Trivial Beer-Suits Beer and Religion, Part 2: Mesopotamia March 2007 By Charlie Pavitt

I wrote on this topic back around September, with that material mostly based on the now hundred- year-old book Hundred Years of Brewing (that equals two hundred, but the book goes back before then). This time I am inspired by Gregg Smith’s Beer: A History of Suds and Civilization from Mesopotamia to Microbreweries, but most of the details come from www.beeradvocate.com

As is now well-known, about six thousand years ago, residents of the Fertile Crescent discovered that bread left accidentally out in the rain eventually turned into a liquid with pleasantly intoxicating effects. The Sumerians figured out how to perform this transformation themselves but were apt to give credit to the spiritual world for its achievement. Ninkasi, whose name means “the lady who fills the mouth,” was the goddess who oversaw brewing and who lent her name to the later Babylonian root word for beer, kassi (I say “root word” because versions of it referred to different types; “kassi” itself stood for black beer, “kassig” for red beer, “kasusasig” for spiced beer, among others). The Hymn to Ninkasi was written on a clay tablet around 1800 B.C., although it is likely far older than that. It contains the recipe that Fritz Maytag and Solomon Katz attempted to reproduce, with, to maintain historical accuracy, women doing the actual brewing. The following is an edited version of the Hymn; see http://beeradvocate.com/news/stories_read/304/ for the entire work:

You are the one who handles the dough [and] with a big shovel, Mixing in a pit, the bappir with sweet aromatics,

You are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven, Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,

You are the one who waters the malt set on the ground, The noble dogs keep away even the potentates,

You are the one who soaks the malt in a jar, The waves rise, the waves fall.

You are the one who spreads the cooked mash on large reed mats, Coolness overcomes,

You are the one who holds with both hands the great sweet wort, Brewing [it] with honey [and] wine.

The filtering vat, which makes a pleasant sound, You place appropriately on a large collector vat.

When you pour out the filtered beer of the collector vat, It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s first known piece of literature and a classic creation myth, continues the story. According to Horst Dornbusch (http://beeradvocate.com/news/stories_read/673), Gilgamesh wandered the land searching for the key to immortality, accompanied by Enkidu, a creature half man and half bull. The king of the city Uruk, the center of worship for Ninkasi, assigned one of the temple maidens the task of seducing Enkidu. After that deed was accomplished, she offered him bread and beer. To quote Dornbusch,

Then the epic continues: “The wild beast Enkidu ate bread until he was sated. He then drank beer, seven crocks full. His spirit relaxed and became free. He started to talk in a loud voice. Well-being filled his body and his face turned bright. He washed his matted fleece with water and rubbed his body with oil, and Enkidu became human." In short, it’s beer that makes us animated, it’s beer that propels us to civilization, and it’s beer that makes us human. By gentling Enkidu’s animal nature, beer helped to define who we are! Now go tell that to abstemious teetotalers and neotemperance zealots! Well said.

Trivial Beer-Suits Gluten-Free Beers February 2007 By Charlie Pavitt

Sadly, not everyone can drink beer as we normally think of it; an alcoholic beverage made primarily from barley, hops, yeast, and water. For various reasons, some people must stay away from alcohol. For them, the brewing industry has for quite a few years provided (almost) alcohol-free, about which I need not inform you. This month’s beer-suits is written for another category of folks; those who cannot tolerate gluten (celiac disease). As a consequence, the primary beer grain (barley), number one adjunct (wheat), and other likely additives (oats and rye) are out of bounds. But, there are many gluten-free grains that could potentially be fermented, including among others buckwheat, sorghum, rice, corn, millet, and quinoa (see www.bellaonline.com/articles/art30583.asp). And where there is a market, there is someone trying to fill it. Breweries specializing in gluten-free beers are beginning to appear, some from celiac brewers. Further, the world’s first gluten-free beer festival was held in Chesterfield, England, last February with support from CAMRA (see www.glutenfreebeerfestival.com). Five beers were awarded blue ribbons for being good (good may not be great, but one must start somewhere).

Here are some of the breweries that are producing gluten-free beers:

From the U.S.: • Milwaukee’s Lakefront Brewery, a sorghum- based ale entitled New Grist that garnered one of the blue ribbons; • New York’s Ramapo Valley (RVB; www.ramapovalleybrewery.com), makers of a honey-based beer, a second blue-ribbon beer; • Bard’s Tale (www.bardsbeer.com), run by a couple of celiacs, who brew a sorghum- based American lager called Dragon’s Gold (unavailable for the festival) and are planning to add an ale.

From England: • Green’s (www.glutenfreebeers.co.uk), brewers of a menagerie including Explorer Stout (a third blue ribbon winner), Discovery (just described as a “beer”), Pioneer and Trailblazer Lagers, Herald Ale, Endeavour (a “double dark”), and Pilgrim (a cherry beer); • Hambleton Ales (www.hambletonales.co.uk) provides an ale and a lager; • Fine Ale Club’s (www.ale4home.co.uk/fine_ale_club.htm) Against the Grain bitter, a fourth blue ribbon winner.

From Quebec: • New France Beers’ La Messagère (www.lesbieresnouvellefrance.com), a pale ale made from rice and buckwheat.

From Australia: • O’Brien (www.gfbeer.com.au), a lager and a fifth blue ribbon winner, with brown and pale ales reportedly coming soon.

Several of these can be purchased on-line (just google “gluten free beer”) and are beginning to appear at stores. There is some discussion on-line about brewing gluten-free, but I only saw one recipe. Unfortunately, it looks atrocious (the author compares the result to Coors Lite, which makes sense if you look at its ingredients).

Gluten free beers can be found described as such in the 2005 Brewers Association Style Guide as a hybrid/mixed style. In that vein, we conducted a tasting/judging of Dragon’s Gold (of which I found available six-packs at my beer store, State Line Liquor of Elkton, Maryland) at the GABS Beer Dinner on January 27th. Collectively, we found it highly diacetyl and a bit cardboardy (I have no idea how old the bottles are). But it was drinkable. And if your options were a flawed but drinkable beer versus no beer at all, ever, which would you choose?

Trivial Beer-Suits – Technology in the Brewery, Part 2 - Refrigeration November 2006 By Charlie Pavitt

(One last column ripped off from 100 Years of Brewing along with www.rogersrefrig.com/history.html)

Where would we be without our fridges? Not only would we have no way to cool our beer, but we’d be hard pressed to keep food safe and tasty. All beer people should know that, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, the brewing industry was the main impetus behind technical advances in refrigerator design.

At the beginning, brewing was restricted to the cooler months, and in fact due to concern with public health, it was illegal to brew in some parts of what is now Germany in warm months. However, brewers began to cut ice from local frozen ponds and use it to store their product in cellars. By the first half of the nineteenth century, the cutting and transport of ice from New England was a thriving business, and brewers in the region were ready customers for the “ice kings” of Boston. The advent of lager in the middle of the century accelerated the desire for artificial cooling. The basic design for refrigeration consisted of a machine that would compress a gas, send it through radiating coils, and then allow it to expand. The first, using regular air as a coolant, was apparently built in 1851 by a physician in Florida, John Gorrie, in order to cool hospital rooms. A commercial version was probably initiated by an Alexander Twinning in 1851. A variant of the Gorrie and Twinning machines was installed at an Australian brewery in 1860 by a James Harrison, but it did not work well in that context.

Coolants other than air were attempted, with a machine using methylic ether designed by Charles Tellier of France becoming the first refrigerator installed at a U.S. brewery by George Merz of New Orleans in 1869. It did not work well in cooling the brewery as such but was capable of producing a good amount of ice. Serious refrigeration really started with a machine invented by Ferdinand Carre, also of France, which replaced air with ammonia. Too big, costly, and potentially unsafe for residences, Carre-style machines were quickly pounced on by brewers. The first was used by S. Liebmanns’s Sons Brewery in 1870. For the next twenty or so years, commercial refrigeration was primarily aimed at brewers, who were eager to try out the products of those who made improvements upon or alternatives to Carre-type machines. By 1891, nearly every brewery had some sort of cooling system. The only other major use for refrigeration at that time appears to be for transporting perishable foods via train.

And what of the common folk? They used the ice box, and needed daily supplies purchased from one or another of the ice kings. But the modern fridge was undoubtedly more convenient, and, after some technical improvements, the household refrigerator became commonplace during the 1920s. The invention of the now-thankfully-disappearing chloroflurocarbons (CFCs) in 1928 allowed for the replacement of ammonia and other nasty chemicals with a safer product (for the home, if not for Mother Earth).

So, I offer a toast for the refrigerator, without which I for one would be limited to water from the tap.