People have been turning grain, honey, and fruit into alcohol for thousands of years.

Turning grain into alcohol is as simple as:

  • pouring boiling water into a vat of malted grain;
  • putting a lid on the vat;
  • covering it up with blankets and letting the grain soak a while;
  • draining the resulting wort from the vat;
  • letting the wort cool off;
  • Pouring the wort into a barrel;
  • Adding yeast.

Nature does the rest.

For lack of a better term, we will call this product ale.

Throughout the Middle Ages, this ale was basic sustenance.  When people talk about beer being “liquid bread”, this is it.  The product was normally consumed very young, because it tends to spoil quickly.  It was common in the Middle Ages to consume ale before it was done fermenting.

This ale was also sweet and bland.  People eventually discovered they could “improve” the flavor of ale by boiling the water drained from the grain with bitter and savory herbs (such as sweet gale, mugwort, yarrow, and others) before letting it cool off.  Ales made with these herbs are referred to as gruit ale or just gruit.

Special flowers

By the middle of the 8th century, someone in the middle of Europe (somewhere around modern-day Munich) decided to throw some flowers from a climbing plant into the boil.  Thus, began the long, steady rise of hopped beer and the corresponding decline of ales and gruit ales on the European continent.

In addition to the flavor that hops provides, it also acts as a preservative making beer stable for relatively long periods of time (weeks, months, and even years in some cases).  This enables large scale production of beer and the shipment of the beer to far-off locations.  By the end of the 14th century, beer is being shipped all across northern Europe (primarily along coastal trade routes).  Isn’t commerce a wonderful thing.

Unfortunately for the English, hops are not native to England so they are forced to survive for many more centuries with just ale and gruit while the Flemish, Dutch, and Germans are partying hard with real beer.

Ben, the two of us need look no more

Then, as now, moving goods across the sea is the most cost-effective way of getting products from producers to consumers.  In the 14th century, ships are moving products all around Europe through the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the North Sea.  Life is good.

There is one minor problem though.  Ships bring rats; rats bring fleas; and fleas bring the plague.  Over the course of four years spanning 1347 to 1351, the Black Death kills 30% to 60% of the population of Europe.  England is not spared.

But remember to Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life.

If you had skills, your position in life got a big boost from the lack of competition.

By the 15th century, there were immigrants from all over Europe  living and working in England.  This included farm laborers, inn-keepers, bakers, doctors, priests, weavers, tailors, and brewers.

Ah yes.  The brewers.

Many of the skilled workers to settle in England, in general, and London, in particular, were Flemish, Dutch, and German.  These immigrants apparently found the traditional English ale to be unappealing.  So, they began to import beer from mainland Europe (fortunately, there was already a well-established trade in exporting and importing beer along the ports of the North Sea).  But then, as now, the cost of shipping anything depends on how big it is and how much it weighs.  Barrels of beer are large and very heavy.

At some point, immigrants realized that all the grain they needed to make beer was in England.  What they didn’t have was hops, because it is not native to England.  So, they begin to import hops, build breweries, and brew beer.

They Took Our Jobs

The English production methods for making ale are far less efficient than the Dutch/German methods for making beer – it takes more grain to make a gallon of ale than it does to make a gallon of beer.  Thus, immigrant breweries had a significant cost advantage over ale producers.

And ale production does not scale well.  While monasteries did have the ability to make large quantities of ale, most ale was produced in small scale alehouses or in homes (where large households would sell about half of their output to bring in funds to underwrite household expenses).  Beer production, however, does scale up well and breweries were quickly making large quantities of beer.

To make things worse for ale producers, the Assize of Bread and Ale passed in the 13th century strictly tied the price of ale to the price of grain.  Cheap bread and ale keep the masses from rebelling, so the price of bread and ale was regulated to keep the price of ale barely above the cost of ingredients.  Regulations also stipulated the minimum amount of grain that could be used to make ale (to keep ale producers from selling “weak” products to the detriment of consumers).  Thus, ale producers were being simultaneously squeezed by minimum required costs; maximum allowed prices; and competition from beer producers.

What does any well-established industry do when it is getting its ass kicked by upstart competitors?  Well, it pleads for protection from “The Powers That Be”.  In April of 1481, the Ale Brewers of London petitioned the Mayor and the Aldermen calling for a clear and legal separation between ale and beer, stating:

No maner of persone of what craft condicion or degree he be occupying the craft or fete of bruyng of ale wtin the saide Citee or libertie thereof from hensfurth occupie or put or do or suffre to be occupied or put in any ale or licour whereof ale shalbe made or in the wirkyng and bruyng of any maner of ale any hoppes herbes or other like thing but onely licour malt and yeste, [under penalty prescribed].

Be careful what you ask for.  The ale brewers get when they want; their petition is granted.  Now ale and beer are two separate products under the law and in the eyes of the guild.   Note that this does not prevent immigrants from brewing beer.  What it does is guarantee that no ale producer can lawfully make both ale and beer.  Ale housed are limited by law to making high-cost, low-profit products that consumers are less and less interested in.  We call this a win/win scenario.

A Woman’s Work is Never Done

The friction between ale and beer brewers is not just the native English versus immigrants.  Large-scale immigrant breweries are run by men.   However, English ale production is tied to households – either the large households of the well-to-do or the public houses for the working class.  And brewing falls squarely in the wife’s work as part of the kitchen duties.  As immigrant breweries win market share from English ale houses, income produced by the women of the household drops.  This lost income cannot easily be replaced by any other work that is “appropriate” for the women of the household.

Working Class

While working men in England were increasing choosing beer over ale, the well-to-do continue to prefer ale, because beer is actually bad for you, but ale is good.  Thus, true Englishmen should only drink ale.  Andrew Boorde, an English traveller, physician and writes in one of his books – Here foloweth a Compenyous Regiment or Dyetary of health, made in Mountpyller {1542}:

Ale is made of malte and water; and they the which do put any other thynge to ale than is rehersed, except yest, barme, or goddesgood, doth sophysticat there ale. Ale for an Englysshe man is a naturall drinke. Ale muste haue these properties, it muste be fresshe and cleare, it muste not be ropy, nor smoky, nor it must haue no wefte nor tayle. Ale shulde not be dronke vnder .v. dayes olde …. Barly malte maketh better ale than Oten malte or any other corne doth … Beere is made of malte, of hoppes, and water; it is a naturall drynke for a doche man, and nowe of late dayes it is moche vsed in Englande to the detryment of many Englysshe men … for the drynke is a colde drynke. Yet it doth make a man fatte, and doth inflate the bely, as it doth appere by the doche mennes faces and belyes.

In short, Ale is made from malt, water, and yeast.  It is the natural drink of Englishmen.  Whereas, Beer is made from malt, hops, and water.  It is the natural drink of the Dutch.   Beer is bad for Englishmen and makes a man fat and inflates his belly as can be seen in the Dutch men’s faces and bellies.

A hundred years later, learned men are still whining about the Dutch and their beer.  In 1651, John Taylor presents Ale ale-vated into the ale-titude: or, a learned oration before a civill assembly of ale-drinkers at what is basically an industry dinner party where everyone gets up and talks smack about the competition, but in reality, that competition is actually kicking their asses.

Beere, is a Dutch Boorish Liquor, a thing not knowne in England, till of late dayes an Alien to our Nation, till such time as Hops and Heresies came amongst us, it is a sawcy intruder into this Land, and its sold by usurpation; for the houses that doe sell Beere onely, are nicknamed Ale houses; marke beloved, an Ale-house is never called a Beere-house, but a Beere-house would have but small custome, if it did not falsly carry the name of an Ale-house; also it is common to say a Stand of Ale, it is not onely a Stand, but it will make a man understand, or stand under; but Beere is often called a Hogshead, which all rationall men doe know is but a swinish expression:

Here we are 300 years (and 15 generations) past the Black Death, yet the English uppercrust still can’t accept that Englishmen drink Beer.  But it’s all over.  Beer is an integral part of English life.  In another 100 years, IPAs come into being.   And another 100 years later, William Younger gives us XXS Stock Ale with ~10% ABV and 137 IBUs {thanks to robc for that link}.

So, remember folks – without rats; IPAs wouldn’t exist.  And the world just wouldn’t be the same.