Beer in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (review)

Entertainingly written and amply illustrated and referenced, Unger's book on the beginnings of commercial brewing will be of interest to beer lovers; experts in economic, social, cultural, legal, medical, and food history; anthropologists; philologists; and feminists. Inspired by Peacock's eight stages in the development of pottery production, the author traces the history of beer brewing from its beginnings to circa 1700.¹ Given the enormous size and importance of the northern European beer industry, reflected in a wealth of diverse sources, Unger's comprehensive study, the first of its kind, is primarily descriptive, but also analytical in its attempts to outline emerging patterns.

Following a brief introductory chapter, Chapter 2 deals with the evidence of beer brewing in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Rome, until early medieval monasticism, and the beginnings of a tax on beer production through the control of gruit, a popular herb additive. Along with urbanization in Europe came the commercialization of brewing in the High Middle Ages, a process that Unger documents in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 treats the addition of hops, which made beer more durable, and as such a major commodity for trade and a source of tax revenue. The large-scale production of hopped beer for export in Bremen, Hamburg, and other towns of the Hanseatic League eventually led to the adoption of hopped beer and hopped-beer brewing across northern Europe, and as far south as Bavaria, and Austria. Chapter 5 reports that the northern Low Countries were first to import hopped beer from Germany and to adopt the technique and become exporters themselves. Gruit tax became hop tax before it was replaced altogether by a tax on the production and trade of beer.

In Chapter 6, Unger follows the spread of hopped-beer brewing to the southern Low Countries, England, and Scandinavia. The author devotes ample space to England, where the introduction of hopped-beer brewing took a path slightly different from that in the rest of Europe. Since ale enjoyed the status of a national drink, and resistance to hopped beer came from the highest levels in England, the Dutch not only exported hopped beer to England but also were the first brewers of hopped beer in England.

According to Unger, by the late 1400s, hopped-beer brewing had become a mature industry with production in nucleated workshops and an extensive network of trading. Chapters 7 to 13 are dedicated to the "golden age of brewing" from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, containing a number of fascinating tables. The levels of production and consumption are discussed in Chapters 7 and 8; Chapter 9 focuses on brewing technology as evident in early brewing literature and legislation. Chapter 10 deals with aspects of capital investment and innovation, including the ratio of capital to labor, raw materials, and growth in the scale of production. Modern readers inundated with beer advertising will find Chapter 11 on the naming and marketing of beers during the period particularly interesting. Chapter 12 focuses on taxation. Regulations ranging from who could enter the trade to how the casks had to be marked were strictly enforced by towns that frequently derived half or more of their tax revenue from the beer industry. Chapter 13 looks at the brewing profession, the formation of guilds, the training of brewery workers, the size of breweries, and the question of gender. Unlike in most other trades, women continued to play an important role in beer making, even after commercial brewing had replaced household production. Unger concludes his book with a brief discussion of the factors that led to the decline of brewing in Europe, among them the substitution of imports by local products and competition from wine, brandy, gin, coffee, tea, and cocoa.

Unger's book contains a wealth of information, much...