Yeast for fermenting beer?

[torjusg]

How did they ferment the beer in the old days? I know that one can spark sourdough from the white-gray fungi that grows on the aspen, but what about beer?

Torjus Gaaren

 

[match]

Beer, like a lot of good inventions, was an accidental discovery.

If you make a bread dough and leave it out - it will develop into sourdough of its own accord from natural yeast infection, causing the dough to rise (and become alcoholic). Baking causes the alcohol to evaporate however.

Now, if you make runny porridge and do the same, it will also turn into sourdough - the difference is that if you eat it as a porridge instead of baking it - the alcohol stays in the mix and you get the full effects.

Over the years people realised that adding a bit of a previous batch of beer to a newbatch of 'porridge' also made it turn into beer - so the process of selecting of yeasts based on flavour and alcohol strength began.

Of course, if you decide you want hot beery porridge, put it over the fire in your cave, leave it to boil and forget about it, the alcohol evaporates, condenses on the roof, runs down and forms a puddle of stronger alcohol - and you've just invented distillation

If you want to know more about the history of brewing, then try to get hold of a book called 'Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers' - a fascinating book on the social anthropology of ancient and modern brewing techniques whicvh I can highly recommend. It comes complete with a lot of recipes gleaned by the author on his travels round the world studying traditional brewing techniques, myths and stories (now theres a job I want... )

 

[torjusg]

Thank you for the good info.

I thought that it may have been invented that way. Seems like commercial yeast speeds up the process a lot.

I'll see what I do.

Torjus Gaaren

 

[Ketchup]

I posted this somewhere earlier.
In many societies, "spontaneous fermentation" is still the way to brew beer. I helped preparing kassiri (cassava beer) with Carib Indians in Surinam. They chew cassave bread and spit it in a big (plastic) container, add water and leave it in the sun. Next day, it's turned into potent stuff!!!

In the area around Brussels, Lambic beers are fermented spontaneously, the yeast simply drop out of the air into the mash. But the process is only controllable in winter. There are too many yeasts and bacteria around in summer. Check your history books. Winter used to be brewing time everywhere in Europe.

 

[Keith_Beef]

The other two just about covered it.

When you know how fermentation can spontaneously happen, all you need is to get it right once. After that, you use a culture that you keep going from one brew to the next.

The real breakthrough must have been when fermentation happened for the first few observed and understood occasions.

I strongly suspect that beer, bread and cheese (or yoghurt) were invented within a very short span of time.


K.

 

[match]

Yoghurt and cheese were probably discovered through the use of badly cleaned animal stomachs as liquid carriers. Cows stomachs contain large amounts of rennet which is used to separate curds and whey in cheesemaking, and the bacteria responsible for yoghurt production are also found in many animal stomachs.

 

[Keith_Beef]

Yoghurt and cheese were probably discovered through the use of badly cleaned animal stomachs as liquid carriers. Cows stomachs contain large amounts of rennet which is used to separate curds and whey in cheesemaking, and the bacteria responsible for yoghurt production are also found in many animal stomachs.

And I believe the pre-Mycenean Greeks used to consume large quantities of grain pounded with milk or yoghourt, which when left might have fermented like blin (pancake) batter.


K.

 

[ilan]

Today commercial brewers take a lot of care of the yeast culture for it gives some of the special flavours. often scrapping the entire yeast culture save a few carfully selected cells then regrowing . Of course in the old days beer was not as strong as todays brews most being 3% or less as they were for consuming in large amounts as the alcohol tended to kill any more sinister bacterior .

 

[TwoFourAlpha]

On an almost completely unrelated note- Boddingtons brewery- 'The Cream of Manchester' - until they closed the brewery and sacked all the staff, that is- managed to let their yeast strain die back in the Eighties, and try as they might, they never managed to recreate the flavour that was lost.

Not that I drink that sell-out muck any more.

Manc and proud.

 

[Keith_Beef]

Of course in the old days beer was not as strong as todays brews most being 3% or less as they were for consuming in large amounts as the alcohol tended to kill any more sinister bacterior .

There is a myth going round, that people used to drink beer rather than water due to the fact that the alcohol in the beer made it safer to drink.

Now, while it is true that the water was often unsafe, and that the beer was safer, this had next to nothing to do with the alcohol.

To brew beer, you boil the water and barley to dissolve the sugars and starches. This sterilizes the mash.

The rapid proliferation of the yeast then prevents bacteria from multiplying.

Finally, the phenolic compounds in the hops act as a mild antiseptic, preventing the beer from spoiling (if well kept).

A meagre 3% alcohol content is not sufficient to sterilize the liquid. Dry wine, at 12% will spoil if left open to the air, and turn to vinegar. Imagine a beer at around 3% or 4% with more unfermented sugar left in it...


K.

 

[neo_wales2000]

There is yeast in dandruff, if you get stuck

 

[Ketchup]

There is a myth going round, that people used to drink beer rather than water due to the fact that the alcohol in the beer made it safer to drink.
Now, while it is true that the water was often unsafe, and that the beer was safer, this had next to nothing to do with the alcohol.
To brew beer, you boil the water and barley to dissolve the sugars and starches. This sterilizes the mash.....

Exactly. It shows how difficult it is to understand the reasoning of people in pre-Pasteur times. In my country; the myth recounts Saint Arnold arrived in a village where there was a 'plague'. He put his shepherd's crook into the brewing vat and decreed: "don't drink water, drink beer". The villagers soon recovered. Arnold became patron saint of the brewers.

In many places, beer was the only drink in the household, morning, noon and evening. A worker's family was partly paid in beer by the employer, with volumes upto 12 liters a day!! Santé!