BEER O'CLOCK: CRAFT, CASK AND CULTURE
Copyright © Jane Peyton 2013
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Introduction – Peerless Beer
The International Language of Beer
Beer's Early Years
Do the Brew
Time to Taste
Meet the Family – Beer Styles
In the Mood – What to Drink?
Beer Hall of Fame
Looking Good – What Glassware?
A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good
Feast – Matching Beer with Food
Beers That Ruled the World
Great Brewing Nations of the World
Boozers in Britain – the Early Days
The Knowledge – Beer Trivia
Swotting for the Pub Quiz – Frequently Asked Questions and More
The Lingo – Glossary of Beer Terms
Acknowledgements
Dedicated to Sara Barton,
who made my dreams of brewing come true.
Some people have humanitarians or sports stars as role models. Mine is a fearsome old battleaxe in a hairnet – Ena Sharples. She was the first person I ever saw drinking beer. I was six years old and can picture her now. There she would sit, with her friend Minnie Caldwell, in the snug of the Rovers Return, both of them enjoying a glass of milk stout as they gossiped about goings-on down Coronation Street.
A few years later as a teenager I ordered my first beer in a pub – Tetley Light Mild – and was instantly hooked. I enjoyed everything about the theatre of the pour – the landlady pulling the handpump and filling the glass, then presenting me with the most gorgeous vision, a pint of tan-coloured beer with a voluptuous foamy head. This was a Yorkshire pint – none of that 'no head on my beer, thank you very much' attitude that drinkers prefer in the south. It was love at first sight.
Back then my choice of pub was determined by whether it sold a good pint of Tetley cask beer. There were only four pubs in my home town of Skipton that did (out of more than twenty hostelries), so Friday night's pub crawl was fairly limited as most of the other boozers sold pasteurised beer and I knew that was the spawn of Satan. Today kegged beer is often superb but in the 1970s it was tasteless. When I went to university I abandoned my beery roots and started drinking cider for no other reason than it was cheap. But the siren call of hops was too seductive and I had a thunderbolt moment in The Junction Inn, Otley with a pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord Ale. Goodbye cider, I was back with beer.
A few years later I moved to the USA. This was before the craft-beer revolution had spread far, and the beer was rubbish. The consolation was that I lived in California where the wine is excellent. Nine years later, when I returned to live in the UK, friends met me at Heathrow and we drove straight to the pub. I ordered a pint of London Pride and wept. I was home.
From then on I made up for lost time and had a great time visiting pubs and trying a plethora of beers. Several of the most popular beer styles currently brewed around the world originated in Blighty: India pale ale, pale ale, brown ale, mild, porter, stout and barley wine. How fortunate to be living in a country with such a diverse selection of beers to help reacquaint me with one of the things that put the 'great' in Britain.
I wrote several books, including one about pubs, and decided that the most fun I could have in my working life would be to set up a business where I could share with others my passion for beer. In order to have credibility as someone who knows what they are talking about, I studied with the Wine & Spirit Education Trust and the Beer Academy, from where my beer sommelier accreditation came.
In 2008 I founded the School of Booze, a corporate events company that specialises in beer, cider, wine and spirits tasting. Now I evangelise about beer to people wearing suits! One of the most satisfying aspects of my job is changing people's perceptions of beer. Many people do not realise that beer is more than just a pint of Pilsner, bitter or stout down the boozer, so when they get to taste a magnificent Imperial India Pale Ale or Trappist beer made by monks and experience its aroma, flavour and complexity they are invariably surprised.
Converting women to drink beer is a particular mission of mine. Beer is for everyone regardless of gender but many women feel it is not the drink for them. There are several reasons why, including the assumption that it is highly calorific (it's not) and that it tastes bitter. Some beers are bitter, but many are not. At this point of the beer conversation with women I pull out my trump card – a tangy Flanders red ale or a well-matured barley wine served in a tulipshaped glass – neither of which is bitter-flavoured. Then I mention all the health benefits of a moderate consumption of beer, that the alcohol level of most beer is significantly lower than that of wine and spirits, and casually drop in the fact that beer was most likely invented by women. Quite often it works, and my tally of souls claimed for Ninkasi, goddess of beer, is rising.
I am devoted to good beer wherever it is made but there is no denying that British brewers make some of the best beer in the world. A quick note to the Aussies and Americans who say that Britons drink warm flat beer: compared to the artificially carbonated, ultra-chilled beers usually consumed in those countries, we do. And there's a reason. Depending on the style of ale, it is meant to be served at temperatures between 8 and 14 °C so the amazing aromas and flavours may be enjoyed to the full. Any colder and the beautiful character of the beer is muted – a person may as well drink fizzy iced water.
Ale is Britain's national drink and has been brewed here for millennia but, before hops were introduced into England in the fourteenth century, what people of the British Isles were drinking was a sweet libation lacking the bitterness that hops add to the brew. Beer was a hopped, bitter-flavoured beverage brewed in northern regions of continental Europe. Eventually ale and beer came to mean the same thing – an alcoholic drink made from water, malted cereal, hops and yeast. In this book I use both terms, ale and beer, interchangeably, unless I am referring to the era before hops made their debut in England (c.1362).
Ale was so important in England that it was mentioned in Magna Carta. Clause 35 states: 'There shall be standard measures of wine, ale, and corn throughout the kingdom.' If it was significant enough in the thirteenth century to include in a document that set out the freedoms and laws of the land, why have modern governments taken such an aggressive attitude towards beer when it comes to taxation? Britons pay 40 per cent of the beer tax collected in the European Union, and drinkers in London and South East England pay more beer tax than the entire country of Germany (the world's second-highest consumer of beer).
This book is an introduction to beer for people who like it and want to know more. It is a guide to the friendliest and most wholesome of all alcoholic libations – the drink for all moods and seasons. Exploring the diverse world of beer is great fun and, unlike any other alcoholic beverage, it is so packed full of nutrition and goodness that you'll be healthier at the end of the glass than you were when you started. During my research I especially enjoyed consulting these publications/blogs: Amber, Gold & Black by Martyn Cornell; The Oxford Companion to Beer edited by Garrett Oliver; Protz on Beer website by Roger Protz; Zythophile blog by Martyn Cornell.
So thank you for reading this tome. May beer always bring you joy. And if it doesn't, send it to me, please. I'll drink it.
When Ludwig Zamenhof invented Esperanto in 1887, his goal was for humans to communicate in a common language so peace and international understanding could be fostered regardless of regional or national tongues. Perhaps he was not aware that a lingua franca already existed, and that it was called beer.
Oh beer, priceless gift to humanity, begetter of happiness, sociability and companionship. No wonder it is the world's number one favourite alcoholic beverage. And, astonishingly, it makes it as number three after water and tea as the most widely and oftconsumed drinks. Walk past a pub, inn, saloon, tavern, shebeen, bar, café, brasserie, bodega, lodge or boozer and look at the people who are having the most fun. What are they swigging? Beer, Bier, cerveja, biera, ビール, birra, bière, пиво, μπύρα, cerveza, 啤酒 of course!
Beer is the essential social beverage. There is nothing wrong with drinking it alone at home, but how much better does it taste when consumed in company? Beer is not the drink to turn to when in shock, or for drowning one's sorrows. Beer is playful. How many times does a quick beer after work end up hours later with people singing, arms round each other, as they profess unending friendship? It is beer goggles that make the world beautiful – not brandy goggles.
Picture the scene. A group of strangers are in a pub. One drinks whisky, another person a glass of wine; someone orders vodka. Chances are they will remain strangers. Now take that same group and fill their glasses with beer. Within minutes they will be friends. Beer drinking encourages bonhomie. I have the satisfaction of observing this close up because I occasionally take visitors from all over the world around one of Britain's leading breweries. Some speak little or no English. Tour groups vary in their makeup: individuals, couples, sets of work colleagues. People are often shy and don't interact with each other beforehand. But in the bar afterwards when they start drinking the beer, something magical happens. Noise levels increase, laughter punctuates the air, and the atmosphere becomes very jolly as beer breaks down the barriers and everyone starts talking to one another – regardless of mother tongue. Then afterwards, as the visitors leave the bar, faces lit up with smiles, they invariably head to the nearest pub for more beer together with their new pals.
Try this experiment on your friends. Ask them what Spanish phrases they know. I bet you a fiver they will include – 'por favor', 'gracias' and 'dos cervezas, señor'. 'Please', 'thank you' and how to order beer are the three absolutely necessary phrases for a happy holiday overseas.
On a recent trip to Zambia, where there are seventy-two tribal languages, I studied enough of the four main dialects to make myself understood when I ended up in a bar each night to drink Mosi, the local brew. In Zambia I realised that in addition to beer there is another international language – football. Luckily I am fluent in both, so now I have new mates in Mongu, Lusaka and Mufulira. It may have been Wayne Rooney who introduced us but it was beer that sealed our friendship.
BEER – A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
On trips overseas, if you do not speak the lingo, one word will suffice – beer. The root of the term 'beer' is believed to derive from the Latin verb bibere (to drink). The Old Norse word bjórr, Old High German bior, and Old English beór resemble the spelling and pronunciation of 'beer' but it is not clear whether this was the word for a fermented cereal beverage (beer), despite what the Oxford English Dictionary states. Some historic sources suggest that the word meant the more general term 'strong drink'.
The etymology of 'ale' is clearer – from Old English ealu via Old Norse öl and Saxon alo.
BEER LANGUAGE ROOTS
Different words for the amber nectar come from different language roots. Here's a sampling:
Afrikaans – Bier
Albanian – Birra
Bulgarian – Бира (pronounced beer-a)
Chinese – Pi jiu
Croatian – Pivo
Czech – Pivo
Danish – Øl
Dutch – Bier
Esperanto – Biero
Estonian – Õlu
Finnish – Olut
French – Bière
Gaelic (Irish) – Beoir
Gaelic (Scots) – Leann
German – Bier
Greek – Μπύρα (pronounced beer-a)
Hungarian – Sör
Italian – Birra
Japanese – ビール (pronounced biiru)
Korean – 맥주 (pronounced maekju)
Latvian – Alus
Norwegian – Øl
Polish – Piwo
Portuguese – Cerjeva
Romanian – Bere
Russian – Пиво (pronounced pivo)
Spanish – Cerveza
Swahili – Pombe
Swedish – Øl
Welsh – Cwrw (pronounced coo-roo)
Modern beer contains water, malted barley, hops and yeast. Some of it may also have herbs, spices, fruit, vegetables, resin, chocolate, coffee and other flavourings in the brew. But the first beer was much more simple – water and cereal. Wouldn't you like to thank the person who invented it?
In fact, beer was discovered by accident in various parts of the world where cereal grew. The hypothesis is that grains being stored for food became damp and started to germinate in warm air. Germination converted starch in the grain to sugars that were fermented by airborne wild yeast spores. How that went from a handful of germinated seeds into something to drink is not clear. But humans are a curious species: how would we have known the pleasure of artichoke hearts if some inquisitive woman out gathering edible berries and plants had not wondered what was hidden inside those spiky leaves?
At some point it was discovered that if bread cakes made from germinated grains were added to water and heated, then left to cool, a few days later the result would be something tasty that triggered a gently mood-altering, intoxicating buzz. With a little experimentation others realised that if they chewed the cereal, spat it into a pan and then boiled it with water it made the process more effective. What they did not know was that the enzyme ptyalin in saliva would transform starch in the cereal to maltose and dextrose sugars that yeast would ferment, creating alcohol as a by-product.
Beer drinkers had advantages over those who abstained because fermentation increases the nutritional value of food and makes it easier to digest. All those vitamins, minerals, proteins, and amino acids in the barley made the brain grow larger. Fermented food contains Lactobacillus acidophilus microflora, which boost immune-system functions and maintain healthy intestines. Those who drank beer were vigorous, resilient, smarter, party people, and likely to live longer than those who did not. And how does nature reward the sturdier specimens? By making them more attractive to potential sexual partners. Meaning that beer drinkers were more likely to go forth and multiply. It is tempting to hypothesise that without beer and the evolutionary and health benefits it bestowed, perhaps humans would never have flourished, doomed instead to being dim-witted, puny, small-brained creatures. And karaoke might never have been invented.
Early beer bore no resemblance to what is brewed today, resembling instead murky pond water and, in the absence of hops, tasting sweet. It most likely had fruit and honey added to perk up the flavour. Any bitterness would have come from herbs and spices. Alcohol levels would not have been much higher than 5% ABV (alcohol by volume). Still, this nascent beer was so appealing that subsequent societies embraced it with a passion unmatched in the history of alcohol.
Beer became a staple of the diet, a wholesome foodstuff made at home for the whole family to drink throughout the day. It provided energy, nutrition, and was a safe source of water. As the saying goes, 'In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria', and those invisible pathogens could cause myriad nasty ailments that, if they did not kill, made people very ill. Not only was beer essential for good physical health, it was also necessary for celebrations, communing with deities, and bonding with neighbours.
It is almost certain that the earliest brewers were women, because food and drink preparation was their domain. So Plato's often quoted phrase 'He was a wise man who invented beer' has lost something in translation. In Viking culture, the law stipulated that brewing equipment was the property of women, not men, and could not be sold or dispensed of without their permission. In the timescale of beer history, male brewers are a recent occurrence. Even now in tribal communities in the Amazon and parts of Africa it is women who make the beer and it would be very odd indeed for a male to be involved in anything other than drinking it.
It may be a surprise to people who consider beer to be a masculine drink that it has more feminine connections than any other alcoholic beverage. Not only were the first brewers women; the brewer uses the female part of the hop plant, and yeast cells that provide the alcohol are female. Throughout time different cultures around the world believed, in their creation myths, that beer was a gift to women from goddesses. The major deities of beer are female: Ama-Gestin, Ceres, Dea Latis, Hathor, Ninkasi, Mamasara, and Siduri – all worshipped in ancient societies by the act of communal beer drinking.
The earliest archaeological evidence of an alcoholic drink made from fermented cereal so far discovered was in a Neolithic village called Jiahu in China dating back to c.7000 bc. Residue on clay pots was analysed and found to contain rice, honey and fruit. To date, the first sign of barley beer is on shards of clay jars found in a settlement in the Zagros Mountains of Iran dating from c. 3500 bc.
These finds do not reveal when beer was first brewed, however, because before earthenware containers, food and drink were stored in wooden vessels and animal skins, and being organic they would rot away over millennia leaving nothing for archaeologists to get their hands on. If, as some historians believe, beer and bread are inextricably linked, then according to finds of cereal flour at excavation sites in Italy, Russia, and the Czech Republic, humans were drinking beer at least thirty thousand years ago. Barley was a commonly grown cereal; the thing about barley is that it is rubbish for making bread with but brilliant for making beer. Our ancient ancestors knew their priorities. Make bread by all means, but only to crumble up and use as the starter for beer.
Beer lovers will no doubt support the theory by some anthropologists that the desire for beer and bread spurred the development of agriculture and civilisation. It happened first in the Fertile Crescent – Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, an area that today covers Iraq, Syria, Turkey and parts of Iran. Hunter-gatherers were so enamoured of beer that they abandoned their nomadic lifestyle in order to plant barley and emmer (a type of wheat) and stay in one place to watch it grow. They formed permanent settlements and organised themselves to work together in communities, eventually developing all the associated trappings of society including law, bureaucracy, education, culture, religion, commerce and pubs. It's for this reason that the area is also known as the Cradle of Civilisation. And brewing and drinking beer was an essential part of it.
Beer-worship was an art that Sumerians, in southern Mesopotamia, excelled at. Beer was consumed by all ages, and by all strata of society, a major element of their cultural identity. Ninkasi was their goddess of seduction, fertility, the harvest and beer, and when Sumerians took a drink of the divine nectar, they uttered the toast 'Ninkasira' in gratitude. In order to prove their allegiance to Ninkasi, Sumerians gathered for great public feasts to drink prodigious amounts of beer and commune with her. There was no shame in drunkenness; indeed it was a spiritual state. Written language developed in Sumeria and the earliest known recorded recipe (for any food or drink), dating to 1800 bc, is contained in a poem called 'The Hymn to Ninkasi', a handy guide on how to make beer. A friendly greeting was 'May Ninkasi live with you, let her pour your beer everlasting.' Beer was the civilised drink and a person was not fully human or enlightened unless they drank it. And to think that some people today consider beer to be downmarket!
In Mesopotamian city-states such as Lagash and Babylon, regulations were drafted to enshrine in law the beer rations citizens were entitled to. Dire punishments were meted out to brewers and innkeepers who served short measures. Beware any foolhardy person who sold spoiled beer – they would be force-fed with it until death by asphyxiation.
Archaeological digs throughout the region have unearthed hundreds of clay tablets marked with cuneiform inscriptions that translate as recipes for beers with names such as kassi (black beer) and kassig (red beer). They demonstrate that beer was not just a recreational drink, but also medicine used for treating all manner of ailments. Today's drinker would turn their nose up at Mesopotamian beer because it had a thick gruel-like consistency with cereal husks and yeast cells floating around in it. That's why the drinking straw was invented in the Middle East, so people could enjoy a drink without getting a mouthful of detritus. Most used the hollow stem of a reed, but those with high status would have special decorated gold straws.
One of the greatest sayings ever uttered came from Ancient Egypt and translates roughly as 'the mouth of the perfectly contented man is filled with beer'. Beer was immensely important to Egyptians and it is likely that their appreciation of beer and skills at brewing came from Sumeria. Another popular Egyptian epigram was 'Do not cease to drink beer, to eat, to intoxicate thyself, to make love, and celebrate the good days'. Archaeological excavations near Hierakonpolis suggest that beer was brewed there from at least 3500 bc.
In Egypt, beer was made by dissolving bread cakes in water then mashing them in a reed basket and sieving the wort (sugary water) through the mesh into a clay jar; this was then sealed so yeast could ferment the sugars. Egyptians had a choice of different beers – 'thick beer', 'sweet beer', 'dark beer' – and some special brews called 'Beer of the Protector', and 'Beer of Truth'. Customers in Egyptian bars were served with a side dish of bitter plants such as skirret, or lupin flower seeds. When chewed and held in the cheek, this balanced the sweetness of the beer.
Today we know so much about beer in Egyptian society because they were such efficient documentarians. Of all foodstuffs mentioned in texts, the word for beer, 'hekt', was cited more often than any other. It was used to anoint newborns and as currency, tax, tributes to pharaohs from the provinces, medicine and food (the hieroglyph for 'meal' is a compound of those for bread and beer). Hieroglyphs and receipts exist to demonstrate its importance not just to the living but also in the afterlife. Brews with names such as 'Everlasting Beer', 'Beer That Does Not Sour' and 'Beer of Eternity' were placed in the tomb as offerings to tempt and intoxicate the gods so they would be kind to the soul of the deceased. Murals, including ones found in the tombs of pharaohs, show people drinking beer from a communal vessel through straws. The pharaoh controlled a significant amount of brewing, which turned out to be a shrewd move.
Beer's exalted position in the great civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt gave it cachet and its reputation grew. Trading routes were early information superhighways, and knowledge of the magical brew called 'beer' spread alongside commerce and conquest through the Mediterranean basin, along the Silk Road, and down the Great Rift Valley.
There is evidence dating back millennia of beer being drunk in far-flung corners of the world. In isolated regions, such as the Amazon, that had no communication with the outside world until relatively recently, rainforest dwellers brewed for centuries a style of beer called chicha from the sacred cereal, corn. Not only was it consumed for enjoyment, nutrition, bonding and rituals; in some tribes it was tradition to cremate the dead and then mix the ashes into chicha to keep the spirits within the community. This had an unforeseen additional benefit because the powdered bone acted as finings that clarified the beer.
It is most likely that the first beer on British shores was heather ale brewed in Scotland from at least 2000 bc by the pugnacious warrior-tribe known as the Picts. Heather roots often conceal fogg, a mildly hallucinogenic moss, so the ale would have packed a double whammy of intoxication. Today, Scottish brewing company Williams Brothers produce heather ale (brand name Fraoch, after the Gaelic word for heather), making it the world's oldest regularly brewed style of beer.
Over millennia, waves of invaders of Britain – Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Vikings – brought the habit of drinking their favourite libation with them, which served to reinforce native Britons' already long-held veneration for malt. Apart from the Romans with their wine, the Normans with their wine and cider (the Normans were originally Vikings but had long since adopted the drinking habits of the French), and the Dutch with their gin (the Dutch arrived when William of Orange overthrew King James II in 1688), for the natives it was beer, beer and more beer. Queen Victoria understood this need for beer amongst her subjects when she said, 'Give my people plenty of good strong beer and there will be no revolution amongst them.'
Evidence of beer in early continental Europe was discovered in Germany by archaeobotanist Dr Hans-Peter Stika. A site near Eberdingen-Hochdorf has Iron Age remains dating to 500 bc and he revealed a series of ditches there that contained thousands of grains of charred malted barley. This was a maltings in which the barley was germinated before fires were lit at the ends of the ditches to dry the grains. The beer would have had a smoky taste. Seeds from the stinking nightshade plant were also found and, added to the beer, they would have made it more intoxicating.
The desire for beer swept through Europe with the waves of Nordic and Germanic tribes who moved south and west in the first millennium ad, and, as the Christian church became increasingly powerful, it helped that the clergy was also enamoured of it. Intoxication may have been a vice, but beer was considered a gift from God. It was brewed in monasteries to supply the daily ration for resident monks and nuns, as refreshment for travellers on pilgrimages, and to sell on a commercial basis. There was another reason why the church enthusiastically embraced beer – in order to win the souls of the populace, they had to accept people's source of enjoyment, and turn a blind eye to the habit of 'going for it' when presented with a mug of ale.