Beer (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Boreades]

A local Roman Archaeologist recently told me a tale.

They had done some summer field work near our village, on a site that looked potential "Roman" from the crop marks.

Sure enough, with a bit of digging and scraping, they found some mosaics. Excellent, a Roman villa. But then they realised there was an even bigger older building beneath it.

The ortho-archaeos immediate declared that this "must" be a Celtic Temple. Then their micro-biology work results came back. The grains they had found were malted barley, and the largest room in the "temple" was a roasting oven.

Which means that if it was a temple, it was devoted to the holy and sacred art of brewing

The "temple" was also located close to the spring head of the local stream. Water is, of course, a crucial ingredient in brewing beer. This suggests a plentiful supply of fresh clean water from the spring or a well.

Roasted barley has an acidifying effect on the beer mash. Because of this, modern-day brewers tend to treat the mash with calcium carbonate to keep the pH in the proper range. But the local water is chalky, which would be slightly alkaline, and perfect for a naturally balanced brew.

[Brian Ambrose]

Since we’re talking about beer, The Immortality Key by Brian C. Muraresku is fascinating and subversive. What was so effective about the archetypal religion? But I probably wouldn’t recommend it to a religious person.

[Mick Harper]

In the Megalithic Empire we claimed that 'the beerage' was an everpresent feature in ancient societies. Brewing beer is one of those industries that are both local and national:

* every family could brew its own beer
* it made more sense for one person to do it for the whole village
* and provide a venue for everyone to drink it communally.

This venue is the only communal structure in the village, aside from the church, so is certain to be where long distance travellers will rest up. But not presumably every village, hence a distinction between 'the local' and 'inns'. But inns themselves need not be in villages, hence a network of 'beerage inns'. And before you know it...

[Boreades]

Lest we forget:

[Mick Harper]

I think it is simpler and more complex than that. If you recall my youth, alcohol was only available in (a) pubs and (b) off licences. If you had to go to the 'offy' to get a drink, you might as well go to the pub. Then the law was changed and supermarkets could sell booze so the lady wife filled up the cart with cheap cans and bottles and you could stay at home and drink your fill. Every day was Christmas Day.

This disposed of offies (which started selling wine to the middle classes) but not pubs. Which were in any case protected by the local magistrates having the power to refuse new pub licences because, in the wording of the Act, local needs were already being met.

Pubs were finally felled by a long-term trend I have written about before. As society evolves there is less and less need to provide collective diversions because individual needs are being met more and more efficiently. Britain, the most mature society on earth (or possibly its offshoot, America), has reached the stage when this atomisation has reached the household itself. The individuals within it do not even come together at meals, watching telly etc.

As the art of conversation dies, the last function of the pub dies with it. Although there is the inevitable pangs of nostalgia--and some genuine loss of amenity--it is futile trying to keep pubs going.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I really doubt any of this, wine is very easy to make from grape or fruit, beer is very very difficult. The challenge is to explain why any folks would opt for mass beer production for common people etc.

It's another example of a common invented history.

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]

Beer requires a large barn, with a permeable floor, and a kiln. You need to then slowly smoke the malt, with the use of the kiln and a flue so the smoke goes through the floor in a controlled manner.

Beer requires barns with false floors unless they had kits.

[Wile E. Coyote]

You are not going to find this any easier than, say, finding Anglo-Saxon churches, mead halls, houses, charters etc.

[Mick Harper]

Interesting. But I think it's a false dichotomy. Surely both beer and wine (and spirits, come to that) can be made at all levels of production from airing cupboard to the Watney's Red Barrel Industrial Suburb of Middlesbrough.