Period non booze drinks?

[Gregor]

What sort of non alcoholic drinks would be right for the various reenactment time periods?

[Effigy]

Fruit cordials, herbal infusions, milk drinks ... leave it with me I have some stuff on this. I'll hassle it into understandable form and post it soon.

[pmel018]

Don't forget smallbeer, the almost universal drink of the mdeieval period. Very low alcohol level, about 1%, brewed fresh and consumed young, basically a method of making safe drinking water as the brewing process deals with most of the common waterbourne bugs.
Phil

[Robbo]

*nods* Sorted.

There's a tonne of information on it, and all a fun read.

[crite40]

well it's mostly been said.
Ale (not beer, no use of hops until about 1300/1400) both large and small.
You can still buy very low alchohol cider flaoured with elder flowers in Sweden.
Even kids can drink it as its only about o.6% alchohol so I guess that's like small beer.
Its a very nice drink, I drank a lot of it there back in 1997.
Mead (of course), but early brewing techniques meant that it was tricky to make and very slow fermenting. That, as much as the cost of honey made it expensive.
Finally, of course, imported wine. From sources I have read this was NOT for the ususal casual "booze-up". It seems you could get a couple of strong thralls for the price of a butt of wine when it was scarce!
BUT! NO distilled drinks! Even the Arabs didn't use distillation until about 1250.
And certainly no "alchopops".
BTW drinking milk could be somewhat dicey. Didn't Joan of Arc get her voices from Bovine TB caught from raw milk?
In Davin Niven's autobiography (if I remember correctly) he tells of getting testicular TB in Iceland during WW2. As a result he ran on one cylinder for the rest of his life.
So Northmen could definitely be exposed to it!
In any case we who are interested in this period should have no problems making our own drink. It's at least as easy as spit roasting!

[Kotek]

[crite40]

Well, fairly sure!
The trouble is with the history of technology, it is very rarely the first
inventor that gets the credit.
The idea of distillation to a very limited degree may be older, but it's called
alchohol because that's an Arabic word!
They used to use an odd shaped glass vessel called an Alembic, but even that would be very hard to make before around 1250. Glass simply wasn't good enough yet.

[crite40]

Something I forgot to add. Since wine was forbidden to Muslims the point about drinks was often stretched.
For example was Date beer or beer at all forbidden?
Tp this day the Turks drink a "firewater" called Raki which is I believe distilled from grain.
As Islam got more hidebound after the Mongol invasions it even became necessary to keep an Iman near anyone experimenting with distallation to make sure he wasn't a "sly grogger".

In any event most distilled spirits date from the 15th century onwards, whisky,
vodka and of course Brandjewjin "burnt wine" which became brandy. Gin was even later.

[Robbo]

[crite40]

Ah! But have they ever tried?
Some of the modern beer and cider kits are really simple to use.
A 20 litre water container (about $20), a gas trap (about $1.50), a can kit from the local brew shop or even supermarket (about $20) and a good stock of screw top wine bottles, some sugar and you are away!!!
In these tough times, I can make cider for less than a quarter of the supermarket special price.
Today I just took delivery of nearly 6 KG of Honey. So next week I will be putting down about 23 litres of Mead. Allowing 3 or 4 weeks for working and then bottling for about 3 months it should be just about ready for Yule.
By next Anniversary weekend it should inspire lots of good singing at the
Folk Festival.
I'm sure the Aesir and Vanir will find it to their taste!

[Robbo]

Actually...I was talking about the very simple art of spit cookery. lol.

The cordials I'm very keen to have a go at, and some of the other non-alcoholic fermentations too.

[Thaner]

i've just put down a 10 litre batch of hodge podge stuff.

4 kg of apple and a big tub of honey, sugar, beer yeast, air trapped the bgger and will bottle it in week n a halfs time once fermentation has died off, leave it in the bottles for 2 weeks and then pop em open and away i go.

I should look at bottling the 2 batches of mead i have had down since december, let them develop their falvour in the bottle, they are a tad dry so still have that 'young yeasty' taste still

[Thaner]

me and the kids make ginger beer with bread yeast, and there is minial alcohol content in them, only let them ferment in a closed airtight container for 12 - 24 hours, and then chuck them in the fridge to stop fermentation, there is a chemical you can get from brewing shops that kills the yeast which in turn makes it safe for transport, because without using it, you bring the stuff back out into room temp and it starts fermenting again lol

[ann dugmore]

I had an interesting time at Taupo this year(with the heat) with my ginger beer. In the end I let it ferment to a standstill (ugh!) and then added sugar water only when I wanted to drink it! It was quite potent though!

Ann

[Thaner]

lol was showing the kids how to make ginger beer yeast n all. chucked it in the fridge, sweet as.. had a drink the next day, left it out and forgot about it for a week, i was lucky that the coke bottle didnt explode to begin with. I remembered about it, thought 'oh i would love a drink" a 2 mugs later i was feeling quite relaxed lol