I can see it. Do I want to till the fields for bread or for booze? There are berries on those bushes over there if I’m hungry but there’s no Quik-Trip where I can grab a six-pack.
Also, if you drink beer you won’t get sick like you will from unprocessed water in the wild.
This. This is why beer proliferated. And mead. And any number of fermented beverages.
And getting drunk making existing more manageable when life is terrible doesn’t hurt.
You know, I wonder just how much that was the point back then. Probably more than we will ever know.
What do you mean, “back then?” Yesterday?
I have to laugh, mostly because last night I went to see my girlfriend at the bar she works at. Excellent point, Benny. It’s not changed at all. People drink to escape.
However, we no longer have to drink because it’s cleaner than water.
It probably wasn’t easy to get drunk off of ancient beer. First it was pretty thick, more like a bread soup or gruel than a beverage. Second, until casking and two-stage fermentation were developed, the alcohol content was pretty weak – like something you’d drink in Utah.
Wine was typically much stronger (up to 20% alcohol in Roman times) and that or the Greek “barley wine” was your go-to drink for tying one on.
It was also flat, most containers were not airtight so no pressure could develop for CO2 natural carbonation. In climates where temps reached freezing, though, they would use that as a method of extracting higher alcohol from beer, ala eisbock.
But you have to think, when beer was the equivalent of water, drinking a gallon or so a day would still leave you feeling quite toasty.
Ancient beer was like chocolate milk?
I googled it and they said they ‘remove the ice that forms’. How are the phases separating? I thought it was miscible. Marangoni effect?
I have not made an eisbock, but the technique involves low temp lagering. Lagering is fermentation with yeast that is active at lower temperatures than ales. In a cold climate, those would have been preferred. Part of the fermentation period keeps things warm as yeast gobbles up the sugars from malts, resulting in byproducts of alcohol and heat. As that starts to fade, the temp of the lagered beer starts to drop. Since we’re talking about low temp lagering (near or below freezing) The water within the vessel will freeze. Alcohol will not. So at that early stage of freezing, the ice is simply pulled out. The resultant leftovers still have water and the remaining alcohol, but since that water volume is lower, you’re left with a higher alcohol beer.
The process is labor intensive, since you’re babysitting that tail end of fermentation when you’ll get the freeze. I think that’s the issue with why eisbocks aren’t made often. But you can imagine a different time when you had nothing to do but watch the process, it would have been a cold weather favorite.
EDIT: Also from what I understand it became known later on (1800s?), but I’m willing to bet that somewhere, someone else figured this out, it just didn’t become famous until Reichelbrau sold it.
Interesting, I didn’t know there’s a strain of yeast that thrives at that temp.
I’m still not sure how it separates. If they’re in solution together the freezing point of the mixture will drop. Anyway, the phases separate somehow and stronger beer is the result.
Ahh, gotcha. The process is known as fractional freezing. Bonus, the same technique can be used to desalinate sea water.
Most don’t. They will lager a bit higher temp than that, then drop it for the freezing process. Lager yeasts can tolerate pretty low temps though, 38-40 degrees F.
Ah I see, not at the eutectic point. I shoulda figured.
U.S. News: Sessions Hints at Shift in Federal Marijuana Enforcement
Sessions said that the department is looking “very hard right now” at a directive carried over from the Obama administration that effectively encourages federal prosecutors to generally defer to state laws that legalize marijuana use.
“We had meetings yesterday and talked about it at some length,” the attorney general said, speaking at a press conference on new measures to combat opioid abuse. “It’s my view that the use of marijuana is detrimental, and we should not give encouragement in any way to it, and it represents a federal violation, which is in the law and it’s subject to being enforced, and our priorities will have to be focused on all the things and challenges we face.”
While Tom has explained that we should not wish or threaten death to those we hate… I will say that if Sessions was burning in a gutter, I would not piss on him. I hope that’s okay.
Well, you wouldn’t want to get any pee on the marshmallows.
Wow, it really is an all out assault on the ‘millenial’ demographic. Net Neutrality going, CFPB destroyed, environmental protections eliminated, eliminating student loan deductions, and now revisiting the war on weed at full power.
Hey young people, FUCKING VOTE (I say this as a younger member here who does, but lives in Illinois so is about as meaningful as a fart in the wind)