Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

5. The Spread of Hopped Beer Brewing: The Northern Low Countries

Chapter  The Spread of Hopped Beer Brewing: The Northern Low Countries The first phase in the development of northern European brewing was achieved by  with an urban brewing industry in place, and the breweries in towns producing beer for a commercial market. There was a distribution network and regulations at various levels of government covering production and selling. Consumers were familiar with and used to beer, beer of a certain type. There was a market prepared to accept variant types with the necessary structure to absorb different types of beer. The second phase, the development of a new product, had been accomplished by brewers in north German port towns by the thirteenth century. German shippers introduced that superior drink, beer made with hops, into other markets. The shock of imports of German hopped beer to the Low Countries precipitated the third stage in the development of northern European brewing. Wine and Hopped Beer The cultivation of grapes and the making of wine expanded in early medieval Europe. The ritual of the Latin Christian church made wine a necessity, so by the thirteenth century it was produced almost everywhere. As a commodity of commerce, wine was adopted a little more slowly. By the later Middle Ages viticulture was practiced throughout southern and western Europe, even in England, and through lands with German speakers. It reached eastern Prussia by the fourteenth century. The height of viticulture in the Low Countries did not occur until the later Middle Ages, just as the brewing industry began its dramatic expansion.1 The wines produced in the Rhine and Moselle valleys were much better than those produced farther east and so were traded, but shipping them over any distance raised their prices. In Strasbourg wine cost about as much as beer while in Nuremberg, French wines were . times as costly as beer. In Hamburg the ratio was  to  and in Cracow  to .2 Wines had problems of infection and deterioration and did not necessarily improve Northern Low Countries  with age or travel so most wine had to be consumed when it was very young. In northeastern Europe beer enjoyed a price advantage over wine. The addition of hops which improved the durability of beer made the drink a higher quality product, able, some consumers decided, to compete with wine. The development of quality beer with hops made possible not only the long-term growth of the brewing industry, but also the gradual erosion of the market for wine and the slow migration south and west of the border between the regions where wine was preferred to beer. A Goliardic poem, probably from the second half of the twelfth century, talks about a battle between wine and beer. By that date, and probably before, the two drinks were seen to compete and for consumers there was at least a theoretical question of choice. The poet said that in Germany, Hainault, Brabant, in Flanders, in the empire of Frederick Barbarossa, and Saxony, beer was widely consumed by all estates, classes, and groups of men. The implication was that in areas to the south and west beer was not a common drink. Even though beer was widely drunk, the poet makes clear in the half of the poem devoted to wine that beer came in second place in the competition between the two. Wine makes the old young, gives light to the eyes, and takes cares from the heart. As in two nearly contemporary poems by Peter of Blois, wine is said to have more positive effects on health than beer. The idea that beer was inferior to wine proved highly durable . The Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum, produced in southern Italy around , claimed wine was better than beer because beer caused longer and less pleasant intoxication and because the fumes and vapors of beer were grosser than those of wine, hence it was harder to clear them from the brain. Farther north in the Italian peninsula, Aldobrandino of Siena in  talked about beer made from oats, wheat, and barley claiming that beer made with oats and wheat was better because it did not cause as much gas. For him, beer made from rye or rye bread with mint and wild celery as additives was the best kind of beer. Whatever the ingredients, he nonetheless complained that beer harmed the head and the stomach, caused bad breath, ruined the teeth, filled the stomach with bad fumes, caused the drinker to get drunk quickly, facilitated urination, and made the flesh white and...