Beakers were for Beer! part three: alewives and barmaids

In the early years of my research, I visited a few microbreweries. I wanted to talk to professional brewers who made ale in the traditional way using crushed malt, not malt extract, and who worked on a small scale. This approach to brewing beer in small batches, supplying local pubs, hotels and restaurants, began to take off in the 1980s and 1990s. The interest in real ale in Britain began with CAMRA in 1971. Peter Brown does a good job in telling the story of the rise of craft beer UK style. Worth reading. Anyway, to get back to my story, one of the microbreweries I visited was a tiny establishment, equipped with one mash tun, one boiler and two fermenters. He used crushed malted barley, hops, water and yeast and made a wide variety of beers from these basic ingredients. As any good brewer does.

He was interested in the story of the Bronze Age woman buried in a stone cist at North Mains, Strathallan. She had been buried with a Food Vessel. The residue from a cereal based alcoholic brew, flavoured with meadowsweet, was discovered within it (see part one). We chatted about it in detail, and with some excitement, because I had only just found out about the residue analysis in the Strathallan pot myself. That evening, he went down to the pub and related the story to his mates. And why not? It's a good story. One of his mates was a journalist for the local paper. A couple of days later there was a headline "Bronze Age Barmaid" or "Prehistoric Barmaid discovered" or something along those lines. And my name was attached to it, almost as if I had discovered it. Many of the details were wrong. It was only a small piece in a local newspaper, but it seemed like sensational stuff at the time. Some folk at the University were not very pleased about it.

I had just had my first encounter with The Press, and with some of the silliness that seems to surround any news story about ancient alcoholic brews - beer, wine or mead. 

alewives and cup bearers 
Maybe that journalist was thinking along the right lines, although 'barmaid' is not quite the right word to use in a prehistoric context. There is a well established tradition of women as cup bearers, providing the drink at feasts.

Eva Koch, writing in 1986, gives several archaeological and historical examples of the woman as hostess, who would have held a high status position within society. In her article the woman with the drink she describes the grave at Juellinge of a woman, in her 30s, who was buried wearing her silver jewellery and hair ornaments. In the grave with her was some meat, either a whole sheep or pieces of pork and beef - archaeological sources vary. The bronze bucket had contained a drink brewed with barley and cranberries or crowberries and bog myrtle. There were drinking horns and glasses for her guests. The grave was excavated in 1909. 

A recent detailed analysis of these residues has led to the novel idea that the Juellinge vessel had contained 'nordic grog'. The media loved this story. There are variations of it all over the internet, but journalists don't always get all the details right. I don't agree with the concept of a 'nordic grog'. I think it is far more likely that the bucket contained an ale, or perhaps you could call it a barley wine, made from wort and flavoured with a few berries, flowers, herbs and maybe some honey. All the sugars that you need for fermentation can be obtained from the mash tun, as I explained in earlier posts.

There are many similarities between the Juellinge grave and the burial of the young woman, described by some as a dancing woman or priestess, at Egtved.

reconstruction of the oak log coffin of the Egtved Girl. Bronze Age. 1370BC

She was buried wearing bronze jewellery and the bucket at her feet contained the remains of an ale or beer, flavoured with berries and perhaps honey. The bucket was made of birch bark and is too big for a drinking vessel. It is more suitable for serving or perhaps it was one of the vessels used in making the ale. One interpretation is that she was buried with ale for the journey into the afterlife, which is certainly possible. I can't help wondering whether she was buried with the tools of her trade - her brewing bucket.

And so we move on to Bronze Age Scotland and the cist grave excavated in 1979 - the one that the brewer was so interested in. The Bronze Age barmaid herself, buried with her Food Vessel. Could she have been a cup bearer, at feasts and ceremonies, perhaps? Maybe she was an alewife. Some might see her as a priestess or as one of the elite, a high status and important member of society. There are several possible interpretations of who this Bronze Age woman was and what her role in society could have been.

female cist burial excavated in 1979 at Strathallan, North Mains, SC845100. (copyright Historic Scotland)

The specialist secrets, skills and knowledge of how to transform harvested grain into ale by malting, mashing, lautering, sparging and fermentation were as important then as they are now. Without them, there would be no ale or beer for the feast.

I'm sure that the tradition of the alewife, or brewster, goes right back to prehistoric times, to the earliest grain cultivators and processors, the neolithic folk. There are many different herbs and plants that have been used to flavour, preserve or enhance ale. Known today as gruit, some herbs have medicinal or hallucinogenic properties. Henbane pollen was identified in cereal based residues on sherds from large bucket shaped neolithic pottery known as Grooved Ware at a site called Balfarg in Scotland. More on this in the next post. This discovery extends the potential role of the alewife to that of a healer, maybe even more than that. Here's a link to a blog about the 'brewster as witch' by Jane Peyton, a sommelier and beer expert. Her article is a bit of an advert for a Ninkasi style women's brewing competition that took place in 2011. So, sadly, too late for me to make a brew for that. But she makes some interesting points.

I shall return to the 'magic of brewing' in a later post. It's a huge topic.

beakers, food vessels and tripartite urns - some brief notes
Welcome to the wonderful world of prehistoric pottery! It can be quite bewildering. Confusing to non archaeologists, at the very least. I have discovered this after many years of explaining (or trying to explain) prehistoric pottery classifications to tourists.

In a British Bronze Age context, there are beakers, collared urns, tripartite food vessels and funerary urns. Simply explained - beakers were drinking vessels. Food Vessels, otherwise known as tripartite food vessels, appear to have had no specific function, other than for 'food preparation'. This is how they are described in the archaeological literature.

Sometimes they are found in stone cists and they contained the cremated bone. Collared urns are larger vessels, also often found with cremated bone in burials. This is a blog. It is not an academic thesis. So I must apologise to all archaeological pottery specialists for the simplicity of these descriptions.

a few recent rather exciting discoveries of tripartite food vessels
In March 2012, the land owner of a disused quarry on the island of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland, noticed something interesting in the cliff face. It turned out to be not one, but two Bronze Age stone burial cists. One cist was empty and the other contained the remains of an adult human cremation in a tripartite food vessel and a flint knife.

the food vessel

an unusual excavation technique at Sannox Cliff, Arran

A radiocarbon date of 2154 - 2026 BC was obtained. The flint knife, when analysed, had traces of silica, indicating that it had been used to cut grasses or cereals. This is intriguing. Was this the cist grave of someone, probably a woman, whose work involved the gathering and the processing of wheat or barley? I think so. It's not the sort of thing that is found every day. Excavation techniques involved the use of a cherry picker. A news report with some great photos, is here. The excavation was undertaken by GUARD Archaeology, Glasgow and is available here.

In September 2011, in Spinningdale, by the Dornoch Firth in Sutherland, northern Scotland, the accidental discovery of a very well preserved Bronze Age female cist burial, with food vessel, occurred when someone was digging the hole for their new septic tank. Once again, it was excavated by the team at GUARD. Radiocarbon dates from the bone were 2051 -1911 BC and from the charcoal within the grave, dates of 2151-2018 BC were obtained. Inside the cist was female skeleton with a tripartite food vessel at her head.

She was between 35 and 50 years old and had been laid upon a sheepskin, or maybe she wore woollen clothing. It is not quite clear, but unusually, fragments of the wool had survived in the well sealed cist. The excavators thought she may have been an important woman, having been buried with such great care and attention. More details here.

The cist grave of another high status, important and wealthy Bronze Age woman was recently excavated near Windsor, England. Excavations at the Kingsmead Quarry, undertaken by Wessex Archaeology, were presented to the public in 2013. They have put a lot of their information online. It is a large, complex site that includes mesolithic, neolithic, bronze age, iron age, Romano British and medieval elements. The excavations were generously funded by CEMEX. The archaeologists have been digging up lots of really exciting stuff at Horton and you can read all about it on their web site.

Of particular interest is the female burial, dated to between 2500 and 2200 BC. She was at least 35 years old, according to bone evidence. She was buried wearing her necklace of gold, amber and black lignite beads. She may also have had a bracelet, since there were black lignite beads near her wrist. Some perforated amber beads or buttons indicate that she may have worn woolen clothing, with these valuable fasteners. By her side was a large drinking vessel, beaker style. Was this a serving vessel, rather than her personal beaker? It must be considered a possibility. It would be fantastic if a residue analysis could be done of the vessel fabric. I'm not sure, but I don't think this has yet been done.

We cannot be completely sure of her full role within society, whether she was a princess, queen, alewife or cup bearer. It is clear that she was a woman of some importance. More details about her here.

In the words of the site director, Gareth Chaffey, who has been excavating the site for seven years, " It is interesting to think who this woman was within her community. She was probably an important person in her society, perhaps holding some standing which gave her access to prestigious, rare and exotic items. She could have been a leader, a person with power and authority or possibly part of an elite family - perhaps a princess or a queen."

I shall leave the mysterious high status women of the Bronze Age, for now. I'm sure you will come to your own conclusions about them.

Site Director Gareth Chaffey, of Wessex Archaeology, who has been excavating the site for the last seven years, said: “It is interesting to think who this woman was within her community. She was probably an important person in her society, perhaps holding some standing which gave her access to prestigious, rare and exotic items. She could have been a leader, a person with power and authority, or possibly part of an elite family - perhaps a princess or queen.” - See more at: http://www.wessexarch.co.uk/blogs/news/2013/04/19/beaker-burial#sthash.uX7GzXBU.dpuf

Site Director Gareth Chaffey, of Wessex Archaeology, who has been excavating the site for the last seven years, said: “It is interesting to think who this woman was within her community. She was probably an important person in her society, perhaps holding some standing which gave her access to prestigious, rare and exotic items. She could have been a leader, a person with power and authority, or possibly part of an elite family - perhaps a princess or queen.” - See more at: http://www.wessexarch.co.uk/blogs/news/2013/04/19/beaker-burial#sthash.uX7GzXBU.dpuf

Beakers were for Beer! part two: a birch bark bucket with residues

The image below might not, at first, seem to have anything to do with prehistoric ale. Or beer even. This is the oak log coffin of the young Bronze Age woman known as the Egtved Girl. She died about 3300 years ago. Her oak coffin was found by a farmer, Peter Platz, within a large grassy burial mound in southern Jutland, Denmark. He called in the archaeologists from the local museum who excavated it in 1921. Recent dendrochronological dating of the oak log coffin reveals that the tree was felled in 1370 BC. The North European Bronze Age is a fascinating place to go and visit online to understand some of the background to the Egtved Girl's world. There is a lot of information out there - for example, this atmospheric short film. And lots of pictures of the things that they made and wore and used - the bronze figurines, the sun chariot, the drinking vessels, the well preserved clothing and even a wooden folding seat.

 

What the archaeologists discovered within the Egtved Girl's oak coffin was quite astonishing ... there was no skeleton, just a few fingernails and some of her teeth, brains and hair remained. Her bones had been destroyed by the acidic conditions. But the clothes and the grave goods of the young woman had survived the millennia virtually intact. She had been buried wearing a woven woolen tunic top, a corded wool skirt and a woven belt with a bronze spiked disc. Bronze bracelets adorned her arms. Most people agree that she was a dancer, maybe even a priestess, and that she was buried in her dancing clothes. A small bronze figurine, doing a back flip and wearing a skirt like that of the Egtved Girl, was found at Grevensvaenge, Zealand, Denmark. It was part of a small Bronze Age hoard that was first reported in 1779. Over the years, several of the figurines have been lost but the little bronze acrobatic dancer is now in the National Museum of Denmark.

a reconstruction of the Egtved Girl's clothes: details here

Now the oak coffin, the clothes and grave goods have been reconstructed and there is a wonderful display in the National Museum of Denmark. She is visited by thousands of people. There is so much on the internet about the Egtved Girl that it is easy to find out about her. She even has a few Facebook friends ...

I first came across reports of the Egtved Girl through reading the bibliography of Eva Koch's article Prehistoric Plant Food of Denmark, published in 1999. Archaeology can be a bit like a detective story. In the days before the internet was everywhere, the bibliography at the end of an academic paper was probably the only lead you had to find the next piece of information. What interested me about this young woman's grave was the discovery and subsequent analysis of cereal based organic residues in a birch bark bucket that had been placed in the log coffin.

residues in a birch bark bucket
The reconstruction at the National Museum shows how she was laid upon a cow skin. A bundle of cloth, at her feet, contains the burnt bones of a small child, aged 5 or 6 years old. Also at her feet was a bucket made of birch bark. Someone noticed that there was a thick, dark brown residue at the bottom of the bucket. It was analysed in 1929 by Bille Gram. For all you fellow bibliography hunters, this is the reference for the original archaeobotanical report ... over the years I have tried, and failed, to get hold of a copy. In either Danish or English. Maybe you can find it. If you do, please let me know!  

Th. Thomsen (1929): Egekistefundet fra Egtved. Nordiske Fortidsminder Andet Bind. København. (In this book, her drink is mentioned by Bille Gram on page 184 note 2, apparently)

the birch bark bucket 

I don't know how the analysis of the residue was undertaken. I would imagine that it involved a microscope and not a lot else, given that it was done in 1929. The bucket had contained an alcoholic drink - it was probably ale - made from wheat, cowberries or possibly cranberries, bog myrtle, some other plants and perhaps with added honey.

Descriptions of the residue analysis vary in the archaeological literature, which is why I would like to read the original archaeobotanical report. Some archaeologists mention the presence of clover pollen, others mention lime flower pollen. Mixed pollens often indicate the addition of honey. It has been suggested in some academic papers that the "beer" was made from the berries, but any all grain brewer knows that this is simply not possible. The primary source of fermentable sugars had to come from the grain - or rather, from grain that had been malted. It could have been either malted wheat or malted barley or a mixture of both.

Residue analysis provides you with a list of probable ingredients. It does not provide you with a recipe. Nor will it tell you the ratio of ingredients to each other, nor the quantities that are required. To make a similar brew from the list of ingredients you need a recipe. In other words, you need to know and understand the brewing process, the techniques and the methodology of how to make malt and ale.

making malt and ale
There seems to be some confusion amongst archaeologists and anthropologists about what malt is, how it is made and how the brewer uses it. Malt is sometimes described as 'toasted barley sprouts' or even as 'sprouted barley' - something like beansprouts. Neither of these is an accurate description. Malt is grain that has been steeped and aerated in water, then spread out on a smooth, level floor within a dark but well ventilated building to begin to germinate. When the acrospire (the root and shoot) is no more than one third the length of the grain, it is dried gently in a kiln. This is traditional floor malting and this process makes pale malt. Specialist malts are made by roasting at higher temperatures.

I have read descriptions of brewing in academic papers, explaining that malt is 'boiled with water' to make a 'malt solution'  but this would not work at all. The brewer mixes crushed pale malt with hot (not boiling) water to make a sweet wort. This process is called the 'mash' or 'saccharification'. If you boil the malt, then the enzymes that convert starch into sugars are destroyed and you will never make anything fermentable. Specialist dark malts, such as crystal or chocolate malt, are used for colour and flavour and do not provide any sugars in the mash tun.

I began to discuss these issues in an an earlier post and I will certainly go back to these fundamental aspects of making malt and ale in future posts. My last academic paper The Craft of the Maltster is about to be published as I write this blog post. I was given permission to put it online. The book of the conference will be out soon. Floor malting techniques have not changed over millennia.


the ingredients, according to residue analysis of the Egtved bucket

• wheat - this was probably identified, under the microscope, by the presence of a part of a grain husk. Could it have been a bit of barley husk? This is possible. During the brewing process, specifically in the mash tun, the malted grain is mixed with hot water and the grains become broken up. As mentioned above, whether it was wheat, barley or a mixture of both, the grain had to have been malted. Malt provides the primary fermentable sugars for ale and beer.

• cowberries - not the main source of fermentable sugars. These are very tart, sharp tasting berries. Probably used as an adjunct. Cowberries, also known as lingonberries were probably identified in the Egtved bucket residue analysis by the presence of seeds. It can be tricky to identify the specific berry type from the seed alone. 

• bog myrtle - also known as myrica gale, this leafy shrub has been used for millennia as a 'brewer's herb'. It both preserves and flavours the ale and it was used before the introduction of hops in medieval times. Many other plants and herbs can be used in brewing ale. We have used meadowsweet and juniper berries in our ancient ales. Yarrow is another commonly used plant as an alternative to hops. These are known as gruit and these days you can buy a wide variety of these ancient and traditional ales in the shops, made by several different brewing companies. 

• lime pollen, clover pollen - the presence of these in the bucket residue might indicate the addition of some honey to the ale. Again, it is an adjunct and not a primary source of sugars for fermentation. Alternatively, the pollen might indicate the addition of lime flowers and clover to the wort, for flavour and/or preservation.  

how we would make an 'Egtved Ale'- the basic techniques and recipe
We have been making ancient style ales for fifteen years now. Small batches, a few gallons at a time, in our home brewery. To recreate the ale that was in the Egtved bucket we would, first of all, get some malted grain. If possible, we would try to obtain some malted bere - an ancient strain of barley. The grain is skinny, much thinner than modern barley. We have used bere malt successfully to make an ale flavoured and preserved with a few dried meadowsweet flowers instead of hops.

our mash tun 

We would mash the crushed malt with hot water in the mash tun for about one hour. Grist is the brewer's term for crushed malt. Brewers refer to the water used for brewing as 'liquor'. It is not alcoholic. Then we would lauter, that is, collect the first runnings of sweet wort from the mash tun,  and then sparge. This involves running several gallons of hot water through the mash and collecting more wort. As far as quantities and ratios are concerned, we would use about 15 pounds of malted grain to make roughly 8 or 9 gallons of wort.

Cowberries could be added to the mash tun, or they could be added to the wort during the boil. It is difficult to know exactly how many to add, but when we made our Juniper Ale with berries, we used just a few ounces to twelve pounds of crushed malt. Having obtained the wort we would boil it, together with some sprigs of bog myrtle and/or lime flowers and clover flowers. Yeast would be added, most likely in the form of barm from a previous brew. Leave the ale to ferment for a few days, then rack it off into a fresh container and see what it tastes like.

strange brews
Over the last few years, there have been some rather strange re-creations of the alcoholic drink hinted at by the residues in the birch bark bucket found at Egtved. Not all of them are convincing. I watched a TV programme recently that showed the archaeologist Neil Oliver drinking an 'ancient style brew'. I think, but am not entirely sure, that it was supposed to be based upon the Egtved residues but, sadly, some of the basic ingredients had been altered. Apple juice was used instead of wort. The herbs, honey and berries were included. I don't think that apple juice would have been an option for those Bronze Age brewers 3300 years ago. Crabapples were the only available 'apple' and these are very sour. Even today, when people make a crabapple wine, they have to add a large quantity of sugar because the crabapples are not sweet enough to ferment by themselves. Crabapples also require a modern press to extract the juice. I cannot work out how the juice could have been pressed from crabapples in Bronze Age Denmark.

Another strange brew is Kvasir, made recently by the Dogfish Head Brewery in collaboration with Professor Pat McGovern, who is sometimes referred to as the Beer Archaeologist. For some reason, concentrated birch syrup was included in the Egtved inspired brew. I have no idea why, since this ingredient was not identified in the analysis of the residue from the birch bark bucket. Concentrated birch syrup is made using modern processing techniques. I think the word to remember here is 'inspired'. I don't think they were aiming to actually recreate an accurate copy of the 3300 year old ale, rather, they are making a modern Craft Beer, USA style, that pays homage to the Egtved Girl. I have found no mention of malt, mash tun or wort in the media coverage of this brew.

It is odd that she is referred to as a 'leather clad priestess' when she was actually wearing a tunic made from woven wool and a corded skirt. This is a very well known detail of the Egtved Girl's clothing. When she was first discovered, in 1921, some  archaeologists thought that there must have been a linen undergarment because the 'string skirt' was so revealing.

There are plans to make a commercial beer to a similar recipe in Sweden - Arketyp. This brew appears to have crushed pale malt as an ingredient, but it also includes concentrated birch syrup. Again, I don't understand the reason for this addition to the ale unless it is to make a kind of 'Nordic Grog'. Professor McGovern has proposed, in a recent academic paper, that this is what people made and drank throughout Europe in prehistory - some kind of mixed alcoholic drink made up of different components, such as birch syrup, wine and herbs. Although the biochemical analysis of four residues is incredibly detailed, there is nothing in the paper about malting, mashing, malt sugars or the brewing process.

For some of these strange and exotic brews, it seems as if the archaeologists who try to recreate them are struggling to find fermentable sugars, while neglecting the malt and the wort. Barley, and wheat, are an excellent source of sugars for fermentation  if processed in the right way. Maybe you have to be a brewer to understand these processes.

Egtvedpigens Bryg - made with malt, water, herbs and honey
I am very pleased to say that the National Museum of Denmark, working together with the Skands Brewery, have made an authentic ale based upon the ingredients identified in the bucket residue analysis. It should be available in the Museum Shop. If you are lucky enough to go and visit the Egtved Girl in Denmark, maybe you could try some. The details of this ale are, as yet, sparse on the internet. The launch party was on the 22nd of March 2014, so this really is the most recent and, for me, the most exciting development in the long story of the Egtved Girl and her bucket of ale.

I have found some Press Releases online, in Danish and translated into English. I expect that we will be hearing a lot more about it in the future.

launched recently, a modern commercial version of the Egtved Ale

Beakers were for Beer! part one: ale, mead & residues

Beakers were for beer. I was told this back in 1995, in my final year as an archaeology undergraduate. There was absolutely no doubt about this, or so it seemed at the time. I made a note to look further into the idea. This was when my interest in ancient brewing techniques began. I had never thought about it before, but, being married to a home brewer of fine ales, made from all grain, I was intrigued. He would carry a 25 kilogram sack of crushed malt from the Brewing Supplies shop into the house, and then after about a week, he would have made us some excellent beer. A 25 kilo sack of malt would make 4 brews of 8 or 9 gallons each. Yes, I'm mixing Imperial and Metric but I am not bothered about that. The point is that you can make plenty of beer from 25 kilos of malt.

How did those Bronze Age folk, living in Britain around 4000 years ago, make their beer? I asked several people in the Archaeology Department but nobody seemed to know. They all thought I was crazy, looking for the archaeological evidence of beer brewing. You won't find anything, they said.

A paper was cited by the lecturer: Burgess and Shennan: The Beaker Phenomenon: some suggestions. It had been presented at a conference "Settlement and economy in the third and second millennia BC" and the proceedings were published in 1976 as a British Archaeological Report (BAR 33). It is cited in dozens, if not hundreds of academic bibliographies about the Bronze Age of the British Isles. It has become a classic paper, but it is not easy to find unless you have access to a University Library. That is to say that I have not managed to find access to a copy online.

One of the arguments of the paper was that Beakers were made specially for the drinking of beer. They proposed that a warrior cult existed in Bronze Age Britain, with some people buried with grave goods that reflected their prestige, high status and lifestyle. Grave goods often included a drinking vessel - a finely made and decorated pottery 'beaker' from which they drank their beer. No archaeological evidence, such as residue analysis, was presented in the paper.

The Amesbury Archer, referred to by the media as the 'King' of Stonehenge was considered to have been an important person and someone of high status, since he was buried with lots of grave goods, including five fine beakers, gold jewellery, the equipment for making metal and a slate wrist guard that hints at his prowess with a bow and arrows.

beaker from Hemp Knoll, Avebury

If beakers were for beer, then what is the archaeological evidence? Did it taste like the beer that we drink today? Who made it? Were the brewers men or women? What's the story?

Strictly speaking, when referring to prehistoric brewing from cereals, it should be called ale, not beer. What's the difference? Ale and beer are both made from malted grain - barley, wheat, oats or rye. Ale is preserved and flavoured with a variety of herbs, such as bog myrtle, heather, yarrow, juniper or meadowsweet. Beer is flavoured with hops which were introduced to the brewing process only recently, in medieval times. Spices can also be used. Today, we tend to use the terms 'ale' and 'beer' fairly indiscriminately.

For anyone interested in ancient ale, the discovery of cereal based residues on old pots has to be one of the most exciting things. Research was very different in those days. In the late 1990s the internet was in its' infancy. Internet search engines were a rare and wonderful thing, to be accessed by a few lucky academics. Charles Mount has written about how University research has changed over the last 20 years here. He is writing about University College Dublin, but the story is the same throughout UK Universities.

So, for me, my first research involved going to the John Rylands Library, looking through the card index systems, finding archaeology journals and reading lots of excavation reports. I spent many hours doing this. I started with the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, fondly known as the PSAS (now available online). It is an excellent resource. I soon stumbled on excavation reports that had some intriguing descriptions of cereal based residues on pottery, together with a detailed pollen analysis. Just what I was looking for.

cereal based residues on pottery
A couple of years after the Burgess and Shennan paper was published, a discovery was made in Fife, Scotland, that supported their thesis that beakers were for beer drinking in the Bronze Age. 

In 1978, excavations by a team led by Gordon Barclay at the site of a timber circle, bank and ditch (c2330 ± 60BC) at North Mains, Strathallan, Scotland, revealed several cist burials  In one of these, a female cist burial, there was a fine, complete Food Vessel with a deposit of organic material still adhering to the inner surface of the pot, after thousands of years. It was described as a 'black greasy material on the internal surfaces'. Such discoveries are extremely  rare.

The cist was situated in the centre of the timber circle. Fortunately, it had remained partially sealed, hence the unusual survival of the organic material. Analysis of the residues revealed high percentages of cereal pollen and meadowsweet pollen. It was interpreted as being the probable remains of a cereal based fermented drink. The radiocarbon date was 1540 ± 65BC. The analysis (below) is on pages 178 to 180 of the excavation report in PSAS Volume 113. The details are important and of interest to any all grain brewer. The 'human interference' that has introduced charcoal to and that is referred to might be the drying of malted grain, rather than parching harvested grain.

There is a Table on page 179 which gives the details and percentages of the pollen finds. Of course, I recommend reading the whole report, which can be downloaded from the PSAS website. That is because I really like to read the original excavation reports rather than secondhand interpretations. It is almost like being there! The descriptions of the pottery finds (between pages 155 and 163) are also informative.

When I showed this pollen analysis to my husband he said 'I can make that. I just need to replace the hops with some meadowsweet flowers.' And so our research into recreating ancient ales began.

POLLEN ANALYSIS OF DEPOSITS IN A FOOD VESSEL FROM THE HENGE MONUMENT, NORTH MAINS                         S Bohncke
INTRODUCTION
Burial B was accompanied by a food vessel (SF17), discovered lying on its side by the skull. Within the pot a small deposit of black greasy material was found. As the analysis of material within vessels has proved valuable (Dickson 1978) samples of this deposit and scrapings from the pot wall were subjected to pollen analysis. 

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Part of the black greasy material was used for the preparation of two pollen samples and another sample was scraped from the inner fabric of the pot. All samples were treated with hydrogen fluoride to remove the silaceous component and were subsequently subjected to Erdtman's acetolysis. Microscope slides were then prepared using glycerol jel as an embedding medium.
 
RESULT AND DISCUSSION 
High percentages of Filipendula (meadowsweet) pollen (74-1 %, 77-8%, 84% (scraping)) and relatively high percentages of cerealia pollen were noted. There was also a large proportion of charcoal fragments. Within the Filipendula grains there was a wide range of variation in the states of preservation. The well preserved type is the tricolpate micro echinate pollen in which the pores are clearly pouting. The very corroded type lacks the characteristic pores but the wall structure is not affected. Immature pollen was also present. Relatively high proportions of Filipendula can be attributed in part to selective corrosion as Filipendula has a relatively thick wall but this could not explain the 74-1-84% found in these samples.

Cereals are self pollinating, the result being that little pollen is dispersed into the air. The anthers remain within the spikelets so that on the fully grown cereal pollen grains could still be present, though most would be lost during the winnowing process. Compared with the other species the cereals are over represented in both samples. This is probably the result of human interference. The charcoal in the samples might have originated in the processing of the grain (eg roasting to remove chaff), however the cereal pollen were not burnt and this therefore seems unlikely. The charcoal may also have found its way into the pot during the burial ritual or have been in the pot already, perhaps as the result of firing a new vessel for the burial. The remaining pollen almost certainly came accidentally into the food vessel and represented a part of the contemporary pollen rain. The presence of pollen of plants flowering at different times of the year (eg Corylus March-April, Polypodium August-September) might be explained by the addition of pollen-bearing water to whatever was contained in the vessel or its incorporation in the manufacture of the contents.

Dickson (1978) in his analysis of the Ashgrove beaker scrapings discovered very high proportions of Tilia and Filipendula and concluded that the vessel had contained lime honey or mead flavoured with meadowsweet. The North Mains food vessel contained neither lime pollen nor sufficient pollen from other honey-producing plants. The 2-4-3-7% of Compositae pollen were not sufficient for a honey based on Compositae alone. The high proportion of cereal pollen grains might suggest either a porridge of cereals (eg frumenty) or a fermented ale, flavoured with meadowsweet flowers or extract. The name 'meadow-sweet' originates from mead-sweet as it was used to flavour mead and other drinks. It is distinctly possible therefore that the North Mains food vessel contained a fermented drink.

the Ashgrove beaker
Mention is made of the Ashgrove Beaker. This was found in an excavation of a Bronze Age cist burial by Audrey Henshall and was published in Antiquity in 1963. As well as the skeleton and a beaker, there was also a fine dagger. It seemed that the pot had fallen over, spilling its' contents on the floor of the cist. James Dickson analysed the residues in the 1970s and he also published his results in Antiquity.

Pollen analysis revealed large amounts of immature lime pollen and meadowsweet pollen, which was interpreted as the remains of mead but sadly, it was not radiocarbon-dated. Nor did they look for cereal residues. Ian Hornsey discusses the implications of this discovery in his book, The History of Beer.

my first article

These discoveries, and others, led me to write my first article about the archaeology of ancient ale, towards the end of 1996. Descriptions of residues on Grooved Ware pottery from the neolithic site of Balfarg are very similar to those found on Beaker pottery. It was beginning to look as if making ale from the grain was a Neolithic, not a Bronze Age phenomenon.

I was very pleased and proud to be the cover girl for BA19 and I have Simon Denison, the then editor of British Archaeology, to thank for that. He was interested in my work and very supportive.

The picture shows the Strathallan or North Mains food vessel, with meadowsweet flowers surrounding it. These flowers would have been the flavouring and preservative for the ale, the base of which would have been a wort made from crushed malted cereal - barley and/or wheat.

Finding Magic in Stone Age Ale - my first article - you can read it here.

That's all for this blog - more than enough for you to be getting on with. I find it odd that in 2014, particularly in the UK, there seems to be a taboo surrounding any discussion by archaeologists of malt and ale in prehistory.

The evidence is there, if you know and understand what the brewing process is and what you have to look for in the archaeological record.

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... my next blog will be about the Egtved Girl's Brew, the residues of which were found in a birch bark bucket in her oak log coffin in Denmark ... there are some details here.

Please get in touch with me if you have made a beer based upon these residues, if you know of someone who has or if you have been lucky enough to taste one of these brews.

I know about the 'Nordic Grog' made by Dogfish Head Brewery, under the guidance of Professor Pat McGovern. It was recently marketed as Kvasir, named after a Nordic Princess. 

I want to hear about any real home brewers who have had a go at recreating it.

Thankyou! 

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further reading
Burgess, C. & Shennan, S. 1976. The Beaker Phenomenon: some suggestions. In Burgess, C Miket, R. (eds.)  Settlement and economy in the third and second millennia BC : papers delivered at a conference organised by the Department of Adult Education, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, B.A.R 33, Oxford, 309-331.

Barclay, G. (1984a) 'Sites of the third millenium BC to the first millenium AD at North Mains, Strathallan, Perthshire', Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Vol.113


Dickson, J. 1978 'Bronze age mead', Antiquity, 52 (1978), 108-13.



 

crushed malt v malt extract

Making your own beer at home is becoming a popular hobby. On the internet there are thousands of videos, web pages and blogs about beer and how to make beer. They vary from the basic through to complex, jargon filled technical descriptions. There are some funny ones too. And quite a lot of strange stuff. If you are interested, just search for a few choice phrases around the basic question of 'how to make home brewed beer' and you will find plenty to choose from. I have put a couple of my favourite web sites and books at the end of this blog.

It can be confusing, with extract brewing, extract brewing (with grain) and all-grain brewing, not to mention the many different styles of beer and ale that can be made. Home brewers often tend to have their own, sometimes idiosyncratic ways of beer brewing. However, it is all based upon the same basic principle - that grain can be easily converted into ale by the processes of malting, mashing and fermentation. Maltsters and brewers have been doing this for thousands of years.

I aim to demystify the whole beer brewing process through this blog, and also to share some of our adventures with making ancient style ales.

Here is our Juniper Yule Ale, just as it is beginning to ferment. We had made 6 gallons of wort and the big plastic fermentation bucket was very full. When the ferment took off it was so vigorous that there was not enough headroom in the fermenter. So we siphoned a gallon of wort into this demijohn and put an airlock on when it settled down. No sugar was added to this wort - it all came from the crushed malt in the mash tun.

our ancient ale, bubbling away in the kitchen ... magic.

There are two main ways to make beer at home. Use a brewing kit with malt extract, or go for the all grain brew. We don't use malt extract, although it is possible to make really good beer with it. We just prefer the flavour of all grain ale, and think that it is well worth the extra effort of making your own wort, then fermenting it. Traditional ingredients and techniques provide authentic flavours for ancient ales.

Crushed malt is the traditional ingredient for ale and beer. Any grain can be malted - wheat, barley, oats, millet and rye. Today, a bewildering variety of malts are available to the brewer and for every brew there is a grain bill. Also known as the 'mash ingredients' or the 'mash bill' by some brewers, it is the particular and specific mixture of crushed malts in the mash tun that create the colour, flavour and body of the resulting ale. The grain bill depends what you are brewing - bitter, porter, pale ale or stout for example.

For our juniper ale, we mashed 15 pounds of pale crushed malt as the base malt, together with eight ounces of crystal malt and eight ounces of roasted barley for colour and flavour. From this, we got 6 gallons of wort that was boiled with a few hops and a couple of ounces of crushed juniper berries and then fermented into ale.

It is important to crush the malt before putting it into the mash tun because this mixes up the grain starch with the enzymes that were activated during the malting process. Those breweries who use malt tend to buy their malt as whole grains, because it stores better, then they crush it in a grain mill before mashing. Crushed malt is also known as 'grist' and the photo shows some of the pale crushed malt that we use. You can see the grain husks.

Malt extract is thick and sweet, like syrup. It is widely used in the food processing industry. You probably eat some most days, since it can be found in cereals, sweets, ice cream, cakes and many other processed foods.

sweet sticky malt extract

Today many home brewers and some of the big brewing companies use concentrated malt extract to make their ale and beer. There is no need for a mash tun. All you need are boilers and fermentation vessels. The mashing has been done for you, in the factory. Grain processing companies mash huge amounts of crushed malt, extract the wort and then concentrate it, by boiling it in a partial vacuum, to keep the temperature down.

It is a food processing technique that was patented in the 1860s and was first used to make condensed milk. It was not long before the vacuum extraction method was used to make wort concentrate and it is now a powerful industry, with factories all over the world. Over the past ten to fifteen years, the number of breweries using malt extract instead of malt has increased. Given that it is concentrated wort and that it has been made on an industrial scale using equipment, techniques and technologies that have only been available since the late 19th Century, it is debatable whether or not malt extract is a suitable ingredient if you want to re create an authentic ancient ale. In Brew Your Own magazine, May/June 2008, there is a detailed description of how to make malt extract. A shorter description can be found here

I was looking for a video that would show how extract brewing works. There are hundreds, if not thousands of them. I chose this one. In September 2012, the news story broke that President Obama wanted beer to be brewed in the White House. They chose the malt extract method. The recipe included a small amount of specialist malts for flavour, but the main ingredients were liquid malt extract and dried malt extract, with some special White House honey and pelleted hops. This seems to be the way that many people make beer at home. But not everyone.

There are a lot of home brewers who still use malted grain. There are even some who make the malt themselves and crush it before putting it into their mash tun. There are others who want to make ales using traditional gruit herbs instead of hops, which were introduced in medieval times ... but more of gruit ales and traditional floor malting later. That is another story. For now, I just wanted to write a little about the difference between extract brewing and all grain brewing. And I think I have done that.

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If you are interested in reading more ...

... our favourite brewing book is The Big Book of Brewing by David Line.
First published in the 1970s, it is still in print. Excellent explanations of how to mash at home and it has very good, clear instructions and recipes. He wrote another book Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy. Also an excellent set of recipes for all grain brewing. I am not sure that all of the breweries that made those beers and ales still exist. The brewing industry has changed a lot since then.

... our favourite brewing history book is Beer: The Story of the Pint by Martyn Cornell.
This book covers the prehistory and the history of beer brewing. I think it is out of print but available secondhand, or from your local library. Another fascinating read by the same author is Amber Gold and Black, a history of beer styles. Available from here: zythophile

This is a very detailed site that explains everything you might want ever to know about making malt, ale and beer: http://www.howtobrew.com

Here is a site that discusses the 'extract or grain' debate:
http://www.maltproducts.com/news.malt.extract.html

jargon: the malt, the mash & what is wort

This blog was started last year but, for several reasons, I didn't keep it up. One thing that I found tricky was learning to understand the Jargon of the Blog Page. Over recent months, I have managed to get to grips with image editing software. I did that so I could copyright my photos. Now I have to work out how to do lots of other new things, like making tabs and all that stuff. I am slowly navigating my way through the 'construction' things and 'gadgets'. See what I mean? I'm not even sure how to explain what it is that I don't know what to do! 

I am not asking for help. I know that if I persevere, I will learn how to do this. Eventually. Sometimes you need to do something for yourself before you can say that you understand it. So far I have mastered quite a few 'computer things' and this blog is just another. 

The point I want to make is this: that every skilled activity uses jargon to explain the specialised knowledge, skills and tricks of the trade. Once you learn the vocabulary, the jargon, the particular methods and techniques it is relatively easy to do. But if you don't understand these things, then you can be faced with a very difficult task. Every ancient and traditional craft has its' jargon. Those of the maltster and brewer are no exception. 
  
the jargon of malting and brewing - well some of it anyway 
Much of the jargon used by maltsters and brewers can be misunderstood by non brewers. It can lead to some very odd conversations between brewer and non brewer. I once spent a long time talking to someone about the possible archaeological evidence for malt and ale, only to discover later that he believed that I was talking about whiskey and ale. I thought it was a strange conversation at the time. Below is a picture of part of what I was talking about. 

Traditional floor malting. Not one of my photos, this one was given to me by Ivor Murrell, who was Director General of the magb between 1993 and 2006. The malt is raked as it begins to germinate on the malting floor. 

I was talking about 'malt' as in malted barley, partially germinated grain, the prime ingredient for ale, beer, lager and also whiskey. Malt is grain that has been steeped in water, then it is spread out on a smooth floor in a dark, well ventilated building to begin to germinate. It must be raked and turned, to stop the rootlets from becoming matted together, before being carefully dried in a kiln. Malting is an ancient craft. A complex craft. One that probably dates back to the earliest grain processors of the Fertile Crescent, over ten thousand years ago.

Another example of brewer's jargon is 'to mash' or as we call it in our garage brew house 'to run a mash'. We call it 'running a mash' because that's what it feels like. In modern breweries, the temperature of the water is regulated electronically. Or by computer. In our garage brew house, we have a simple mash tun that is heated by an electric element and you have to watch over it very carefully, turning it on and off as needs be. The mash tun is where the crushed malt is mixed with hot water (not too hot) and then left for about an hour. It is not like mashing potatoes. Nor is it like treading grapes ...

crushed malted barley is added to hot water in the mash tun

It is important to crush the malt before adding it to the hot water in the mash tun. We now know that, at temperatures between 65 and 67 degrees Centigrade, the enzymes (amylase) within the malt are reactivated in the hot water. They convert, transform or hydrolyse the grain starch into malt sugars. The technical term for this is the saccharification.This is what happens in every mash tun, whether it is a modern one heated by electricity or an old fashioned one, for example a cauldron heated by a fire or a wooden tub or trough heated by hot rocks. 

We ran a Viking style mash in a wooden tub and we got a good conversion of starch into sugars, using hot stones to heat the water and the mash. First of all, you have to heat the water to the correct temperature before you add the crushed malt. This is when you can see your face most clearly reflected in the hot water. Modern brewers use a thermometer. Before they were invented, brewers used this traditional technique, and it just so happens that, at 74 degrees Centigrade, the water becomes still enough to see a reflection. Hotter than that and it becomes too steamy to see anything. Cooler than that and the water surface is too 'bumpy'.

Add crushed malt to hot water, maintain the temperature for about an hour and then lauter and sparge to obtain a wort. This involves running off the sweet wort from the mash tun (lautering), collecting the wort in a clean jug. The cloudy wort is poured through the mash until it runs clear, and then you can sparge, by gently pouring hot water through the mash to obtain several gallons of wort (sparging). The grain itself acts as a filter. The wort is boiled with herbs or hops and then, when it is cool enough, yeast or barm is added which ferments the sugars into alcohol. Barm is the foam on the top of a fermenting beer and many craft breweries 'harvest' the barm and use it to start new fermentations.

We usually use about 13lb of pale crushed malt and we get 6 or 7 gallons of wort. Recently, we made a Juniper Ale for Yule, and we added a handful of berries, a couple of ounces or thereabouts, to the boil as well as the hops. There are some photos on my Facebook page here. We sent some bottles down to the Experimental Archaeology Conference, at Oxford University in January 2014 and there are some tasting notes here.

What is wort? Wort is the sweet, dark brown liquid from the mash tun. It is what the brewer ferments into ale or beer. It tastes very sweet and it is the primary fermentable sugar for either ale or beer. Oh, and whiskey as well. 

Well, that's all for now. There is so much to be said about malt, ale and beer in prehistory and in historical times that I am sure there will be more from me soon.

My published papers and my Master's Thesis, "Barley Malt and Ale in the Neolithic" which I did at Manchester University in 1998 are available as free downloads on my Academia.edu page. Here. It was published as a BAR (British Archaeological Report) in 2004.