[Sca-cooks] small beer

[Stefan li Rous]

Phillipa asked:
> Speaking of which... What is the alcohol content/percentage of regular beer and of small beer and would current day light beer be akin to small beer?

There are likely to be other differances between our regular beer and the
medieval small beer, than just the alcohol percentage. More experienced
brewers feel free to correct me.
Most of our modern beers seem to be highly filtered. Particularly for the
lower classes, this is not likely to have been true in period. I suspect
the small beer was fairly "chewy" with more grain particles and such.
Perhaps thicker than say "Coors" or "Budweiser".


Was this small beer, really "beer" or was it actually an "ale"? The

former having hops added. Since I believe the hops and other herbs
were added for lengthen the time the beer would last, as well as
perhaps for flavor, I'm not sure this would have been added for small
beer as that was drunk rather fresh. I believe the main reason the
alcohol level was low was the short brewing time.


Small beer seems to have been drunk like we do soft drinks and was often
one of the boons given to peasants bringing in the lord's harvest.

Stefan
Small beer - it's not just for breakfast
--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas         StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****