What is hops? What even is beer? Why did we ever start making beer? What were the "original" styles like and how old are they?

It's easier, in my opinion, to try to understand modern beer and beer production in an historical context. Of course, it's also important to understand the chemistry and biological processes involved, but if that's all you know, how are you supposed to build upon the cherished traditions that have come before? How can you know in which direction to innovate? How will you produce brews that are meaningful to a lot of people?

What's difficult about this is figuring out where to start, where to look first. Beer brewing is incredibly wide-spread and stretches into the distant and unrecorded past. I recommend just picking a time and place, preferably one where decent records were kept.

Myself, I like to start with medieval England: it's not so far in the past that there are no records, the records that do exist share a common (or at least very similar) language with me and thus don't have to undergo much translation, and large parts of modern beer culture has been influenced by it. It's a great middle ground between ancient and modern.

Would such a tradition last so long without good reason? In order to fully understand the "what" and "how" of their (and, ultimately, our) brewing processes and systems, we have to consider their motivation.

The "why" is what gives a tradition its staying power, and a tradition evolves with its motivations.

Why did people in Medieval England brew beer?

First of all, what did the medieval English have available to them as an agrarian society? Ignoring imported goods, what did they produce themselves?

Available Crops and Commodities

Barley. Rye. Oats. These were the staple grains in much of England. These crops thrive in the cool, damp, variable climates of northern Europe and tolerate lighter or salt-tinged soils better than wheat. Wheat, in fact, was relatively expensive in this time and place.

These conditions led, in ancient times, to a large supply of barley and similar grains. There's archaeological evidence that barley was a principal cereal by the Late Bronze and Iron Age.[1] People used these grains for everything from livestock feed to bread to ale (which is what they called beer before the word "beer" was introduced from the continent as a name for similar beverages), and by the medieval period there was huge daily demand for barley just for ale production alone.

Even Pliny the Elder mentions beer-making in Gaul and Spain, and reusing beer foam (barm) to leaven bread.[2]

So we've established that the ingredients for ale were ubiquitous, and I've alluded to the fact that they were also in very high demand for the purposes of said ale. But what caused all that demand? Were there no substitutes for the role it ale played in daily life?

Unavailable Luxuries

What role did ale play in daily life, exactly? What made it so irreplaceable?

It largely comes down to the basic human need for water. Sure, if you lived in a rural setting and your village had a good, dependable well, then clean drinking water was not particularly scarce. In towns, on the other hand, and especially in crowded towns and large urban centers, clean water was harder to guarantee and more work to fetch and store. That’s a big reason you see so much everyday small ale (very low-alcohol beer). It was a source of calories and hydration, kept a bit better than plain water, and could be made anywhere.

That last part is important. Until early modern imports, ale was the only everyday hydrator and stimulant available at scale. There was no imported coffee, even the tea trade did not begin until the mid-17th century.

Production at Scale: Food, Water, and Social Practicality

Every person needs safe food and water, and they continuously need these things in constant supply. This necessity is the source of all problems of scale. For a society to exist, food and water need to be continuously produced to match demand, and every individual needs to be able to obtain them.

We've already established that not every person could just go to the well and draw water from the local well. We've established, furthermore, that fresh water was difficult and impractical to store in large volumes. On the other hand, the wells that did exist provided water that was of sufficient quality for brewing ale. There was also plenty of fuel, such as firewood, peat, and charcoal, as well as a good supply of malt.

Those who controlled all of these inputs (as well as human capital), such as monasteries and other large institutions, could produce beer at the largest scales. They could engineer their own water supplies, and farm their own grain and fuel on-site.

In urban settings there were common brewhouses, which were mid- to large-scale enterprises, often with privileged water access, that employed dedicated brewers and sold their ale to retail taverns, alehouses, and households by the jug. They usually had custom-built brewhouses, larger copper vessels, and would buy malt at large scales.

Production at scale, in fact, is one of the central themes I like to focus on. Where's the sweet spot between the effort you expend and the products of your labor? Even today, as it was then, you're limited by the volume of ingredients you can process.

Consider this: how much more difficult is it to homebrew a gallon of beer vs a barrel? How much more time does it take? If there are 36 gallons in a barrel, does it take 36 times as long? Certainly not! The difficulty only comes from managing the volume. You need different amounts of space and different sized tools and vessels.

We can see this play out historically by comparing household and farmhouse production with the small commercial alehouses and inns prevalent during the period. The alehouses and inns used the same kit as the households, but they processed more volume and ran more frequent brews so they'd have enough to sell to locals and travelers. So popular were their wares that the alehouses and taverns became important community hubs for news, hiring, and other deals.

How did households brew beer?

Let's take a look at the smaller producers: the households and farmhouses of the period. How did they brew beer several times a week? How did they do it without electricity or modern plumbing? How did they ensure quality? What were they even making, and would we recognize it as beer?

Maybe we should start with that last question. To start with, the English throughout most of the middle ages wouldn't have called it "beer." Beer didn't come around until the late 14th to early 15th century, at which time it was a hopped import from the low countries, hops being unknown in England prior to that time. This introduction eventually led to the rise in popularity of hops in brewing beer in England (and worldwide), but that's a story for another time.

What the English brewed locally pre-15th century they called "ale." It was an unhopped, top-fermenting, barley-led, grain-based beverage that's made at warm temperatures on fast schedules spanning a few days.

At first glance this seems pretty similar to modern ales, lack of hops aside. It seems unlikely, though, that we'd consider it comparable to its modern counterpart. For one thing, malt technology has come a long way. You would have to use wood or straw to dry the malt, which gave darker, smokier, toastier flavors with inconsistent enzyme content. Eventually, the coke-fired kilns of the 18th century enabled pale malt at scale, opening the door to pale ale and the bright, hop-showcasing beers we know today.

Secondly, medieval ale was open-fermented in kitchens and brewhouses with ambient microflora, and thus souring and variability were common. Modern breweries manage pitch rates, temperature, sanitation, and racking, which give us cleaner, crisper, repeatable results.

The last two major differences I want to highlight are carbonation and parti-gyling. Medieval ale was usually young and softly carbonated, or even near still. Cask and keg conditioning was popular later on, and forced carbonation is a modern development. Parti-gyling is brewing multiple beers from a single mash. Keeping the runnings separate yields a strong ale (the first running) and small ale (the second and even third runnings).

Procedure for a Medieval English Ale

With these several caveats and disclaimers addressed, let's get into how a medieval household or alehouse would have produced their ale and in what quantities.

Let's establish some units: an ale barrel was ~36 gallons (it changed over time). These would have been used by busier alehouses and larger enterprises. At home and in small alehouses, firkins (later standardized as 9 gallons) and kilderkins (later 18 gallons) would have been used depending on the week's specific needs. The ale would have to be brewed every week or so because unhopped ale spoils quickly, and was therefore brewed and drunk fresh.

If, for example, a household wanted to supply their neighborhood of twenty people with a pint per day each week, a total of 17.5 gallons, they'd find the kilderkin, the half-barrel, offered more than enough volume.

Let's look at the procedure for this volume.

Ingredients

Malt: Usually barley (often mixed with oats or wheat if barley was short). You'd either buy malt from a maltster or make small amounts yourself. Depending on desired strength, you'd need between about 2-4 bushels of malted grain for a half-barrel.

Barm: The so-called "barm" contains the yeast and other microbes necessary for fermentation. It's either skimmed from a previous batch or borrowed from a neighbor or baker.

Equipment

Generally speaking, you'd need several tubs for mashing the grain, collecting the wort, and fermenting it. You'd need a large kettle for heating water and boiling the wort. Further, you'd need a way to draw off and strain the mash, a shallow trough for cooling, and small casks/jars for serving.

1. Mash the Malted Grain

This assumes you already have malt, which can be produced at home. Crush the dried malt in one of the tubs. For a half-barrel yield you probably want to use a tub around twice that size, about 36 gallons.

Use the kettle to heat some water until it's scalding but not boiling. Stir the hot water into the crushed malt in the mash tub until it becomes a thick porridge you can stir. Generally speaking, if it's doughy you haven't added enough water. Too soupy and you've added too much. To end up with the 18 gallons needed for the half-barrel, you'll want to add a bit more water, maybe 20-22 gallons. Cover and rest so the sweetness pulls out. The goal is to produce a sweet, grainy liquid (the wort) trapped among the grits.

2. Draw Off the First Wort

If your tub has a tap or other outlet at the bottom, you can use a straw or wicker mat to filter the wort as you transfer it to a different tub (the underback). If it runs cloudy, pour the first cups back through until it runs clear.

This first running becomes the strong ale.

3. Remash for Small Ale

Repeat the above steps: add more hot water to the same mash, stir it, let it rest, and then draw off again.

This weaker second (and sometimes third) running makes small ale, a weaker, lower-ABV brew compared to the strong ale.

Parti-gyling like this was typical: one grain bill could yield a strong ale and several small ales.

4. Boil the Wort

Return each wort to the kettle and boil. Boiling clarifies and helps it keep a bit longer.

During this time period, before hops were common, households might add a local herb mix (sometimes called gruit) for bitterness or aroma, things like yarrow, alecost, bog myrtle, or whatever grew nearby. Many batches were simply plain, too.

5. Cool the Wort

Spread the boiled wort in a shallow tray or trough, or simply let the tub sit until it’s comfortably warm to the touch. Not hot, not cold. This is to provide an ideal environment for the yeast.

A shallow vessel is preferred because the increased surface area allows the wort to cool much more quickly.

6. Pitch the Barm

Transfer the wort from the cooling vessel to the fermentation vessel. Stir in a ladle or two of lively barm. Folks often proofed barm first in a cup of sweet wort to see it froth.

7. Open Fermentation

From here you cover the fermentation vessel loosely and let it work for a day or two. A thick head forms during this time, and people skimmed this barm to save for bread and the next brew.

When the bubbling subsides and it tastes right (sweetness fallen, pleasantly tangy), it’s ready.

8. Rack and Drink Fresh

Draw off into small casks or jugs, leaving the lees behind.

9. Notes on Flavor and Keeping

Unhopped ale is soft, bready-sweet, lightly tart from yeast and stray lactic acid, with gentle herbal notes if gruit was used. It spoils quickly, hence the frequent brew-days.

It also generally lacks a lot of carbonation, and may even be nearly still when served.

In Conclusion: A Baseline Understanding of Beer Production

This medieval sequence (i.e. mash, separate sweet wort, boil, cool, ferment) is still the backbone of every brewhouse. Today we measure mash temperature instead of judging “hand-hot,” use a lauter tun instead of straw mats, and chill through a plate chiller instead of shallow trays, but the logic hasn’t changed: convert grain starch to sugar, clarify and stabilize the wort with a boil, then turn sugars into alcohol with yeast. When you learn the old method first, modern equipment reads like ergonomic upgrades to the same problem set.

Unhopped ale also explains why hops matter beyond flavor. Medieval ale spoiled fast. Hops’ resins suppress microbes and extend shelf life. That single constraint in the past drives many modern choices: bittering additions for stability, late or dry hops for aroma without sacrificing keeping quality, and oxygen control throughout packaging. Even styles obsessed with freshness, like hazy IPAs, are negotiating the same shelf-life trade-offs that unhopped ale made unavoidable, only now with cold chains and dissolved oxygen meters.

Yeast handling is another through-line. Households once pitched barm skimmed from active fermentations, and now modern brewers pitch pure cultures by cell count. The goal is identical: predictable flavor and a timely finish. Open tubs taught brewers the risks of wild microbes and temperature swings, and today’s sealed conicals, sanitation regimes, and fermentation profiles are the systematic answer to those medieval lessons.

In short, the past isn’t quaint background. It’s the user manual. Unhopped ale shows the process skeleton, hops explain stability and logistics, barm underscores yeast management, and parti-gyling illuminates efficiency and portfolio design. Modern beer is medieval ale with instruments, stainless steel, and data.

References

  1. Hammann, Simon et al. Neolithic culinary traditions revealed by cereal, milk and meat lipids in pottery from Scottish crannogs. Nature communications vol. 13,1 5045. 6 Sep. 2022, doi:10.1038/s41467-022-32286-0
  2. Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, Book XVIII.