SC - Small Beer?

[Lee-Gwen Booth]

> Is "small beer" a lighter, lower-alcohol version
> of what would have been drunk later in the day?  
Small beer, as I understand it, was made form the second sparge run from the 
mash. (Today it is made from a comparativly diluted wort.)
The process of getting fermentable sugar from grain, involved three steps,
Malting, mashing, and sparging.
Malting starts the sprouting process, to release the plants own enzymes that
converth the grain's starches into maltose and other sugars.
Mashing takes the Grain, crushes it, and adds heat and water to allow the 
natural enzymes to do a more complete job of converting the sugars than
would be possible otherwise.
Sparging ( lautering) is the process of running hot water through the mashed 
grain to rinse out the sugars.
The rinse water then is called "wort" and is used as the base to make the 
beer.
The sugars come out strongly at first, and as the process continues there 
is naturally less sugar in the grain, so the wort contains less sugar as you 
go along.

The first, strongest, runs take longer to brew, and make heavier and stronger 
ales or beers. After these are boiled and flavored with spices or hops, they are 
innoculated with yeast and put aside to ferment and age. The grain is 
washed again to get as much sugar as possible. this much weaker liquid
ferments and finishes quickly. ( it is still boiled first, which is why it was so 
popular as a "common" beverage for all ages, because the natural yuckey 
stuff from the effluvia of the villiage upstream was killed in the boiling!)

So if a very diluted malt beer is made, usually put up the same day or soon 
after and drunk within a week, before the ferment really finishes. this results
in a lightly fizzy, and somewhat sweet drink. Kinda the "soda" of it's day.

> I have a recipe for a
> lemon-beer, three days, 10 lemons, some sugar, a package of baking yeast,
> water, and voila!, you have a fizzy lemon drink, not enough fermentation
> to have much alcohol (and just how much is another question, when does it
> cross that line and become too much to be used for our purposes) but just
> enough to be fizzy.  

Whoa!! invest in a better yeast, you'll taste a lot less yeast, and the finish 
will be crisper and more lemony. 
I've never like the results of using baking yeast in beverages... 
the results are usually cloudy and "bready"

"Premier Cuvee" is a good all purpose yeast I would recommend for this 
recipe. It keeps a long time in the fridge in active dry form, and it is widely 
available at local and on-line brew/wine shops, and is inexpensive.

> I don't think this is a period recipe, but it is a
> very simple, easy to make beverage.  

Nope not period at all. the use of sugar for fermentation was more likely
in sugar producing areas, such as East India, and was not common in 
Europe because it was rather expensive to blow it on making small beer 
for breakfast and thirst quenching during the day.  
It would be like making pure milkfed veal steaks every day for breakfast. 
Nice occasionally, but too expensive for every day.

Brandu