SC - Small Feasts-'unplanned' LONG

[Woeller D]

  Agreed on principal. However, I feel I need to qualify that with my
  opinion that while there are some areas in which Digby appears to have
  been a quite influential brewer whose "career" might be regarded as a
  sort of turning point for the art, there are nonetheless many areas in
  which the art has remained consistent before, during, and after the time
  in which Digby lived, brewed, wrote, died, and was published.

Agreed.

BUT: it takes a rather learned hand to know the difference, and frequently
Digby as cited as if he had lived in period.  His brewing was (by and large)
a bit different than found in period, but part of a smooth evolution.

The sad truth is, however, that since his is one of the most accessible
sources, it is frequently the starting point for brewers.  The end result
are brewers who do not know to pick and choose amongst Digby's ideas, and
would not know how.

  On a similar note, Gervase Markham has also been placed as officially
  OOP by his 1615 publication date. I personally feel that Markham has
  quite a lot more to teach about brewing as a science than Digby, because
  the process of English-style infusion mashing is explained in quite
  clear detail, while Digby just speaks of pouring your boiling water over
  the malt, which, if followed to the letter, may well not result in
  anything drinkable.

At lease Markham was born in period.
  
  The other charge sometimes made against Markham, generally as an attempt
  to discredit his value as a nominally period source, is that he was a
  plagiarist. What many people who repeat this charge fail to take into
  account is that what he was accused of plagiarizing was his own work,
  over about the forty years previous to the publication of "The English
  Housewife". The charges of plagiarism were made by a consortium of
  publishers, who threatened to blackball him, essentially, if he
  attempted to recycle any more of his previous works. In other words,
  much of what was published in The English Housewife in 1615 had been
  previously published, by Markham, in the 1570's and '80's.

Anyone that would reject a period cookery or brewing handbook because of
plagiarism, has NO idea how much plagiarism took place in the period.

	Tibor
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