The Curiosities of Ale & Beer. John Bickerdyke
in a small beer barrel. She thought that poor folk might do a great deal for themselves if they only knew how; “but,” said she, “where there’s a will there’s a way.”
Among modern writers Christopher North has left perhaps the best description of what a modern private brewhouse should be. “We dare say,” he says, “that many personages who never in the whole course of their polished existences dreamed or thought of dreaming of brewing anything (except mischief), will shrug their shoulders at the idea of being introduced like his Majesty George the Third, at Whitbread’s, into an odorous brewhouse, redolent of wash, wort, grains, hops, yeast, and carbonic acid gas; peeping into pumps—tumbling into vats. Silence, good exquisite! and let us inform you—(but first take that cigar out of your mouth, or you will infallibly burn the carpet)—let us inform you that a gentleman’s brewhouse, like his greenhouse, his hothouse, his dairy, or even his cellar, is no such unpleasant place. No place, indeed, can be so that has anything of the rural about it. There is our own brewhouse at Buchanan Lodge; it might pass for a summer-house. We shall describe it to you. It stands, good reader (mark us well), at the back of the house, just at the edge of the little ravine or dell, and half hid by the laburnums. It is also separated from the other offices by a lowish beech hedge. Around, below, and opposite are growing the wild cherry, the tall chestnut, the sycamore, the fir, the thorn, and the bramble, which clothe the sides of the deep glen. From its chimneys, as soon as the soft March gales begin to blow, curls the white smoke before the hour of dawn. The fire within burns brightly. Everything is clean and ‘sweet as the newly-tedded hay.’ Precisely as six o’clock strikes we march forth—ay, even we, Christopher North—with our old fishing jacket and our apron on; our old velvet study-cap close about our ears, and our thermometer in our hand. The primroses are basking in the morning rays; the dewdrops are sparkling the last upon the leaves; the unseen violets are breathing forth sweets; the blackbird trills his mellow notes in the thicket; the wren twitters in the hedge; and the redbreast hops round the door. We enter. All is right. We try our heat. ‘Donald, a leetle more cold. That will do. {62} In with the malt. Every grain, you hound.’ ‘Ech! Donald’s no the man to pench the maut.’ ‘Now stir, for life;’ and the active stirrer turns over and over the fragrant grain in the smoking liquid. All is covered up close, and the important mash (twelve bushels to the hogshead) is completed.
“But of what sort of malt? ‘Another question for the swordsmen,’ for of ‘malts’ there are as many flavours, almost, as of vintages. They who think that if malt be but sweet, mealy, and well crushed—that is all—know, begging their pardons, little of the matter. We have heard brewers, who thought themselves no fools, assert that the hops alone give the ale its flavour; and that the difference between pale and high dried malt is only in colour. They might as well have argued that the lemon gives all the flavour to punch! We, Christopher North, aver, that upon the degree of dryness which has been given to the malt, the distinguishing flavour of malt liquor mainly depends. The bitter principle of the hop is only the ground or substratum upon which the skilful brewer builds his peculiar flavour of beer. As more or less of hops is put in, no doubt the saccharine principle of the malt is subdued, or is suffered to predominate. But in malt there is, besides the mere sugar which it contains in common with so many other vegetables, a flavour peculiar to itself: and this is brought out and modified by the application of more or less of the great chemical agent, heat, to the malted barley. In short, fire makes malt more or less savoury, much as it makes a brandered fowl, or a mutton steak, or a toasted oaten cake, more or less savoury.”
Countless receipts have been preserved for making, flavouring, and keeping home-brew from the days of the Saxon Leechbooks down to the present time. Some of the older ones were supposed to depend for their efficacy on supernatural intervention. “If the ale be spoilt,” says an old Saxon Leechdom, “take lupins, lay them on the four quarters of the dwelling, and over the door, and under the threshold, and under the ale-vat, put the wort (the herb) into the ale with holy water.”
In a Scotch brewer’s instructions for Scotch ale, dated 1793, may be found a mystical note: “I throw a little dry malt, which is left on purpose, on the top of the mash, with a handful of salt, to keep the witches from it, and then cover it up.” Perhaps the idea that witches could spoil the ale by their evil charms gave rise to the phrase “water bewitched,” signifying very weak beer or other liquor.
The plant, ale-cost (ground ivy), was, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, used for “dispatching the maturation” of ale and beer. {63} Gerard, in his Herball (1579), mentions the same plant under the name of ale-houve. “The women of our northern parts,” he says, “do tun the herb ale-houve into their ale, but the reason thereof I know not.”
Our ancestors either must have had some means of very rapidly “maturing” their ale, or they must have been content to drink it unmatured; for it is recorded in the Munimenta Academica Oxon. that a brewer of Oxford was, in 1444, compelled to solemnly swear before the Chancellor that he would let his ale stand twelve hours to clear, before he carried it to hall or college for sale; and in London it was the custom to drink ale even newer, so much so, that on complaint being made, in the fourteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, that the brewers deliver ale and beer but two or three hours after it has been cleansed and tunned, an ordinance was made that the brewers should not deliver their liquors until eight hours after it had been tunned in the summer months, and six hours in the winter.
Ivory shavings have been recommended for rapidly maturing beer, and it is related that a woman, who lived at Leighton Buzzard, in Bedfordshire, and had the best ale in the town, once told a gentleman she had drink just done working in the barrel, and that she would wager it was fine enough to drink out of a glass even before it was bunged. It was as she said, and the ivory shavings, that she boiled in the wort, were the cause of it.
Among the many receipts given in old works for “recovering” ale or beer when it has turned sour, is one directing the housewife to put a handful or two of ground malt into the beer, stir it well together, which will make the beer work and become good again. In another receipt the brewer is directed to put a handful of oatmeal into a barrel of beer when first laid into the cellar, which will cause it to carry with it a quick and lively taste. The root of flower-de-luce or iris suspended in ale is said to be a specific against sourness.
Another plan is to calcine oyster shells, beat them to powder with a like quantity of chalk, put them in a thin bag into the liquor, hanging it almost to the bottom, and in twenty-four hours the work will be effected. It may be suggested that in these cases prevention is better than cure—drink your beer while it is good, and do not give it an opportunity of getting sour. An old receipt for preserving small beer without the help of hops, is to mix a small quantity of treacle with a handful of wheat and bean flour and a little ginger, to knead the mixture to a due consistence, and put it into the barrel. “It has been a common observation,” said an old writer, “that both beer and ale are {64} apt to be foul, disturbed, and flat in bean season; the same is observed of wines in the vintage countries. Thunder is also a spoiler of good malt liquor, to prevent the effects of which, laying a solid piece of iron on each cask has hitherto been esteemed an effectual prevention of the above injuries.” In some places, too, an iron pad fitting closely over the bunghole is used, and in others an iron tray answers the same purpose. An old receipt book contains the following remarkable directions for making forty sorts of ale out of one barrel of liquor.
“Have ale of good body, and when it has worked well bottle it off, but fill not the bottles within three spoonfuls; then being ripe, as you use it, fill it up with the syrup of any fruit, root, flower, or herb you have by you for that purpose, or drop in chimical oyls or waters of them, or of spices, and with a little shaking the whole mass will be tinctured and taste pleasantly of what you put in; and so you may make all sorts of physical ales with little trouble, and no incumbrance, more healthful and proper than if herbs were soaked in it or drugs, which in the pleasant entertainment will make your friends wonder how you came by such variety on a sudden.”
Thus much then, of home-brew; the subject is almost inexhaustible and pleasant withal, but the laws of space are inexorable, and forbid further tarrying. As Walter de Biblesworth quaintly remarks:—
Ceste matyre cy repose, Parlom ore de autre