[Sca-cooks] Ale with soup consistency

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

The Sumerians strained their better beer. Otherwise, many drank it through  
a straw (sometimes literally, sometimes of metal) to get past a soup of  
impurities on top. 
 
Tacitus' comment on beer being like the Roman wine is only I think meant to 
 point out that it was an alcoholic drink, not anything precise about the  
quality. This was roughly the equivalent of seeing a rhinoceros and, lacking 
any  other point of comparison, saying it looked like a horse with a horn - 
which  resulted of course in the invention of a very different animal.
 
As it is, it is curious that Tacitus seemed unaware of the drink, since  
Roman soldiers were drinking it in Britain just then and Rome had long ruled  
Egypt, where it actually taxed the beer. But this fitful ignorance on the 
part  of Latin speakers endured into the early Middle Ages and probably speaks 
more to  the uncertainty of the transmission of ideas than anything else.

http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/04/stumbling-through-history-towards-beer.
html
 
Otherwise, I would think the go-to guy for beer history is Martyn Cornell,  
whose blog is here:
http://zythophile.co.uk/

If you  contact him though just be aware that he runs his mail through a 
site-hosting  service which tries to scare you into signing up before assuring 
you your mail  will get through. I did so and have been unsubscribing from 
their spam ever  since.
 
 
Jim  Chevallier
_www.chezjim.com_ (http://www.chezjim.com/) 

FRENCH BREAD HISTORY:  Late medieval bread
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2015/06/french-bread-history-late-medieval-brea
d.html





In a message dated 7/19/2015 1:39:17 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
carlton_bach at yahoo.de writes:

. I have  read a few references to poorly strained or unstrained ale (never 
bothered to  check the source since it was all about rural England). Other 
cultures  routinely do not strain their brews. But here, I have no 
documentation.  

Best
Giano

On Jul 18, 2015, at 7:11 PM, Terry Decker  <t.d.decker at att.net> wrote:

> This may be the "plena cervisia"  (full bodied ale) referenced in the 
Domesday Book.  You might also check  Tacitus to check his comments on beer in 
Germania.  As I recall, he  speaks of it being similar to Roman wine (which, 
IIRC, was commonly sweet and  thick).