MEDIAEVAL BEER

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 32, 1 November 1932, Page 14

MEDIAEVAL BEER

Rarest Drink in World AN OXFORD BREW As in the Days of Chaucer Beer such as nourished Henry V and warmed the hearts of Englishmen six centuries ago was being brewed at Queen’s College, Oxford, recently. The brewery there is thought to be the only surviving mediaeval brewery in England. The beer-pump dates from 1500 odd; the methods go back perhaps to King Alfred. But those who have drunk enough of the red-brown liquor that Queen’s has been brewing since her Founder’s statute in 1340 are apt to compare it to the ale that Chaucer and Shakespeare doubtless quaff in Paradise. And brewers, forgetting every fetish of modern science and “hygiene,” pay tribute from afar to one of the rarest drinks the world can offer — the “Chancellor” or liqueur-beer of Queen’s College, of which only two barrels exist at a time in the world. Yesterday morning, before sunrise, says a correspondent of the “Morning Post,’’ London, I watched the Queen’s College brewer and his man begin their immemorial process to supply the needs of the new term. The brewhouse itself is so old that no one knows its date, but enormous beams and cross-beams still sturdily support the stone-tiled roof, above a bjirnlike maze of lofts, huge vats, mysterious wooden troughs, barrels, “paddles,” “rakes,”, tun-bowls, and all the apparatus of a mediaeval brewery. As I entered, the old brick furnace in the cornet was blowing steam in clouds through the rafters, and with occasional luck even up the chimney. Evidently, after heating all night, the water was on the boil, ready for tne malt-vat. The malt-vat itself stood close by in the loft, overhung by eight huge sacks of malt, a sack of hops, and the barrel of indispensable yeast. Operations Started. All, then, was ready, for no other materials are used. The brewer and his mate rolled up their Sleeves before a day’s work that would leave them but shadows of their present substantial selves.’ Then the mate flung open the furnace door. As he poked the blazing fire a stream of burning embers crashed to the ground, sparks flew round him like a swarm of infuriated bees, and the water in the boiler hissed into steam. With one hand he drenched the burning pile of embers, with the other be opened a tap. Volumes of billowing steam rose suffocatingly from the embers and from the boiler and tilled every corner of the brew-house, but through it all came a noise of boiling water pouring into the waiting vat. Brewing had begun. • All day long the magical operations continued, with pauses only for the “liquor”—i.e., water, a word of ill omen never employed in brewing at Queen’s —to boil or cool. There was frothblowing on a noble scale till the bibulous flag-stones were dark with greedy stains. There was “village-pumping” for brewer and mate till their thirst could almost drain the boiler; furious “liquor-raking” to keep the “wort” of boiling hops and malt from boiling over and swamping the whole brewhouse with odorous malt, and a half-dozen other operations forgotten for centuries everywhere else.

First they were “mashing” the floating malt into the liquor with six-foot “tooth-brushes” until it consented to be drowned info a yellow gruel smelling of hot grapenut porridge, and they stood panting beside it. Then, after it had cooled for two hours, they strained out the husks arid took turns at pumping up the 500 gallons of gruel to the boiler with the 16th-Century pump. A Magic Scent.

The hops were thrown in, and as soon as the mixture began to boil a magic scent stole from brewhouse to garden, from garden to college, from college to much of Oxford, until dons and scouts from far and near were sniffing it and smiling the contented smile of all their predecessors.

Then came the fermentation, while great volumes of froth rolled like a Niagara from the fermenting-vat. But early to-morrow the brewers will pitch the whole hissing mixture out with heavy tunbowls info 12 huge cleansing barrels.

Now comes the strangest process of all. For a whole week these drunken barrels do nothing but blow froth ceaselessly through their bungholes into a beer-reeking trough beneath. And the brewers rest on their oars, and sample duly . . . And one day late next week ten other barrels, newly filled from their frothblowing brethren, are rolled heavily down the garden and Into the cellars. “Hygiene” and “science” have been spurned.- They hold the beer our fathers knew.

Lastly, as the barrels are set up in the cellar, a strangely familiar smell drifts up through the grating at the college chapel door. Under their monumental brasses the Founder and his Fellows rejoice at this best and oldest of incense.