What Ales You?

          Producing, selling, and consuming alcohol in the Middle Ages did not hold the negative connotation it does today. Drinking ale and beer (and to a lesser extent, wine) was actually done more so for nutrition and hydration than for recreation. Alcoholic drinks are much less susceptible to bacterial contamination than water, so it became common for ale to be drunk with every meal as well as throughout the day, providing a source of safe, disease-free fluids. While, medically speaking, pure water would have been substantially better to drink in such quantities, much of the water supply was either infected with cholera- and dysentery-causing bacteria (often from improper disposal of human waste) or simply full of dirt, metals, and mold. Alternatively, alcoholic beverages were safe to drink for three specific reasons.

Manufacture and Processing

Ingredients:

     - Grain

Most often barley, grain was malted (germinated and then dried), crushed, and mixed with boiled water. Once boiled, water is free of live bacteria and thus safe to drink.

Crushed, Malted Barley Being Steeped

Note that the brewer is female. What do you think the mechanism above the pot is?

     - Yeast

Yeast is a fungus which rapidly digests carbohydrates (which grains contain a plethora of) into alcohol. Yeast was not strictly necessary to add to the vat of malt (as grains possess natural yeasts), but it greatly sped up the fermentation, reduced the likely hood of post-contamination, lengthened the shelf-life, and gave control over the consistent product.

     - Water

While any amount of water could be used, using too little would have stopped the fermentation process prematurely. Yeast can survive in an environment with an alcohol content up to about 20%, so using too little water would cause the yeast to reach this cutoff too soon and die, rendering a small batch of weak ale, susceptible to contamination.

     - Hops

While many people think hops are fermented to make ale, this is untrue. Hops was later added to the process to add a mildly bitter taste as well as help preserve the drink (around 1525 in London). Hops have a natural antimicrobial effect that inhibits unwanted microorganisms.

A Medieval Botanist's Illustration of Hops

16th Century

Now, I doubt these men were just thirsty...

Alcohol Content

While medieval beers had a lower alcohol content than modern beers, they still resisted contamination quite well. Because the water was sterilized in the manufacturing process, even a small percentage of alcohol could generally keep the drink safe for consumption for up to a week. While it was not common practice to boil simple drinking water, even safe water was easily contaminated through contact with fingers, unclean cups with previously contaminated water, and extended time open to the air.

Souring

While beer kept very well by contemporary standards, it was not immune to time. Given long enough, even the strongest ales would foster dangerous disease-causing bacteria. Interestingly, however, the drink would almost always go sour prior to becoming unsafe to drink. The cause of this souring is a family of benign, hardy microorganisms - lactobacteria. These bacteria convert starches and alcohol to vinegar, giving the drink a horrible taste. While soured ale was revolting to the tongue, it was not yet infected with disease. Thus, before a drink became unsafe, it would sour and be thrown out by the family.

                                                                                 

http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=medieval/brewing

http://www.lordsandladies.org/middle-ages-drink.htm

http://www.sca.org.au/st_florians/university/library/articles-howtos/what-people-drank.htm

Harnessing the Wind: Energy-Production in the Medieval Period

When anyone who has read classical literature thinks about ideas of chivalry, images of the armored Don Quixote come to mind. This post-medieval literary work brings back notions of heroic knights riding to battle to save damsels from distress. Anyone who has read the book or has any knowledge about the storyline, knows that the main protagonist Don Quixote in his senility proceeds to joust against 30 or 40 windmills. Although this seems to be a humorous adaptation on the ideals of chivalry, it does mention a curious detail that relates to the medieval period. The windmills that Don Quixote went up against may not have been the immense “giants” that he thought they were, but they were in fact another sort of towering economic giant in the real medieval Europe.

 

Flemish Manuscript, Fourteenth Century

Windmills were developed prior to the year 700 C.E. in the area of modern day Iran and Afghanistan. It wouldn’t be for another four centuries until the technology would make its way to Europe. The first surviving mention of a European windmill comes from Yorkshire, England in 1185. Even though it was only ten years later that the first surviving record of a European windmill, by 1195 due to the prevalence of the windmills throughout Europe, the pope levied a tithe on them.

 

A Scene from the Luttrell Psalter: Psalms 87, the miller receives grain
(notice the windmill on the right)

The benefit that windmills brought to medieval people was two-fold. As Bennett mentioned the rise in the process of land reclamation along the coastlines, windmills provided the power needed to drain wetlands. That same power, as Bennett discussed, could also be utilized and harnessed via metal shafts and hammers that could then be used in various other ways. These included finishing cloth, milling corn or grains, or any other device that the owner desired to power with his mill’s drive shaft.

The three most common types of windmills during the medieval period were the post mill, the hollow-post mill, and the tower mill. The mill in Yorkshire was of the post mill type, which remained as the most common type of mill in Europe until long after the medieval period. Seeking something more sturdier and long-lasting, people began building tower mills towards the end of the thirteenth century. These mason structures although a great deal more expensive, were much sturdier and more economical than the post mills. From the fourteenth century onwards came the hollow-post mill. Slightly different than the post type and commonly used in the Netherlands for the draining of wetlands and marshes.

For more reading on windmills:

http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/tekpages/windmills.html

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?gtrack=pthc&ParagraphID=agk

http://www.moulins-a-vent.net/  (This is a French website about the windmills in France. NOTE: Some of the windmills are not from the medieval period, but it does allow the viewer to see some great pictures of medieval French windmills.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill

Addition sources:

Judith Bennett, Medieval Europe: A Short History

http://www.medievalhistories.com/luttrell-psalter-4/

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote

Pocketless, but not Penniless

Many people today when handed something small, such as coins or a business card, simply place it in their pocket. But what if we didn’t have pockets? This was the dilemma for people in the Middle Ages, because they had not yet come up with the revolutionary invention of pockets. Instead, they made due with a variety of bags and purses. The most common bags were simple in design, being round pieces of leather with holes punched around the edge for a drawstring. These bags, once synched closed, could be looped to a belt with the remaining drawstring or would simply be carried in hand. However, these bags were small and could only hold keys or coins (Newman 124). Far larger items, bags could be draped over the shoulder or made into something resembling a horse’s saddle bags in miniature, by attaching these bags to belts.

These designs of bags were basic, and unlike pockets, were easily stolen. It was a simple matter for thieves to walk up to a person and discreetly cut the leather cords supporting the bag or connecting it to a belt. The thieves –known fittingly as cutpurses—were the ancestors of modern day pickpockets, also fittingly named.

Travelers wearing their purses over the shoulder.