Tuesday 23 August 2011

The scales tip

Columbus was responsible for the creation of lager beer.

Miserable bastard.

7 comments:

Ironmistress said...

As far as I know, bottom fermented lagers have been brewed in Germany already in the early 15th century

I thought 15th century means the same as 1400s.

As far as I know maritime history, Columbus made his first voyage 1492. That is not early 15th century, it is almost closing of the century. And he never went to Patagonia

Either the article is complete balderdash, or someone had been to Patagonia long before the Conquistadors.

Anyway, I make most of my beer by myself, and it is all real ale. Why buy inferior products when you can make yourself far better stuff?

Sergej said...

Ironmistress: you overlook the possibility that the Patagonian yeast got into Columbus's drinking water, and then he kinda' bumped along the coast until he found his way home. If he was so wasted that time actually ran backward for him, this could account for a certain famous arithmetic error as well. Hm, some more prose and some footnotes, and there may be tenured position in this for me...

Ironmistress said...

Umm... perhaps the yast was brought to Germany by swallows?

Anonymous said...

Trouble is we need to send the instructions to brew decent Beer back to the US! How you poor people survive on that insipid dishwater is beyond me! Trying to find a decent pint in the US is well nigh impossible. Lovely people, very friendly but could not brew beer at gunpoint ;)
Mind you getting a decent cup of tea is similarly hard. Come on chaps, you were once a Colony, no backsliding please! :)

David said...

An African or European swallow?

eon said...

Then again, they may simply have been looking on the wrong side of the South Atlantic.

Since South America and Africa were once very close neighbors (see "Pangaea" and "continental drift"), it's entirely possible that the yeast in question exists somewhere in Southern Africa, as well.

Where it could have been brought back to Europe, quite accidentally, by Portuguese seafarers working the western African coast in the late 1300s to early 1400s, or even (admittedly a stretch) Phoenician traders even earlier.

cheers

eon

eon said...

And oh, yes, before I forget-

Since beech is native to Germany, too, the yeast might have been there from prehistoric times. It may be missing today because of the forest "assarts" of the Twelfth through Fifteenth Centuries.

Just a thought.

cheers

eon