[Sca-cooks] Beverages, was Royal authenticity

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach AEllin Olafs dotter:
>Small beer has been mentioned a few times, but I don't know anything 
>about it but the name. Is there anything  like it currently 
>available? I was wondering about Malta, though that's totally a wild 
>guess... I'm not familiar with that, either. Anyone know?

Maybe bottled kvass. It'd be nice if the Old Peculier people made a 
Lite Beer; that would probably be ideal. The process for making small 
beer (and therefore, for practical purposes, what it is) has been 
fully described elsewhere, but small beer tends to be both low in 
alcohol content, but also fairly low in dextrins/body. It's light and 
not very filling compared to, say, a bock or a porter. As has been 
said, it's often the result of a second infusion of previously mashed 
and infused malt (like a second cup of tea from the same tea leaves). 
Some recipes seem to simply be tailored to produce a weaker product 
on the first infusion.

Small beer is a good way for people like laborers in the summer to 
have access to a decent beverage that won't knock them out even if 
drunk in quantity, even where the water may not be entirely safe to 
drink (IOW, it's been boiled, at least as of late period).

Malta, on the other hand, is different from small beer in that it's 
been brewed quite strongly: as strong as porter, generally, but the 
malt has been mashed on the hot side, resulting in heavier, 
relatively non-fermentable sugars, which is why it tends to be sweet, 
thick, and generally non-alcoholic.

Some malta actually contains a fair kick to it, though.

In response to some earlier questions about the fresh small ales 
we've sometimes done in Ostgardr, all I can say is they were done in 
response to some of the Viking sagas which mention great heroic 
deeds, followed by a feast day, for which there is, of course, a 
brewing and a baking: fresh bread and ale of some kind, both of which 
are no more than maybe twelve hours old. Which, if you've been eating 
dried flatbread from the previous autumn, may be considered a big 
deal.

Some have been brewed from grain on the day of the feast, with a 
minimal flavoring gruit (sage is great), and we've even made some 
from dried malt extract, sometimes with a little added flavor in that 
case. It's about as easy as adding water to lemonade mix (and not 
much more expensive), but relatively uncommon as SCA feast drinks go. 
Kinda like drinking a glass of Grape Nuts cereal, flavor-wise.

For those not into the whole mashed-malt thing, the same sort of 
thing can be made with honey, water, and flavorings, and at the very 
least, there's a near-period precedent for this in some of Digby's 
recipes.

Adamantius