cheesecloth to a strainer and pour your
cider through it a few times.
You should end up with the same weak but drinkable everyday
beverage enjoyed by people over 3000 years ago. It won’t taste
anything like the Woodchuck or Strongbow you can buy in stores
today, but isn’t that the point?
VIKING MEAD
Vikings were the badasses of the ancient world. They were taller, they
were stronger, and they were downright meaner than nearly everyone
they met. Even their food was badass. Any culture that considers
rotted shark meat (Hakarl) a delicacy is made by people who aren’t
afraid of anything.
Vikings would honestly drink anything they could loot from the more
settled people to the south. They enjoyed plenty of Roman influenced
wine, English ale, and Central European hard cider. But once a
plundering warrior came home, he would’ve wanted a big mug of good
Viking mead.
Most Vikings drank what modern brewers call a melomel - basically,
alcohol made by adding some berries or fruit to honey. The berries
give your yeast a little something extra to eat, ensuring a better quality
of fermentation.
Unlike Early Man’s Hard Cider, which is drinkable in five days, Viking
Mead takes up to a year to fully mature. This was the drink of victory
and celebration, considered a pale mortal reflection of what the gods
drank in Valhalla.
The quantities in this recipe may seem a little excessive, but if you’re
going to bother making a recipe that takes a full year to mature, you
might as well have plenty of it to enjoy when it’s finally ready to drink.
- 16 lbs raw, unpasteurized honey
- 4-5 gallons purified spring water
- 1 pint blackberries or strawberries
- 5 oz sliced fresh ginger root
- ½ tsp fresh grated nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp fresh rosemary
- 6 whole cloves
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 tsp Irish Moss
- 1 packet champagne yeast or 1 cup of homemade yeast water
Step 1: Get a ginormous stockpot. Heat your spring water until it boils.
You don’t want to use distilled water. The trace minerals in spring
water are actually helpful when making mead.
Step 2: Once your water is at a good, healthy boil, stir in your honey
and all the spices. This will get a little messy. Keep stirring everything
until the honey completely melts into the water. Modern home brewers
may scream at the idea of boiling honey, but its done in countless
period recipes stretching over 2000 years of written history.
Step 3: Once the honey melts, let your mix boil for another 15 minutes
so the flavors will have a chance to get to know one another.
Step 4: Meanwhile, use a hand skimmer to skim off any foam that
floats to the surface. Try not to remove any of the spices while you’re
skimming foam.
Step 5: After 15 minutes, add your Irish Moss (if you’re feeling
authentic, although honestly, any moss will do). This is your clarifying
agent. Do not skip this step. Mix your moss in nice and well. It will
stick to the bad things in your mead and leach them out.
Step 6: Once every five minutes, skim the moss and newly formed
foam off the top of the pot.
Step 7: After fifteen minutes and your third skimming, turn off the heat.
Mash up your fruit of choice and dump it in the pot. Give it another
good stir then leave it alone for the next half an hour.
Step 8: After half an hour, use your hand skimmer to fish out the fruit.
Step 9: Now comes the tricky part. Line a large funnel with two layers
of cheesecloth and put it in a five gallon carboy. This is a big glass jug
available from any homebrew supply store. Yes, the Vikings would’ve
stored theirs in a big clay pot. If you have any clay pots large enough
to fit it all, feel free to experiment, but at this point in time, a carboy is
actually a lot cheaper than a giant piece of ceramic. As an alternative,
you can also use a food grade five gallon bucket. If you do, make sure
it's heat resistant enough that it won't melt when you pour in hot honey
water.
Regardless of what kind of vessel you use, carefully pour in your
mead. If you want to avoid an epic and moderately expensive mess,
this is a 2-3 person job.
Step 10: Real home brewers would put a fermentation lock on the
carboy. You can get this from the same homebrew supply store where
you bought your glass jug. The Vikings didn't have access to this kind
of technology, though, so instead you're going to put a couple layers
of cheesecloth on top to keep the bugs out. Yes, it'll be messy. Now
leave it alone for 24 hours. If you’re using some sort of giant clay jug
or food grade bucket, cover the top of your jug with cheesecloth or
leave the lid slightly ajar. This is more authentic. It'll result in a
skunkier mead than anything made using a proper fermentation lock.
Hey, the Vikings liked it like that. Who are we to judge?
Step 11: After a day of admiring your murky honey brew, it’s time to
play with it again. Pour out one cup of mead and heat it until the liquid
is very warm but not quite scalding.
Step 12: Add your packet of yeast or, if you're feeling authentic, use a
cup of homemade yeast water instead. Either way, mix your yeast into
your mead then walk away. Let it sit for about 15 minutes.
Step 13: When you come back, pour the yeast mix into your carboy or
food grade bucket. Give it a good stir to both mix and aerate the
mead.
Step 14: If you’re using a carboy, stuff a run-off tube into a bottle
stopper (once more, available from your homebrew store). The other
end of the tube should empty into a large bowl. This lets you capture
the blow off froth. For the next week, your mead is going to be as
violent as the Vikings who drank it. Your blow off bowl will fill with
conquered foam while the mighty honey warriors dominate the carboy.
If you’re using a ceramic jug with cheesecloth on top or a food grade
bucket with the lid slightly ajar, just accept that you’re going to end up
with a huge mess. You want to put this in a room with tile or out in
your garage. Flatten some cardboard boxes to put underneath it in
order to soak up some of the mess and make cleanup a little easier.
You're about to get foam everywhere. The Vikings would've left the
mead in an outdoor tent rather than store it inside at this stage.
Step 15: Once the mead settles down, anchor some cheesecloth in
place as a strainer and carefully, with the help of friends, strain your
mead into a second giant food grade bucket, ceramic jug, or carboy.
Either way you do it, separate the liquid from the sludge. The liquid is
your mead. The sludge can be used to make homemade yeast water
for a future batch of booze or bread. Just add some apple peels and a
cup of juice. Harvesting yeast would've been considered a beneficial
side effect of brewing.
Step 16: Cover your pot in cheesecloth or put the lid on with just a hint
of a crack so fermentation gasses can escape. Again, real home
brewers are probably screaming THAT'S NOT HOW IT'S DONE.
They're right. We have all kinds of amazing, sterile techniques today.
The Vikings had clay jars with lids. It's no wonder they were constantly
invading other cultures in search of better food. Now put your mead in
a cool, dark place and forget about it for the next six months. It should
gradually clear during that time. More sediment will probably form on
the bottom. Don’t stress about it. That's actually a good sign that your
yeast is still doing its job.
Step 17: After six months, your mead is ready for bottling. You can
simply siphon it into bottles, but if you’re feeling fancy, you can add
some carbonation by adding ¼ tsp of white table sugar to each 12 oz
bottle before you fill it with mead. The Vikings wouldn't have done
anything of the sort. No bottling, no carbonation. Once it was ready,
they'd leave it in the pot and wait until the next batch of conquering
heroes came home (also known as Tuesday) before feeding them a
big mug of victory. The open jugs rarely lasted the night.
Here in the present, you should end up with a slightly skunky but
certainly alcoholic beverage pretty close to what actual Vikings would
drink in 1000 CE. Let’s be honest, though. When Vikings dreamed of
mead fit for the gods, they were actually channeling the stuff you can
find for $20 a bottle at Whole Foods. Their reality was horrifyingly
rougher than anything for sale today.
Mead may take a lot of time, but the process itself is really simple.
Think of it as a fun science experiment for grownups where your
success is rewarded with enough booze to throw a party.
MEDIEVAL ALE
No one in medieval Europe drank water. It just wasn’t safe. Instead,
from the fall of Rome through the Black Death, most people's
everyday beverage of choice was a simple form of ale. You woke up
in the morning, had some of last night’s bread and butter for breakfast,
then stopped by the alewife’s house to pick up a fortifying mug of her
brew before heading out to work in the fields. Morning, noon and night
you’d have what amounted to a big mug of weakly alcoholic hearty
liquid bread.
Ale was almost entirely made by women. It was cheap to make, could
be left alone for long stretches of time while they tended the children
and household, and was considered appropriate, respectable work for
widows. A lot of alewives doubled up as the local midwife or local
herbalist.
Due to local laws, ale and beer (basically the same stuff, but with hops
added) couldn’t be brewed in the same place. After a couple
centuries, as Europe grew more prosperous, this led to male investors
forming breweries while ale stayed a female cottage industry.
Eventually, the breweries were able to get legislation passed which
made it increasingly difficult for women to sell ale from their homes. By
the time the devastating plague ran its course, ale had almost entirely
given way to beer as people’s everyday drink.
Today, one of the biggest differences between ancient ale and
modern beer is the ability to preserve it. Ale doesn’t keep for long. It’s
best drunk young and fresh before it spoils. Beer on the other hand,
can be bottled and preserved for months without changing the flavor
or quality. In a preindustrial world where every day’s food was made
fresh, that wasn’t a big issue. Today, it makes ale impractical on a
large scale.
However, you can still brew a batch of the same stuff enjoyed by
everyone from Charlemagne to Chaucer. It’s surprisingly easy.
If we’re going to get really authentic here, first you need to know how
to make your own malt.
HOME MADE MALT
- 2 pounds whole barley grains
- water
Step 1: Put your barley in a large bowl and soak it in just enough
water to barely cover the surface. You want to encourage germination.
Step 2: Let the barley soak for 12 hours. You can stir it every 3 hours
or so if you’re feeling bored or impatient.
Step 3: Preheat your oven to its lowest setting. 170°F or 180°F is
ideal, but don’t stress if your oven only goes down to 200°F. You can
leave the door slightly cracked open.
Step 4: Strain your barely and pile the wet grain on a baking pan. You
want a big heap about 2 inches deep. Don’t spread the grains too thin.
You want to keep the center moist so you can use the magic of heat to
convert the starches inside the kernels into sugar.
Step 5: Cook your grain for about 1.5 hours.
Step 6: Now that chemistry has worked its magic inside your grains,
it’s time to dry them out. Crank your oven up to 250°F. Instead of
leaving your grain in a big, moist heap, it’s time to spread the barley
around into a thin layer - no more than an inch thick.
Step 7: Cook your grains for 2 hours. Every half an hour, give the
barley kernels a good stir to prevent them from scorching and to make
sure all the grains dry evenly.
Step 8: Now it’s time to actually cook the grains and caramelize the
sugars within. Turn your oven up to 350°F. Depending on how dark or
light you want your malt, you can leave it in there for anywhere from
10 minutes (a pale amber grain) to an hour (for a dark brown grain.) If
you plan on leaving it in there for more than 10-15 minutes, make sure
to stir it every 15 minutes. That way everything will end up cooked
nice and evenly instead of getting burned on the outer edges and left
undercooked in the middle.
Step 9: Remove your newly created malt from the oven. Admire it as it
cools. You’ve done the hard part, but you’re not quite ready to brew
with it yet. The grain needs to sit for about a month in order for the
sugars within to crystallize. Store it in a cool, dry place.
Step 10: After a month, throw your grain in a food processor and turn
it into flour. It’s now ready to be used in place of malt purchased at a
home brew store.
Medieval alewives would've cooked their barley in a cooling bread
oven, hours after the heat for real cooking had subsided. Cooking was
an all day process where things that needed the most heat were made
first thing in the morning, when the roaring oven fires were hottest.
Over the course of the day, different things would be added as the
oven cooled. The appropriate temperature determined what was
baked when. Malt would've been a night time activity, well suited for
the last useful dregs of the oven's heat.
OLD ENGLISH ALEWIFE’S BREW
- 4 ½ pounds malt
- 1 ½ pounds rolled oats
- 4 gallons water
- 2 packets ale yeast (or 4 cups yeast water)
- 2 five gallon food grade buckets
Step 1: If you want a less authentic but notably cleaner flavor, get
some sanitizer from your local homebrew store and use it on your food
grade buckets. Sure, medieval English Alewives would’ve considered
soap a product of the devil, but they also would’ve taken your word if
you told them invisible sickness demons lived in the water and could
only be killed by being boiled alive. It’s up to you to decide how much
authenticity you enjoy.
Step 2: Boil the water.
Step 3: Mix your malt and oats. If you decided to save time by
purchasing malt from a home brew store, no one will tell on you.
Step 4: Put one of your food grade buckets on the floor next to your
stove. Very carefully, very slowly, pour about half a gallon of your
boiling water into the bucket. You want to let it pour slowly so you’ll
produce plenty of steam.
Step 5: Pour your nice dry malt and grain mix into the plastic bucket
on the floor.
Step 6: Slowly pour another half gallon of boiling water over the grain.
Don’t stir it. Instead, put the lid on your food grade bucket and walk
away for 10 minutes. Let the grains and malt soak up the water in
peace.
Step 7: Take off the lid. Pour another gallon of water on top of the
grain. You’ll want to stir it, but resist the temptation. Leave the mix
alone, put the lid back on, and walk away for another twenty minutes.
Step 8: Now you finally get to stir! Knock yourself out. You should
have a fragrant mix the consistency of thick oatmeal. Once you’ve
given it a good stir, put the lid back on and once more leave it alone.
This time, you need to give it at least an hour and a half. Honestly,
though, you can leave it a lot longer than that and it’ll still be fine. Go
watch a movie.
Step 9: When you get back, get your water boiling again then pour a
gallon of it into the bucket. Put the lid back on and find something to
amuse yourself with for another half an hour.
Step 10: Add the last of the boiling water and give everything a good,
solid stir. Now, you may think all this adding water and waiting is a
waste of time. Why not add everything at once and walk away for five
hours? The thing is, you’re trying to create a series of ongoing
reactions with the malt and the oats. If you try to rush it you’ll ruin your
ale. Honest. Take your time.
Step 11: Put a strainer on top of your second food grade bucket. Now
very carefully strain the liquids (the “wort”) from the solid grains. The
first gallon should strain out pretty quickly. The last gallon will take
some time and patience. Keep straining.
Step 12: Put the lid on your bucket and let it sit overnight to cool.
Step 13: Rehydrate both packets of yeast according to the package
instructions.
Step 14: Add the yeast to your bucket of liquid. Give it a good stir. In
fact, go crazy with the stirring. You want to seriously aerate the liquid,
so let yourself go nuts with it. This is your chance to do all that stirring
you craved so badly the day before.
Step 15: Put the lid back on your bucket. Now walk away. Seriously.
Leave it alone.
Step 16: One day later you can open the lid and peek at your ale. The
yeast should’ve started it bubbling by now. Congratulations. Now
leave it alone for another 3-4 days.
Ale was served “young,” which means it was still in the process of
fermenting. Six days, start to finish, should give you a drinkable, low
alcohol, authentic early medieval ale. Unlike modern beer, it really
does taste like liquid bread. You can see how a few mugs of this a day
would’ve given serfs the energy to do their jobs while also helping
them forget the depressing monotony of subsistence farming.
CONCLUSION
People are pretty clever. For most of human history we’ve struggled
with finding safe drinking water and getting enough calories. We pretty
quickly figured out that alcohol could fit both needs. As an added
bonus, it also made us happy. It’s no wonder all the old polytheistic
religions had a full time alcoholic god or goddess who was only in
charge of booze and bliss.
Making these ancient brews from scratch is an easy way to engage in
some armchair anthropology. You get a feel for what everyday life
must have been like when hard cider or ale substituted for water. You
get a taste of the flavors that dominated their palate. You get a feel for
the work necessary to keep a community safely hydrated on a day to
day basis.
As an added bonus, you also get a nice buzz.
Think of these recipes as a simple form of tasty time travel. Once
you’ve finished a batch, you’ll have a new respect for the people who
created western civilization as we know it.
If you enjoyed this book on Edible History, try other books in the
Edible History series, including:
Edible History: Easy Recipes for Homemade Mother of Vinegar, Apple
Cider Vinegar and Wine Vinegar.
Edible History: Ancient Celtic, Gallic and Roman Techniques for
Leavening Bread Without Modern Yeast