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In the late Middle Ages, the brewing industry in northern Europe changed from a small-scale domestic industry to a large-scale export industry. The key innovation was the introduction of hops, which began in northern Germany in the 13th century. Hops sharply improved both the brewing process and the quality of beer.
As a trade in medieval Europe, ale brewing offered women a relatively lucrative and stable career. Even as the industry underwent multiple economic changes in the Late Middle Ages, female brewers and alewives generally found stable work in the trade, particularly when compared to other contemporary female trades. [23]
Brewing ale in the Middle Ages was a local industry primarily pursued by women. Brewsters, or alewives, would brew in the home for both domestic consumption and small scale commercial sale. Brewsters provided a substantial supplemental income for families; however, only in select few cases, as was the case for widows, was brewing considered the ...
Brewing dates from the beginning of civilization in ancient Egypt, and alcoholic beverages were very important at that time. Egyptian brewing began in the city of Hierakonpolis around 3400 BC; its ruins contain the remains of the world's oldest brewery, which was capable of producing up to three hundred gallons (1,136 liters) per day of beer. [8]
A 16th-century brewery Brewing is the production of beer by steeping a starch source (commonly cereal grains, the most popular of which is barley) in water and fermenting the resulting sweet liquid with yeast. It may be done in a brewery by a commercial brewer, at home by a homebrewer, or communally. Brewing has taken place since around the 6th millennium BC, and archaeological evidence ...
In the Middle Ages, the brewing right or gruit right was one of the privileges granted by the land owner or territorial ruler. Sometimes this right was linked to a plot or a house, called a "beer court"; sometimes the right was held by a hereditary judge, who might also hold the right to run a pub.
Small beer (also known as small ale or table beer) is a lager or ale that contains a lower amount of alcohol by volume than most others, usually between 0.5% and 2.8%. [1] [2] Sometimes unfiltered and porridge-like, it was a favoured drink in Medieval Europe and colonial North America compared with more expensive beer containing higher levels of alcohol. [3]
Old English: Beore 'beer'. In early forms of English and in the Scandinavian languages, the usual word for beer was the word whose Modern English form is ale. [1] The modern word beer comes into present-day English from Old English bēor, itself from Common Germanic, it is found throughout the West Germanic and North Germanic dialects (modern Dutch and German bier, Old Norse bjórr).