How did they handle sanitization back in the day?

They happily consumed infected beer because it made them feel full and drunk.

 

Lol @Brew_Betty
However, it is a great question but the honest truth is that they didn't know what sanitary and unsanitary was back then! Hence the very short average life spans!

 

I am preparing a presentation on the history of beer sponsored by the local public library. The original German Purity Law does not even account for the presence of yeast in making beer, due to a lack of understanding of microbiology at the time. It was probably luck of the draw which places brewed good beer and which places failed. There is evidence that some breweries understood something was in "good" beer because they would occasionally start a new brewery using product from an established, successful one to initiate fermentation.

So while they did not understand sanitation in the sense of isolating the desired yeast, they may have gotten a good part of the way there by favoring them, even if haphazardly or accidentally.

 

Yeah, cholera and dysentary will do that for you : )

 

hops, copious amounts of hops...

 

I don't think it was as unsanitary as people like to generalize. They didn't have access to modern chemicals and an understanding of bacteria, but they did have a great cleaner and sanitizer called lye. We wouldn't use it today because we have much safer chemicals but lye is powerful stuff and one of the oldest cleaning agents around. Lye dates back almost 5000 years.

 

From what I can gather from studying beer made back even in Egypt, they had very sacred areas for making beer, and you had to go through rituals in order to enter the room. I personally don't believe that they were stupid back then, considering we can't even figure out how they made some of their buildings back then. Also keep in mind that the whole reason for making beer way back then was to purify drinking water. It was safer to drink than just regular creek water.

Even if they didn't understand microbiology, I'm sure they could still taste, and had the drive to make things taste better. And I'll agree that beer probably didn't taste as good back then, but it also didn't have to. It tasted better than pretty much anything else they had to drink back then!

Tons of history and I love this subject, great question to the OP. Thanks for bringing it up.

 

There was an excellent presentation given at the recent (2105) National Homebrewers Conference entitled “The Beginnings of Beer in the Ancient World” by Travis Rupp.

Travis was of the opinion that the beer quality was ‘good’ back then. If my memory serves me correctly this judgement on quality was an ‘inference’ since beer was both a present to the Pharaohs and were gifts that were presented to the Gods. The Ancient Egyptians would not provide low quality beverages to those folks, would they?

Travis also made mention that the beer was likely consumed young so this lessened the timeframe for infections to be evident.

Cheers!

 

Yes I have heard that as well. Also, the people who worked on the construction of things like the Pyramids would get paid partially in beer. More researchers are agreeing that there were no slaves building the Pyramids, they were paid professionals. They've uncovered some of the jars that held beer, and were filled every day as payment for their work.

I wouldn't mind getting paid in part like that!

 

Boiling.

My next guess, they drank what we would now call "wild beer." From what I understand, the sanitizing everything is to prevent spoilage by the bacteria that make wild beer. A mess up for a yeast brewer is the goal of a "wild" brewer.

 

My guess is that many historical beers and ales (probably not lagers) had varying degrees of sourness, depending on the region as well as how long the beers were left sitting around. People knew they got more sour with age, so if they liked it fresh, they drank it fresh. If they liked it tart, they'd let it sit for a year before drinking. If they expected all beer to taste sour and kind of liked the best of both worlds, then they'd blend it to their liking with both fresh and old beer. The English were doing that for hundreds of years until Pasteur came along and got us all edumacated. I imagine most beers of the world were pretty sour. And it was fine. People liked the taste, it was safer to drink than fresh water, and they could get drunk off it. They were just like us, just even more open minded to the goodness of sour beers.

 

I believe that the Egyptians burned sulfer candles or some kind of sulfer combustible so the smoke when into and around their crocks. Read that a while ago so might not be remembering it perfectly

 

It was safer to drink than creek water downstream from their shitpiles because of the boiling stage, true. But I think that was more like a happy accident than the whole reason. After all, they could've just boiled the water. Also there is the implication there that they knew their water was killing them and understood how boiling would render it safe, not sure thats true.

 

What period of time are you refering to when you say "back in the day".

Brewing practices changed slightly over the last ~4000-5000 years

 

I'm no historian, but I think in days of yore, unintentionally sour beers were more prevalent, even expected as part of the process. The English marketed fresh beers (milds) and stale ales (probably some lactic and Brett twang). There is a section in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing devoted to more or less obsolete styles of beer and several of the German beers sound like they were soured, a few even typically having molds (pellicles?) growing on the top of the vat. Sanitation and single strain fermentations came about in the late 1800s, and a century after that, many funky styles went obsolete and the meaning of mild seems to have changed (no longer typically used in contrast to stale, because those beers disappeared). A few sours survived this (barely), and modern craft brewers recognized the possibility of reviving something that had been lost, and we are seeing a come back.

 

One thing that you need to also keep in mind from a biological standpoint is that Sacch yeast has evolved over eons to purposefully put out ethanol...even in an aerobic environment it puts out ethanol. This is a huge advantage for them as they can still thrive in the environment where it is lethal most other critters. So while there are a few organism such as Acetobacter, Lacto & Pedio that can still survive in this very harsh environment, it is still one that Sacch dominates. So there is basically no better sanitizer imho than just adding Sacch itself to the sugary liquid. This is one reason wine is still often made without the addition of any yeast, just spontaneous fermentation from Sacch found on the grape. Sacch dominates...