PRAISE FOR SCHOOL OF BOOZE
'Jane Peyton serves up an intoxicating brew of drinking lore, boozy anecdotes and hop-driven history – this is the sort of school I wish I'd gone to.'
Adrian Tierney-Jones, beer writer and author of Great British Pubs
'Whether it's the words for "hangover" in Swedish, the beer-related miracles of Brigit of Kildare, or the three classifications of a drunk in Japan, you'll find it all in here, as beer sommelier Jane Peyton takes us on an enjoyable tour of all things alcoholic. Covering all types of drink, from absinthe through to whisky, one swiftly realises that Jane is as much a lover of words and history as she is of booze. Where else will you find the origins of the phrases "fill your boots" and "scot free" within a few pages?
Just like those conversations down the pub, this is a mix of fun, fancy and facts, presented with Jane's refreshing charisma and engaging enthusiasm. You are hereby cordially invited to join the principal of the School of Booze for an entertaining jollification. Cheers!'
Susanna Forbes, DrinkBritain.com
'Jane Peyton's passion for the subject shines through on every page of this riotous, irreverent journey through the world of drink. Chock full of fascinating drinks trivia too.'
Alice Lascelles, columnist, The Times, and founding editor of Imbibe magazine
'The perfect starter to a great pub conversation. Will launch a thousand sentences that begin with the words, "I bet you didn't know..."'
Pete Brown, author of Man Walks into a Pub and Hops and Glory
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
Brilliant Britain
Beer O'Clock: Craft, Cask and Culture
SCHOOL OF BOOZE
Copyright © Jane Peyton, 2013
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.
Jane Peyton has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Summersdale Publishers Ltd
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eISBN: 978-1-78372-004-0
Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Summersdale books are available to corporations, professional associations and other organisations. For details contact Nicky Douglas by telephone: +44 (0) 1243 756902, fax: +44 (0) 1243 786300 or email: nicky@summersdale.com.
Dedicated to the British boozer – what would Britain be without them?
Thank you to Nicky Douglas and Claire Plimmer for commissioning this book and all at Summersdale who helped to produce and market it. Special thanks to Graham for his eagle-eyed copy-editing skills.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: A JOLLIFICATION
PROLOGUE: A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
CHAPTER ONE: THE FOURTH DRIVE
Irresistible Intoxication
Carpenters in the Head
Monkeying Around – Animals and Alcohol
Down the Hatch – Toasting
CHAPTER TWO: BOOZE: PART OF THE FURNITURE
What the Doctor Ordered – Alcohol and Health
God Given – Religion and Alcohol
Down the Pub
The Verbals
CHAPTER THREE: RAISE A GLASS TO THE ANCESTORS
Mesopotamia
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Greece
Ancient Rome
CHAPTER FOUR: THE SHOPPING LIST
Popping the Cork – Cork
Wolf Plant – Hops
Marvellous Malt
God-is-Good – Yeast and Fermentation
A Ghostly Wraith – Distillation
CHAPTER FIVE: BEHIND THE BAR
The Emerald Sorceress – Absinthe
Ninkasi's Nectar – Beer
Burnt Wine – Brandy
Apples and Pears – Cider and Perry
Buttressed Booze – Fortified Wine
Strip Me Naked – Gin
Mythical Mead
Excommunication – Mezcal and Tequila
Kill Devil – Rum
Where's the Party? – Sparkling Wine
Bread Wine – Vodka
Water of Life – Whisky
A Necessity of Life – Wine
CHAPTER SIX: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN
Speak Easy – Temperance & Prohibition
CHAPTER SEVEN: BOTTOMS UP!
INTRODUCTION:
A JOLLIFICATION
Don't tell the social services, but when my siblings and I were children, our parents allowed us to drink a tiny glass of low-alcohol cider with Christmas dinner. It was a once-a-year treat that made the day even more special. We lifted our glass and Dad gave a toast to deceased family members. Then we sipped the sweet sparkling juice knowing that we were participating in a ritual. Even back then I preferred the cider with the pork rather than turkey. A nascent sommelier!
My three wonderful maiden great-aunts used to throw jollifications when the extended family would gather for singing, laughter, and maybe a jig fuelled by something stronger than lemonade. An abiding memory is what fun it all was when people congregated and had a drink. They relaxed, laughed, told jokes, sang, acted daft, and everyone felt the warmth of companionship.
I have always been fascinated by the story behind alcohol – how it is made, the effect it has, the cultural history, and its central role in so many societies. This led me to found an events business called School of Booze. I host tutored beer, cider, wine, whisky tasting events for private groups, appear as a public speaker, and recreate libations from historic eras. My passion is beer and I am an accredited beer sommelier, which if you like beer is one of the most enjoyable things a person can do!
When it comes to the urge for a drink, necessity is the mother of invention. In my experience the greatest example of this is the nomads of Mongolia (and other central Asian countries) who roam around the steppes in search of pasture for their animals. These people would not know what to do with a piece of fruit or a vegetable as they do not stay anywhere long enough to grow anything to eat or supply ingredients to make hooch with. So what do they do when the nearest off-licence may be hundreds of miles away? They drink airag (also known as kumis) which is made from fermented horse's milk.
Horses play a central role in their society and so does airag as an important part of the daily diet. A nineteenth-century book celebrating the nutritional and health qualities of airag referred to it as 'milk champagne'. In Mongolia airag is also distilled into a clear spirit called shimiin arkhi. At around 12 per cent ABV it has a bigger kick than its low alcohol sibling. Fermentation is easy to achieve when airborne yeast cells land on the milk and ferment the sugars, but milking the mare is a little trickier. A foal suckles its mother's teat to start the milk flow and then a milkmaid moves in with a bucket, wraps an arm around the mare's hind leg and starts milking. I can vouch for the fact that airag tastes similar to yoghurt with a sour flavour and slight tingle on the tongue because I spent some time in Mongolia. My hosts offered me a drink and, well, it would be rude not to. They passed a bowl, the size of a heavyweight boxer's fist, full of a pale thin liquid. With all eyes on me I accepted it and smiled as I tucked in, trying to avoid the horse hairs floating around on the top, and finished the entire serving. Little did I know that in Mongolia if you eat and drink everything served up, it means you want more.
This book is dedicated to the peerless British boozer and is a guide to what's behind the bar. If you've ever wondered how your favourite drink is made, then this is the book for you. It also includes highlights of the history of some of the most popular alcoholic beverages with compelling pieces of trivia to tell your mates, where else, but down the pub.
It's not the whole story, just an overview because alcohol is such a vast subject it would not all fit into a book that could be lifted without dislocating the back. The content is unapologetically British-centric. When I mention Britain it is sometimes shorthand for England, Wales and Scotland even if it refers to the time before the Act of Union 1707. Sorry, Scots, I do know that Scotland was an independent country before then. I also refer to some historic regions or principalities by their modern geographic locations in Germany or Italy.
The majority of alcohol's history took place before humans developed writing, so historians rely on archaeology if the evidence exists, or assumptions. And the nature of intoxication means that contemporaneous accounts cannot always be trusted. If repeated enough times ale house legends become their own truth and I found many such examples during my research. This will come as no surprise but there is so much rubbish on the Internet! Juicy tales about alcohol are copied from one website to another without any fact checking. This is particularly true of the provenance of a beer style called India Pale Ale. Most sites that mention it contain incorrect information. For the true story, and other beer-related topics, the best source is historian Martyn Cornell, who writes books and a blog called Zythophile and meticulously researches his subject.
Books I really enjoyed reading for research were: Drink by Iain Gately (Gotham Books); Uncorking the Past by Patrick McGovern (University of California Press); Intoxication by Ronald K. Siegel (Park Street Press), and Beer and Britannia by Peter Haydon (Sutton Publishing).
Alcoholic drinks all have their own personalities. They also instil certain attitudes or expectations in their tipplers. These are my collective nouns for the imbibers of some popular libations:
Beer: a conviviality
Champagne: a vivaciousness
Wine: a civilisation
Whisky: a kilter
Absinthe: a sorcery
Mezcal: a mariachi
Brandy: a night-cap
My Dad, Bill, was a great raconteur who enjoyed Scotch whisky with a drop of room-temperature water to open it up. 'No need to drown it,' he would say. In honour of Bill, here is a limerick he taught me:
On the chest of a woman from Sale
Was tattooed the price of ale
And on her behind
For the sake of the blind
Was the same information in Braille
Bottoms up!
PROLOGUE:
A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
According to NASA, the Universe is composed of dark energy, dark matter, and atoms which make up bodies such as stars and planets. There is also something unexpected. Deep in interstellar space there is a vast cloud of alcohol composed of ethanol and methanol measuring billions of miles across. It is located at the centre of the Milky Way 26,000 light years or 150 quadrillion miles away from earth. This proximity has raised a fascinating hypothesis about the initial formation of complex carbon molecules on this planet. Did the alcohol build up into carbon polymers and hitch a ride on comet heads that dispersed space dust on to the earth's surface? If so then could it be that the primordial soup in which simple life developed was really a primordial cocktail?
Those single-celled life forms needed energy and this came from sugars. Once ingested, the sugars fermented and created waste products of alcohol and carbon dioxide. Glycolysis, or sugar fermentation, is believed to be the earliest form of energy production used by life on earth so, 3.6 billion years ago, alcohol was a major factor even in a world of primitive bacteria.
Around 100 million years ago the first fruit-bearing trees appeared. For sugar-loving creatures from insects to higher mammals this was the equivalent of an off-licence opening. Sugar oozing from the fruit attracted airborne yeast cells to ferment it so when insects and animals followed their noses to the syrupy prize they gobbled it up and became gently intoxicated on the alcohol that was the by-product of fermentation. Early humans originated in what is now Africa and they lived largely on a diet of fruit. Chemist Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida, mapped the evolution of DNA sequences that make up the alcohol metabolising enzyme ADH4 and theorised that the ability to metabolise ethanol might have originated in the common ancestor of chimpanzees, gorillas and humans approximately 10 million years ago when higher primates ate fermenting fruit that had fallen off trees giving them an exciting buzz. This was not forbidden fruit, however, and it spurred our ancestors and animals to actively seek it out. Fermentation is highly beneficial because the nutritional value of the food is enhanced with increased amino acid and vitamin levels. Those augmented calories would sustain whoever ate them and help them survive a hostile environment. Fermentation also made the food easier to digest, supplying nutrition and energy that caused the brain to grow larger.
Archaeologists believe that humans started purposely making alcoholic beverages in the Palaeolithic Era between 2.5 million and 20,000 years ago – a more specific timeframe is not possible. Ingredients varied depending on where they lived – palm sap, figs and other fruits in Africa, wild grapes in the Caucasus. Honey was widely available everywhere and so mead would have been an early beverage, if not the first. Later, when it was discovered that root crops and wild cereals could be fermented, almost everything growing in soil was fair game. No one understood what caused food to turn as if by magic into nourishing alcohol so when religion became a part of the human experience, it was understood that alcohol was a gift from the deities and they were worshipped accordingly with libations offered in sacrifice. Even today alcohol is central in some Christian and Jewish rites and wine is mentioned in the holy books as God-given.
So far the earliest evidence found for alcoholic drink is on pottery shards in a Neolithic village in north central China that date back to 9000 BC. When the residue was analysed by biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern he identified fermented rice, honey, wild grapes and hawthorn fruit. Those Chinese tipplers had consumed a rice beer/wine hybrid. The Neolithic was the pottery era when humans started to store food and drink in clay vessels. These left an archaeological record. Before pottery, food and drink were stored in animal stomachs and skins, baskets, or wooden containers all of which rotted away over millennia leaving nothing behind to signal how long humans had been imbibing. Patrick McGovern has a theory that the desire for alcohol changed the habits of hunter-gatherer nomadic humans and made them settle in one place so they could be near the plants used to make their favourite booze. This was the birth of agriculture and of civilisation as people started living in close proximity in settlements, purposely planting crops and working together to harvest them.
Unknown to the drinkers their habits gave them an advantage over the abstemious because fermented food contains beneficial microflora called Lactobacillus acidophilus which aid digestion, maintain healthy intestines and boost immune system functions. Alcohol also kills harmful microorganisms in food and water. Our early drinking ancestors lived longer, and reproduced more. Alcohol's psychotropic effects made them cheerful and less inhibited, encouraged singing, dancing, flirting. Even when the party ended with fighting or face down on the savannah, alcohol's effects were too seductive to resist.
Different cultures throughout the world most likely started drinking independently with no knowledge of the others. But trade and exploration certainly spread the habit and appreciation of this mystic gift of nature. Major routes such as the Silk Road, River Nile, and Great Rift Valley were the equivalent of information superhighways. Alcohol is a social lubricant and helped to build community bonds, ease negotiations, resolve disagreements, seal contracts, commune with deities, perform rituals and celebrate significant events. In many cultures alcohol was, and in many places still is, central to society and features in all communal activities. In English when someone says 'Let's go for a drink', they do not mean a cup of tea.
Alcohol has been used over millennia as a universal palliative due to medicinal properties such as pain relief, antioxidant, antiseptic, and to fight disease. Ancient societies in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Greece and Rome used alcohol internally and externally to treat ailments and also used it as a delivery method in which to dissolve medicinal herbs and spices.
Apart from countries where alcohol is forbidden for religious reasons almost every nation in the world produces some type of booze – most commonly this is pilsener lager (the pale, carbonated style of beer made by brewers such as Heineken and Beck's). Drinking is a custom that knows no cultural or class boundaries – it is a universal language.
In modern society there is no escape from alcohol. It is in countless everyday goods such as perfume, deodorant, mouthwash, and cleaning products. It is even present in the guts of people who consume carbohydrates which is almost everyone on earth. Sugars in food are fermented by intestinal microflora in a process called auto-brewery syndrome. But the amount of alcohol produced is not enough to make a cocktail with, nor is it an excuse to use in court for being over the limit when driving!
CHAPTER ONE:
THE FOURTH DRIVE
IRRESISTIBLE INTOXICATION
Of all human experiences, the English language has more words for the state of inebriation than any other. From ankled to zombied, with expressions such as caned, ganted, glambazzled, lashed, sloshed and trollied coming in between. Try this experiment. Make up a nonsense word then place the suffix '-ed' on the end and say to a friend 'I was completely ****ed last night'. They will understand what you mean and may reply sympathetically 'Oh dear, did you end up photocopying your face on the office copier?'
Could it be true that humans are hard-wired to seek mindaltering substances such as caffeine, tobacco, psychedelic drugs, and alcohol? American psychopharmacologist Dr Ronald Siegel believes so and calls this basic desire for intoxication the 'fourth drive' as fundamental as food, drink and sex. Dr Samuel Johnson, eighteenth-century essayist, recognised it when he described alcohol as life's 'second greatest pleasure'.
Alcohol is the most readily available intoxicant but if it were not then humans would find another source. In his book The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), psychologist William James called alcohol the 'great exciter of yes' and wrote 'The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticism of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the yes function in man.'
So what happens physically when we have a drink? Alcohol enters the bloodstream through the stomach lining and small intestine. If the drink is carbonated or warm (for instance mulled wine) this increases pressure in the stomach and speedily forces alcohol through the pyloric sphincter into the gut where it is absorbed. Food slows the absorption of alcohol which is why when drinking on an empty stomach it has a quicker effect.
Alcohol normally affects women more rapidly than men because they tend to have a higher proportion of body fat. Fat cannot absorb alcohol so it concentrates at higher levels in the blood. Women also have less alcohol dehydrogenase, an enzyme that breaks down alcohol before it enters the bloodstream. Hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle can also affect alcohol metabolism meaning that women become drunker quicker at certain times of the month than others.
Once absorbed the alcohol hits the brain and this is where it becomes so seductive. Ethanol is the soul of alcohol and it affects the central nervous system. In small doses creating euphoria and diminishing inhibitions, in larger quantities slurred speech, drowsiness and impaired motor function. In excessive amounts it can be fatal. The brain's neural pathways are affected, particularly the emotional centres and those concerned with language, music making, and self-consciousness. One minute it is natter, natter, natter, then 'Bohemian Rhapsody' on the karaoke machine, then 'I love you, mate, you're my best friend', followed by tears into the beers, and finally a kebab.
Alcohol triggers the brain chemicals dopamine and serotonin in a reward cascade that makes us feel good, relieves anxiety, and calms frayed nerves. Research conducted by Indiana University School of Medicine revealed surprising results. Even a small sip of a person's favourite drink in such a miniscule quantity that the alcohol would have no effect still generated dopamine. So just the taste, the memory and the anticipation of a drink is enough to prompt happy feelings. Alcohol also releases opioids and these bestow a feeling of elation and provide temporary relief from pain. But alcohol is also a depressive so in excess, and depending on a person's mood and mental state, it may have negative effects.
Alcohol is largely metabolised in the liver with the aid of enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH4) and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH). They break it down into acetaldehyde, a toxin that causes hangovers, then to acetate and finally water and carbon dioxide as it is expelled from the body. It takes longer for alcohol to be metabolised than it does to absorb it, so intoxication lasts for some time after a person ceases drinking. Some people have a genetic mutation that prevents the body producing standard levels of ADH4 so they are unable to metabolise acetaldehyde properly and suffer when they drink. This problem is virtually non-existent in the West, but it occurs in up to 40 per cent of people in East Asia causing unpleasant symptoms such as nausea and dizziness. In other words drinkers get an instant hangover. It's enough to put a person off.
Or maybe not. How many times have you said 'never again' the morning after? According to the epigram the definition of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different result. So that would suggest people who have ever suffered a hangover are mad if they don't give up drinking. But if the theory of the fourth drive is actuality then humans cannot help themselves in the pursuit of altered states of consciousness.
CARPENTERS IN THE HEAD
In medieval England it was called 'ale passion' (passion then meant 'suffering') and was liable to cause grog blossoms – the little spots that heavy drinkers sometimes suffer from. In France it known as la gueule de bois – 'woody mouth'; Germany Katzenjammer – 'wailing of the cats'; and in Norway it is jeg har tommermen – 'carpenters in the head'. In all those languages it translates as the dreaded hangover with the associated thumping head, nausea, wooziness, shaking, fever, vomiting, and lethargy. Such misery can last for up to two days and only one thing is guaranteed to prevent hangovers – sobriety. Not even the habit in Puerto Rico of rubbing half a lemon or lime under the armpit before a binge will work.
Alcohol is dehydrating; so is all the extra urination that drinking prompts. Dehydration causes headaches and dizziness. Most alcohol also contains toxins called congeners, by-products of fermentation. When alcohol breaks down in the body then acetaldehyde is created, the presence of which initiates a complex chemical reaction that causes all those horrible hangover symptoms. Some people swear hangovers get worse with age – this is probably true and is due to a decline in the levels of the enzyme ADH4 which is responsible for efficient metabolisation of alcohol.
Around one-quarter of drinkers are resistant to hangovers and this is possibly connected with genetic differences in the way the body manages alcohol. For the remainder of drinkers who suffer the effects of over-doing it, they might try restorative food. In Korea people tuck into a bowl of haejangguk (translates as 'soup to chase a hangover') a beef broth made with pork, dried cabbage, and ox blood; menudo (tripe soup) is a vuelva a la vida, or 'come-back-tolife food' in Mexico. Ancient Romans ate fried song birds including canaries, whereas their Greek contemporaries were partial to a dish of sheep lungs and owl eggs. They also thought that boiled cabbage and cabbage seeds would do the trick as did Ancient Egyptians. Little did they know that cabbage contains compounds that reduce the damage of by-products caused as the system copes with the over-indulgence. Pass the sauerkraut.
It is a myth that drinking black coffee will quickly sober a person up. Only time will do that because the body processes alcohol at a specific rate regardless of any interventions such as a shot of espresso. What caffeine most likely does is to make the person more alert and fool them into thinking they are sobering up.
Japanese salarymen are obliged to drink after work with their colleagues even if they do not want to. In such cases to save face they might pretend to be drunk. By doing so they are following a centuries-old tradition in Japan where men are considered ill-mannered if they remain sober at a social event. Drunkenness is tolerated for Japanese men (but not for women) – even the embarrassing behaviour that goes with it. In Japan there are three classifications of drunk – warai-jogo (happy drunk); naki-jogo (lachrymose drunk); neji-jogo (nasty drunk).
Remember the saying: 'Beer after wine and you'll feel fine; wine after beer and you'll feel queer'? Ignore it because hangovers are caused by the amount imbibed and how the body metabolises alcohol – not the sequence it is consumed in. Darker coloured drinks contain more congeners (toxic compounds) than lighter or clear coloured ones so a bottle or two of red wine after a few pints of stout is enough to make anyone feel queer!
Researchers at Newcastle University claim that food might really work as a hangover remedy by speeding up the metabolism and helping the body eliminate alcohol more quickly. There may also be some truth in the bacon butty cure that so many Britons turn to. Protein breaks down into amino acids which top up brain chemicals depleted by alcohol thereby making a person feel better.
What has no effect is the hair of the dog – i.e. another drink to repair the damage. It may have a temporary influence but makes things worse by increasing toxins and dehydration serving only to postpone the misery. Take comfort from this incontrovertible truth in the law of hangovers; although today you may feel foul, tomorrow will be gorgeous.
Research studies discovered that people led to believe they have been drinking alcohol exhibit a range of behaviour associated with intoxication including increased aggression, greater confidence, and heightened sexual arousal. It is a condition called false intoxication.
In the fifth-century BC Persian statecraft relied on alcohol. Important decisions were taken through group debate oiled by plenty of wine. If when sober the following day discussion resulted in the same conclusion, the policy was adopted. Conversely, choices made when sober were also debated when drunk to see what the verdict was.
It is often said that drinking alcohol through a straw makes a person get drunk faster. The reality is that it has no effect on the speed of intoxication. Perhaps the myth arose because the alcoholic beverages people normally drink through a straw are fruity or sweet so they go down quicker. And when drinking through a straw it is harder to tell how much liquid is in the mouth – usually a gulp rather than a sip.
MONKEYING AROUND –
ANIMALS AND ALCOHOL
Humans are just one species of animal enamoured of alcohol. Most land-based creatures in the wild from insects to elephants seek out over-ripe fruit for a tasty sugary cocktail loaded with energy and nutrients. In small animals, intoxication is a side effect but does not deter them. They may even remember the peculiar feeling and go back for more. And like humans who know about the dangers of over-doing it, some animals instinctively know when to cut down. Take female lab hamsters with access to alcohol. Normally they prefer a drink of 10 per cent ABV rather than water. But when pregnant or nursing they significantly reduce their alcohol intake, only increasing it again once their offspring are weaned.
Other laboratory animals fed with alcohol display behaviour that is similar to human traits of drinking. In one lab, chimps that had unlimited alcohol consumed the equivalent of three or four bottles of wine in a session with males drinking more than females. Over time, as they got used to it, they did not binge but still drank enough to be permanently drunk. They preferred sweet wines over dry.