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| Britain |
| Men have women to thank for making beer popular |
| 2010-04-02 |
| Posted by:tipper |
#7 I'll toast all of you with Ninkasi's Sumerian Ale. After Passover is over, of course.
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| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2010-04-02 22:49 |
| #6 "Men have women to thank for making beer popular" Men may have to thank women for making beer, but beer made itself popular among men. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2010-04-02 19:28 |
| #5 Women have beer to thank for making marriage popular. |
| Posted by: Keeney 2010-04-02 13:38 |
| #4 ...suppose, in order to make my comparison as little complicated as possible, that he brews nothing but beer as strong as the generality of beer to be had at the public-house, and divested of the poisonous drugs which that beer but too often contains; and I shall further suppose that he uses in his family two quarts of this beer every day from the first of October to the last day of March inclusive; three quarts a day during the months of April and May; four quarts a day during the months of June and September; and five quarts a day during the months of July and August; and if this be not enough, it must be a family of drunkards. Here are 1097 quarts, or 274 gallons. Now, a bushel of malt will make eighteen gallons of better beer than that which is sold at the public-houses. That's from William Cobbett's Cottage Economy (link is just the brewing part). Once you get past the rant on tea, about halfway down, you come to a very interesting and useful discription of brewing at the level of a country household. Before the rise of craft brewing in the late '70s, this was one of the very few good descriptions of how to brew from malt at a small scale. It's still one of the best. I highly recommend the whole book, actually, it's available from Gutenberg, and it's in print. Check out William Cobbett on Wikipedia. |
| Posted by: KBK 2010-04-02 12:58 |
| #3 In fact for most of humankind's history men have performed the tasks who fed the family while women who were less productive (both for reason of strength and pregnancies) performed "auxiliary" tasks who made life more pleasnt. Thus when humans ate mostly game, women engaged in agriculture (if crops were bad it was not a such big deal) but once agriculture became critical for survival men ensured most/all of the work in the fields. In the same way, once brewing "became a professional sport" ie some families relied on it for providing most/all of their earnings, men had to take over since not having beer or only in small quantities (like when a woman has also to care for the children or exhausted due to pregnancy) was no longer an option |
| Posted by: JFM 2010-04-02 12:15 |
| #2 If it weren't for women, there would be no need for beer. |
| Posted by: gorb 2010-04-02 10:29 |
| #1 They may have a point. For most of human history, beer, wine, and later whiskey, was a way to store grain long past the time when it would have rotted. Especially in cooler climes, when food ran very low in early Spring. Thus, whoever ran the kitchen was the maker and keeper of the beer. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-04-02 10:17 |