[Sca-cooks] Beverages, small beer, allowable alcohol content

[Christine Seelye-King]

I knew this conversation sounded really familiar, and going back through my
Beverages file, I found several things I saved when I brought up the
question about how low the alcohol content would have to be in order to be
legal.  Below is a chunk of the conversation, mostly between myself and the
esteemed Adamantius (whom I had a dream about last night - Fred Flintstone
doing some hand-sewing on his new toga...mind you, we've never met...maybe
that pasta salad I ate for dinner had been sitting too long....)
:)
Christianna

Adamantius wrote:
> > Okay, rather than tell you again all about SCA funds, let's try
> > another way to put this in perspective. You know drinks like Malta
> Goya, or the various near-beers, which are theoretically non-alcoholic, at
least
>> > for practical purposes? Once upon a time, these beverages (before
> > pasteurization of beers) logged in at under 1% alcohol. Modern,
> > crappy American beer, that awful pseudo-pilsener made with lovely stuff
> > like unmalted rice and corn, measure in at something like 5-6% or less.
> I would guess, very rough estimate, y'unnerstand, that small beer gets
> > you something like 2%. Of course it varies greatly depending on how the
> > malt was mashed, for example, if it was a hot mash and there are a lot
> of dextrins, and therefore fewer fermentable sugars, the ale is lower
> > in alcohol, and a second running will be commensurately lower.

Christianna replied:
>         Yes, yes, I know all about the legality issues, I'm trying to find
out
> what the parameters are, I guess.  I think your answer above tells me
> what I was assuming, (and we all know where that will get you), that
> near-beer is presumably close to small beer.  Would near-beer be ok to
> serve at an event?  If so, and you made something that was under whatever
> the allowable  %  of alcohol was, can you serve it?  (For the purposes of
> this argument, let's assume we're not talking about donated goods, but
> raw materials purchased with feast funds, then turned into fizzy drinks.)

_IN THEORY_... it ought to be possible to mash malt (and any brewers you
know might want to investigate using adjunct specialty malts for this,
such as dextrine malt or crystal/caramel malt, in which case mashing
isn't much of an issue) at a temperature such that the sugars produced
in conversion from starch are mostly unfermentable, i.e. too
complex/heavy, all they do is produce a rich mouth feel and a good head
of foam, but don't taste very sweet or feed yeast adequately.

With that in mind, one of Charlie Papazian's books on home brewing (the
second one, I forget the title, but it might be "The New Joy of Home
Brewing") has a recipe for a dextrinous, heavy, "near-beer", based more
or less on the Latin American Malta formulas, essentially near-stout.
Using such a recipe, it ought to be possible for an experienced brewer
your way to tinker a bit and come up with a suitably weak, pale,
medievalish ale (really dark [English] ales seem to be 18th-19th
centuries, as far as I can tell, given Markham's malting instructions,
among other evidence) that is also less than 1% alcohol, with just
enough fermentable sugars to allow carbonation in bottles, if you want
it that way.

Now, this is all theoretical. Of course, if one wanted to make doubly
sure and donate the materials so as to avoid SCA liability, and thereby
risk incurring personal liability to an unknown extent, I will point out
that five gallons of such ale, probably enough for at least forty
breakfasts, would probably cost about $8 - 10 US, and that's in devalued
New York currency ;  ).

Of course, I could not in good conscience advise such a course...

 Adamantius seenoevilhearnoevilspeaknoevilnohablaespanol


> Why?  What I am after here is a way to serve something period, within the
> limits of the SCA bylaws and Copora.  If one can determine the level at
> which fizz does not equal alcohol (my lord tells me it is below .05%),
> and prepare a beverage that stays under that acceptable level, why would
> the course not be sound?

I knew I shoulda included the little smiley face emoticon...

The unfortunate reality is that the deeper you dig into Corpora, the
clearer it becomes that the intent is to eliminate SCA liability
connected to alcoholic beverages in any way, shape, and form. There is
no legally definable alcohol percentage that the SCA will sanction;
neither Milpitas nor their insurance carrier is gonna say, oh, .05%,
that's okay, then. (Although I'd guess the better quality near-beers and
yeast-carbonated sodas were more like .5%.) What may happen is that some
BoD member would tell you, privately, that they have more important
things to worry about, and to use discretion and common sense in
supporting the spirit of the rule. Which is what you're trying to do, of
course. It's just that discretion and common sense aren't easily
quantifiable. The trouble is that there are times when it is simply
impossible to reconcile periodicity with modern legal restrictions. I
don't think this is the case here, but it's easy to get in logistical
trouble when you start worrying more about the letter of the law rather
than the intent of it.

> Don't get me wrong here, I'm not a big beer drinker, and wouldn't relish
> it at breakfast.  But, over and over again in the sources it says so much
> wine, ale and beer or small beer.

True, but we can only guess at the alcohol content, and many of us,
myself included, are a little shaky even on the equivalent weights and
measures from period to period and in place to place. And, let's not
forget that England, in the 15th through the 18th centuries and beyond,
had a reputation on the Continent as being a nation of hard drinkers. If
Queen Elizabeth I washed down her cornflakes (so to speak) with a quart
of ale (and there's no guarantee she even touched all that was served to
her, let alone finished it), the strong possibility exists that she was
simply used to what some of us may regard as excesses, and that many of
us would have gotten a close-up view of the floor under Elizabeth's
table if we went cup-for-cup with her. Puck excepted, no doubt.

If you're interested in recreating the beverages in an upper-class
period breakfast, and yet remain within the rules outlined in Corpora,
even though those two sets of criteria are arguably at odds, your best
bet is probably to limit the alcohol present in the ways several people
have discussed, and/or see to it that SCA funds aren't used for this
project. Which is why I provided a guess on the costs.

> My next step in this logic is that it
> should be possible to water down wine to a similar level of acceptable
> alcohol levels, and serve that (please don't jump on me for not telling
> folks there's wine in something, or not having  an alternative.  I
> wouldn't do that.)

I'm sure you wouldn't. I know some people immediately began quoting
chapter and verse from Corpora instead of responding to your actual
question, but I didn't think I was one of them. I may have been unclear
in my jibes about that.

> Isn't there a way to do this, short of buying
> O'Doul's and serving that at brekkers?

Sure. Make your own, or have another brewer you trust do it for you, and
you can have a product that is immeasurably higher in quality and period
accuracy, probably coming in at less than 1% alcohol. Consider donating
it, or finding someone else who can/will; it's not expensive. Above all,
I think, with respect, you should worry less about reconciling the total
period experience with the SCA's version of legality, because in this
case I think you're going to find it's impossible. Instead, you should
just do your best and have a good time doing it. Which I don't need to
tell you ;  ) .

Hey, here's a thought that I don't think anybody has mentioned in detail
yet. If you _really_ want to serve a perod ale at breakfast, you could
simply brew it on site. Work it into the event as a hands-on
teaching/research project. You could probably do it on, say, Friday
night in the case of one of the Meridien weekend-long events. Somewhere,
there's a record of a law on the books in Oxford (Cindy can doubtless
provide details) that says a brewer/tavern owner may not sell ale that
has not sat and settled for at least six hours prior to sale. This
suggests that the practice of selling new ale was probably pretty
widespread. What you'd be serving would be, essentially, unfermented
ale, with virtually no alcohol, but just the taste of the malt and any
flavorings you chose to add, which might or might not include hops.
Would it taste like Guinness Stout, Heineken, or my own favorite,
Chimay? No. Would it taste bad? No, because the only way it might suffer
is in comparison to certain modern beers and when modern criteria are
applied, which is clearly unfair. Not bad, just unlike a modern beer, as
anybody who's done any perod brewing knows. It actually tastes more than
a bit like sweetened, iced tea, especially when you cool your wort in an
oak vat. Would it have any alcohol? None to speak of. And it is a good
representation of a period beverage? Absolutely!

Adamantius, Sometime Evil Period Brewer
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com