njlauren
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Joined: 10/1/2011
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MercTech
Now I'm thinking beer in history and putting on the old SCA hat and rattling on a bit.
When beer came from small batches brewed at the local tavern; it was common to do three washes of the malted grain for fermentation.
The first wash for "first beer" or "top brew" would ferment out at 12-20% alcohol. Modern brewers would dilute this for tax appropriate alcohol content. You can't even sell it as beer in the U.S. but if you run across the rare "barley wine" you are getting what your ancestors considered the good stuff.
The second wash was the main beer for sale and would be 4-6% alcohol and would be drunk at most meals.
The third was would ferment out at 1-3% and was known as "small beer" and fit for ladies and children and with breakfast.
Now you know what they refer to in books as "small beer".
Oh yes, hops was originally added to beer as a preservative. Unhopped beer will go bad in a couple of weeks but hops gets it to last for a month or more (empirical test). -we are talking without refrigeration here
My own brew is a brown ale. Top fermenting is easier in the climate I live in (temperature constraints) and I like the nutty flavor you get from roasting the malted grain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hops
Nice description of the history of beer. The only comment I have is that alcoholic content and what you can call beer is not federally regulated, it is all state regulations. For example, out in God's little acre, more than a few states regulate that beer has to be 3.5%, whereas most commercial beers are ~ 5%, so they tend to go for lowest common denominator. In other states, above a certain level, you have to call it Barley Wine or Malt liquor (Malt Liquor, though, is generally used for the crap like Colt 45 and such, that is made cheaply with the alcohol content bumped up by using sugar to make cheap alcohol, ghastly stuff). Thinks like EKU 28 (14% alcohol), Semiclaus (sp? Swiss stuff, about 12%) don't say beer on the label I believe, but what most of them do, like Anchor's Old Foghorn Barley Wine, simply label it like that, because then they can use the term in all states, since they don't call it beer.
And yep, hops were a preservative, unless you were lucky and had cold caves, like how they produced lager beer before refrigeration, it helped keep it from going bad (now a lot of beers use things like citric acid, or some other preservatives like BHA/BHT, and actually use hop flavoring). It is hops that give beer its bitter flavor, the more hops=more bitter.
I generally did top fermenting/ale yeast style of beers when I was making beer years ago, just for me a lot easier (I could do it, always had an extra fridge I could use, or a cold place in a garage in colder weather), I still enjoy Anchor Steam Beer, especially their christmas brew.
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RE: American Riot about dutch beer commercial - 
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