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Chapter  The Mature Industry: Technology Trying to identify and isolate the process innovation that formed the sixth stage of development in brewing in northern Europe is even more difficult than trying to establish when people mastered the new technique. At least it is certain that the pace of process innovation was slow. To get more from the earlier breakthrough, that is from the introduction of hops and all that went with it, brewers tried larger-scale production, even greater specialization , and more capital investment. The available evidence for what innovation actually did occur is limited at best and often ambiguous. It is by no means evenly distributed geographically, perhaps creating a false impression of where improvements were to be found. Treatises on Brewing Technology In the Renaissance, technical information about brewing could be and was communicated more easily than ever before. In distributing knowledge to other brewers sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers created much better sources of information on techniques than any which exist for earlier periods. Books on estate management increasingly included advice about beer brewing. Treatises devoted exclusively to brewing and the handling of beer began to appear in the sixteenth century. Those from Germany and England suggest not only a general tendency toward greater interest in categorizing and comprehending nature but also a more systematic approach to making beer. The works may have been largely descriptions of how to brew but, by definition, they were also theoretical works. The first German book on drinking beer came out in , just two years after Richard Arnold’s Chronicle, that first printed book in English on brewing. As early as , an anonymous author published a book in German on how to deal with serving beer, how to maintain its quality in the cask, and what to add to counteract deterioration during storage. Fresh eggs, salt, hops, a handful of ashes, and even a little wine at the right time could improve beer or save it from being undrinkable. The longer beer could be kept, the greater the need for some additives before serving.  Chapter  Combinations of herbs and eggs and even linseed oil were suggested to preserve the drink and to improve taste before serving.1 An English writer in  suggested putting a handful or two of ground malt in the barrel and stirring it around to revive beer that had started to go sour. He also suggested burying the barrel for twenty four hours or simply adding some new strong beer to it, or even putting in some oyster shells or salt. Presumably brewers and publicans in general drew on the well-established tradition of ways to deal with wine to make sure their beer was and remained palatable.2 By  there was already a book in German, Über Natur und Kräfte der Biere, by Johann Brettschneider who styled himself Placotomus. He was a professor of medicine at the University of Königsberg, town physician in Gdansk, and a friend of the reformer Philip Melanchthon. Placotomus pointed to the increasing consumption of beer in Germany as one of the reasons for writing the book. His principal concern was health: in general, he thought beer a good thing for consumers. Ludovici de Avila, writing on proper diet, in Germany in  said that if beer is not heated enough and then cooled too little, it is bad for the stomach; while if it is heated too much, it causes wind. Barley and hops were the ingredients he recommended and he warned against drinking beer too soon after brewing.3 His position was echoed by a seventeenth-century anonymous writer who pointed to the disadvantages of drinking cold beer. The author argued that in making beer the water should be heated but not boiled. The argument was punctuated with quotations from Galen, Pliny, Aristotle, and a broad range of classical writers.4 Abraham Werner, another professor of medicine but at the University of Wittenberg, in  published a largely etymological work on the origins of beer. He also endorsed beer drinking as being healthy. Thaddeus Hagesius published De Cerevisia in  and before that, in , Basil Valentine in England published a book on brewing. By the second half of the sixteenth century clearly brewing had become a topic worthy of consideration by scholars.5 Jacob Theodor von Bergzabern, who called himself Tabernaemontanus, was perhaps the most scholarly of the writers on beer. He was the personal physician of the count of Heidelberg. In , after thirty-six years of collecting information he published...

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