Beer through History

Some of that information is available about at least some of the Dogfish Head Ancient Ales series. (However, getting a complete picture will most likely require at least some piecing together of bits and pieces of information from more than one source.)

Here's a starting point that mentions some of the basics.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-beer-archaeologist-17016372/

Additional pointers can sometimes be found on the DFH web site where a particular beer is described.

For example, I found this link:

https://www.penn.museum/sites/biomoleculararchaeology/?page_id=143

on the web site page discussing Midas Touch.

Similarly other information can be found on sites such as this:

http://asorblog.org/2013/07/16/a-to...erimental-archaeology-of-alcoholic-beverages/

This one describes the ingredients list of one of the Ancient Ales (but not much about the brewing process, etc.):

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/23/479186257/5-000-year-old-chinese-beer-recipe-revealed

 

I don't really trust Dogfishhead to be honest as far as historical recreations is concerned. If one were to use the same process as theirs for 19th century beer one would end up with a recipe which read: barley malt, hops (and possibly) yeast (found in remnants of drinking or fermenting vessels). The gaps would have to be filled out by one's imagination and possibly commercial considerations. What would the original gravity be for a 19th century beer (if we did not have records from this period)? What would the final gravity be? What would a typical hopping rate be? When would hops be added? What would a typical fermentation temperature be? How long after adding yeast would the beverage be consumed?

None of these questions are possible to answer via the Dogfishhead method of recreation, and thus I am sceptical of the results of their process.

 

Understood.

You don't have to trust DFH alone to be honest since they are informing their work based on the research of McGovern, that includes such things as molecular analysis of residue which shows much more than barley malt or the finding that no hops were used at all. (It is used in the beers produced for commercial distribution in the US because that is required by law in the US for it to be called beer.) As for some of that process information the further back in time we go the more conjecture and indirect inference will necessarily be involved, so a certain level of detail will simply not be available.

One of the things that gives me a degree of confidence in the work is that I've been to a presentation made by McGovern about the work and the "experimental archelogy" involved and it is quite clear that he, himself, is a working partner in the development of recipes, deciding on substitutions if necessary, and concluding which ingredients were used and how they were used.

What I find on the DFH website is relatively superficial but the additional digging reveals a lot more detail. I agree that some of the information you want isn't there but then I suspect that it will never be found. For example, 9,000 years ago would anyone have known about F.G.? How exact would the temperature control have been? Etc.

 

I like the concept of a brewer recreating as close as practicable an heirloom brew but perhaps that's the romantic in me. Although I think the idea is neat there's no guarantee I will like it more than those available from the grocery store most any day.

 

The counter point to your argument in my opinion would be an empty bottle of Budweiser and an empty bottle of Heineken. What makes them different from a 2000 year old clay pot? And how do you go about recreating either beer through the residue in the bottle?

 

I suppose it depends on how much a beer drinker 'values' the small differences.

Patrik (@Crusader) has researched old European (e.g., German) brewing textbooks and brewing logbooks and he has 'discovered' that many of those beers were lowly attenuated as compared to contemporary beers of those styles. Would you notice a beer that has a final gravity of 1.02x vs. 1.01x? Would that be a notable difference to you?

At some point we have to recognize these differences. The challenge is what amount of difference is notable.

Cheers!

 

I think you'll want to read some of McGovern's work. There are clearly methods for identifying ingredients and even amounts of ingredients from that residue. But at the end of the day some filling in of gaps may be necessary. However, your basic skepticism should be focused on the work of McGovern since he is the archaeologist involved and has made a career out of the study of the past. He has a nice book, called "Uncorking the Past," which has been very well received by his professional peers that looks at the role of fermented beverages in human history, etc.

 

Any disagreement between us has to do with the level of detail which either of us thinks can be gained from a project like Dogfishhead (and McGoverns research). I do not question him finding evidence for a beverage made from malted barley, water and spices. If that's our measuring stick of historical beer recreations then I will open a bottle of Pripps Blå (brewed by Carlsberg Sweden), made from water, barley malt and hops, and taste the flavor of when Europeans first added hops to a fermented barley malt beverage.

 

Level of detail and I also think how far back in history one wants to go. Working in the range between say 2,000 and 9,000 years ago is inherently going to influence the level of detail that is available to be found by any method. (Short of time travel. )

 

So your standards are increased by a factor of time. This is something which we can agree upon. It also goes back to the point which I was making in my original post: I want a brewery to be as open about the product they are making as possible. If they claim that the beer they are making is based on a recipe from the last couple of hundreds of years, they ought to have some detailed sources to back it up with. Otherwise we are left with recipes which read: barley malt, hops, yeast, and those can be found on the homepages of Heineken and Carlsberg.

 

Indeed, and that is also my point about DFH and McGovern.

I find them to be open and quite honest about what they know, what they can reconstruct from historical evidence and what involves using educated guesses to fill in gaps. (All that information just isn't all to be found in one source yet. ) As you say there will be less detail. So there will be more gaps to be filled in, than there will be in the case of a recreation of a beer from 100 years ago where there are brewing records to include in doing the reconstruction (or reverse engineering as some would say). But even those more recent reconstructions wouldn't provide much information about the skills, experience and educated judgment of the brewer (at least not the few I've seen).

Anyway, I'd suggest that in the case of the DFH Ancient Ale series the recipes are indeed more than just barley malt, spices and/or hops, and yeast, e.g., from the proportion of a spices in a residue one can tell which would have been most prominent and which would have contributed the background.

 

I think we will have to agree to disagree about what level of information can be gained from these experiments, and I would also like to point out that the impetus of my own original post (unclear or not) was not to discuss early human barley beer but beers of the 1800s-early 1900s which commercial breweries nowadays attempt to recreate but which in my opinion fail to make full use of the plentiful source material which exists from the period in question.

 

Are you wanting examples of classic beers to try or information on historical brewing methods and ingredients as it relates to flavor? If you merely want a list of classic beers, some have been stated and I'm sure folks can come up with some more [with the caveat that perfect recreation is probably impossible].

FWIW, Ballantine IPA is an attempt to recreate a classic late 1800's to early 1900's American beer that I think all beer geeks need to try at least once.

 

I agree. I like that DFH makes an effort to inform with its eclectic flavor selections. A nice nod to the past and a mark in History itself.

 

Sorry about the side-bar discussion and it's level of detail, but it does have a degree of relevance to what is practicable and reasonably accurate, especially to how someone can decide the recreation being offered is even in the same ball park as the original.

 

Hmm? I am thinking that Randy has a new nickname!?!

Cheers!