Oldest beer in Britain?

FortuitousFluke · 23 Jun 2017 at 09:19

Just go the whole hog, get yourself a handmade leather jerkin, a horse and cart, and then pop to your local Greene King and order a flagon of mead.

Avenged7Fold · 23 Jun 2017 at 09:39

Glanza said:
Is Guinness considered the oldest 'off the shelf' ?

Guinness is as much a British beer, as San Miguel is a Spanish one

Tuppy_Glossop · 23 Jun 2017 at 09:47

vanpeebles said:
You can buy some made to that original pre-hop recipe but I cant remember the name. It tasted awful though, bit like fermented grass cuttings.

They used to use wormwood for flavouring which is the original ingredient in Absinthe. Some wormwood extracts are psychoactive so it is possible that ale was a bit psychedelic back in the day.

Tunney · 23 Jun 2017 at 10:02

Dogfish used to sell a beer that used an ancient Egyptian recipe. Doesn't look like they sell it anymore though (probably because it tastes grim).

Feek · 23 Jun 2017 at 13:29

Avenged7Fold said:
Guinness is as much a British beer, as San Miguel is a Spanish one

Well I seem to remember that San Miguel was originally made in Asia (by Spaniards) but what's not British about Guinness?

Avenged7Fold · 23 Jun 2017 at 13:47

Feek said:
Well I seem to remember that San Miguel was originally made in Asia (by Spaniards) but what's not British about Guinness?

Where is it from?

San Miguel is actually a Filipino beer that become popular in Spain much later and so the rights to Spanish San Miguel was sold off to a separate Spanish entity.

Sliver · 23 Jun 2017 at 13:59

Beer sucks. Vodka is king.

Feek · 23 Jun 2017 at 14:54

Avenged7Fold said:
Where is it from?

Doh, it's Dublin isn't it. Clearly a colourblind moment on my part. Oops.

cheesyboy · 23 Jun 2017 at 14:56

My friend once drank a can of Fosters that was 9 years out of date.

Avenged7Fold · 23 Jun 2017 at 15:07

Feek said:
Doh, it's Dublin isn't it. Clearly a colourblind moment on my part. Oops.

I was expecting you to come back with a 'actually, it originated from a small English village' sort of fact and blow my mind.

TheMightyTen · 23 Jun 2017 at 15:28

Avenged7Fold said:
I was expecting you to come back with a 'actually, it originated from a small English village' sort of fact and blow my mind.

Well Dublin translated form Gaelic to English means Blackpool so sort of

Tuppy_Glossop · 23 Jun 2017 at 15:30

Avenged7Fold said:
I was expecting you to come back with a 'actually, it originated from a small English village' sort of fact and blow my mind.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s Guinness relied on the very best Oxbridge graduates to analyse and perfect its processes, including brewing. One particularly famous example is William Gosset who developed the Student's t-test methodology (apparently after studying yeast in fermentation). He is the "Student".

Do I win a fiver ?

Angilion · 23 Jun 2017 at 18:03

Tuppy_Glossop said:
In Britain ale was the only drink until the 15th century. In this sense ale means a fermented malt drink flavoured with roots and herbs but, crucially, not hops. Hops were brought over from Europe in the 15th and were originally added to ale (to make beer) as a preservative. It wasn't until the 16th century that the hops were appreciated as an essential part of the flavour profile. Ale, as it was originally made, ceased to be popular by the 17th century. Since then hopped beer has reigned supreme.

That distinction isn't necessarily right. It's more common to define "beer" as the overall type of drink regardless of additional flavourings. With that definition, ale is a subset of beer and lager is another subset of beer and the distinction between the two is the type of yeast used. You can see this is common usage by the fact that ale was still called ale after hops became almost always used and still is today. Then there are subsets within subsets, e.g. pale ale, pilsner, etc, etc.

The usage may of course change in the future, but right now beer is beer whether it has hops or not.

Going back to the OP's question, I vaguely recalled something I'd seen in an article on archaeology and checked it a bit. The oldest known extant recipe for beer is Sumerian and is ~4000 years old. Brewers have tried to recreate it. It's difficult because the recipe is in the form of a hymn in praise of their god of (amongst other things) beer and not a clearly stated detailed recipe, but people have recreated equipment based on archaeological discoveries and successfully brewed beer with it using only ingredients known to have existed at that time in that place and in a way that matches with the hymn.

Tuppy_Glossop · 23 Jun 2017 at 21:51

It most certainly isn't the current usage, good point. :cool: