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The Archaeology of Alcohol: The Ancient Ales Edition! - Episode 21
60 Plays9 years ago
I suggest you sit back, pop open a cold one, get a little toasty, and enjoy this generally informative fun-times podcast.
So, our ancestors have been making alcoholic concoctions for thousands of years, and thanks to science and archaeology we now have the ability to reconstruct the recipes to some of these awesome drinks. I thought it would be interesting to find out about how alcohol has evolved from its early days to what we are familiar with today, so that’s what today’s podcast is about!
I had a lot of fun recording this episode because it also gave me an excuse to drink some delicious beer, so thanks Beer Gods! In the podcast you’ll learn about:
How Dogfish Head collaborated with biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern, director of the archaeology project for cuisine, fermented beverages and health at the University of Pennsylvania museum, to create their line of ancient ales based on reconstructed recipes from archaeological discoveries around the world!A background on the origins of drinking and producing alcohol, and how drinking helped civilizations develop around the world!How some monks in the Middle Ages started changing the face of ale and created some of the first modern beers. Then, how Germany regulated the crap out of it!Finally, on a non-alcohol related front, I decided to start a book club for people who enjoy books about history, like me! Our first read is a historical fiction novel called All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, a WWII story about a young blind French girl and a German boy whose lives intersect in the midst of the devastation of war. Get your hands on the book and give it a read, then we’ll discuss it on the social medias and youtubes! For more books I’m thinking about reading for the club, check out my goodreads bookshelf called struggling arch book club. Feel free to send me suggestions too, I’d love to hear them!
So that’s it, enjoy the episode and enjoy some great beer while listening. Here are some links from this podcast that you may want to visit-
History of Trappist Monks and Beer Here and Here
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
You are listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello everyone! Welcome back to the struggling archaeologist's guide to getting dirty. This is Jenny and we are here for episode 21 of the podcast today.
Personal Updates
00:00:33
Speaker
Thank you for joining me. I am very excited to be back and I apologize for the month-long break I took in between these last two episodes. One, it was Christmas.
00:00:43
Speaker
And, you know, Christmas was busy and crazy, and I thought I'd take a little bit of time around the holiday to be with my husband and my family. And then, too, I have been sick the last week, like,
00:00:57
Speaker
unable to speak sick. Unfortunately, I got this horrible case of laryngitis and right as I was scheduled to record this podcast for you guys, I became akin to what I imagine death itself would sound like.
00:01:16
Speaker
If Death had a voice and didn't just stand there like a creeper with his little sith and all of the deathy robes, and if he, you know, was speaking, he would probably have sounded how I did and how I felt.
00:01:31
Speaker
So I apologize if I'm still a little froggy. Hopefully I deemed my voice worthy of recording today so that I could get this out to you guys. So I apologize if it's a little bit off or not. My usual glorious
Choosing the Topic: Archaeology of Alcohol
00:01:48
Speaker
glorious self in your ears, but I'm guessing it's pretty close to normal and that you will just be okay with it and that nobody actually cares at all about what I sound like or that I'm different from normal. And so we're going to go ahead with today's podcast anyway.
00:02:09
Speaker
And I'm really excited about this. So on today, I was thinking of a whole bunch of different things I could do for this episode. There's Christmas, there's New Year's, there's a, you know, I could have done like a year in review. I don't know, so many ideas passed through the brains and none of them stuck. And because I guess I just wasn't excited about any of it. Until I started thinking about beer and
00:02:38
Speaker
Beer got me excited, so that's what today's episode is about.
00:02:44
Speaker
Well, not beer specific, only beer, but alcohol in general. I wanted to do a podcast, actually from a suggestion that I got from a friend of mine that they thought it'd be very interesting topic to do a podcast about. So yeah, we're gonna do a show today about the archeology of alcohol, which is a real thing in case you didn't know. It is, it is so a thing. Like it's very,
00:03:11
Speaker
It's very exciting, it's very new, it's very 2015. Okay, so I'm gonna get you on this bandwagon early. There's gonna be a lot of stuff this year about alcohol and archeology. I can just feel it.
00:03:23
Speaker
And so I thought that since I'm cutting edge on this podcast, I would get you guys going early on in the year talking about alcohol and archaeology. And so in honor of today's subject matter, I really felt like it was my duty
00:03:42
Speaker
Um, to imbibe while I record it. Also because it's been a long week and I've been sick and I haven't been able to drink a lot. And as I've probably mentioned on the podcast
Dogfish Head & Ancient Ales
00:03:54
Speaker
before, archaeologists love to drink. Not everyone, obviously. But I'm one of the ones who does. So I am going to, hopefully you can hear it, I'm going to uncap my bottle.
00:04:08
Speaker
delicious dogfish head Burton baton India pale ale for you and I'm going to enjoy it while we record today and talk about alcohol and all fun things beer-ness in archaeology okay ready to start off the podcast here's our
00:04:30
Speaker
Ooh yeah, did you hear that? That little fizz of happiness that happens when you unleash the beer cap from the bottle. Alright, so I've got my dogfish head today. Specifically, I chose this brand.
00:04:46
Speaker
because we are going to be talking a little bit about Dogfish Head, which is a brewery in Delaware, which has a line of beer, or ales, I'd rather, that they make based on ancient beers and ales sort of deciphered and recreated from the ancient world. And if you haven't heard about this before, it's a very cool line with some really delicious drinks.
00:05:16
Speaker
in it that I recommend you go to your local store if you are of age and can drink responsibly and try!
00:05:24
Speaker
I've had a couple of them even though unfortunately I didn't have one to drink with you today I really wish I did but I live in a little tiny town in the middle of nowhere that isn't so much with the New Age things and cool things like alcohol and drinking so much because it's kind of a conservative area so we don't have a lot of places that sell cool beer and
00:05:51
Speaker
So I don't have any of the ancient ales. I can't get my hands on the Game of Thrones beers either So everyone pity me or just send me alcohol. Um, that's also an acceptable Alternative I will accept Anyway, I'm gonna take a swig of my burden baton, which is also a delicious dogfish head beer Mmm Yummy and just you know, I'm not being sponsored by them or anything. I
00:06:18
Speaker
Um, I'm just doing it out of my, uh, love and respect for their company and the deliciousness of their brews. So, uh, let's start talking. Why not? Let's just do it. We're going to talk about the archaeology of alcohol today. Uh, and I was inspired, um, when I started this topic by the Ancient Ale series from Dogfish Head.
00:06:43
Speaker
because it's not just a brewery that sat down and said, oh, we've got to make some beers that taste like ancient type beers. They worked with a biomolecular archaeologist by the name of Pat McGovern from the University of Pennsylvania's Museum on recreating actual recipes from the ancient world that came out of archaeological contexts.
00:07:12
Speaker
That's right!
Ancient Brewing Techniques
00:07:13
Speaker
That's what makes them so darn cool, right? So Pat McGovern is the director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, and he is a collaborator with the Dogfish Head Brewery in their Ancient Ales series.
00:07:33
Speaker
So what Mr. McGovern does is he specializes in recreating recipes used by ancient peoples to create alcohol. Before we had all of these specialized varietals delineated like beer and mead and wine and ale and all that, there was just kind of one variety of beer type drinks until wine was kind of specialized out of that group.
00:07:59
Speaker
but originally they were actually much more of a mishmash of a lot of different types of things that we recognize today as different varietals. And
00:08:08
Speaker
They came out of these sort of traditional brewing methods that relied on very local ingredients and they were all much less regulated and common throughout the ancient world than they are today. You know, today you can go to China and you can get a Bud Light and you can go to Australia and get a Bud Light and you can go to England and get a Bud Light and obviously America. And it's going to be the same thing.
00:08:35
Speaker
And this is not how anything worked in the ancient world for the most part. There were different methodologies used around the world to create different alcohols that were very much a reflection of the local environment in the context in which they were made. And so it's kind of like the kitchen sink philosophy.
00:08:55
Speaker
in a lot of these old cities and towns where they were making alcohol, they just threw a bunch of stuff together. Very specific stuff though because they had the idea of what they needed in order to create alcohol and so they kind of just found a bunch of things that sort of went into that category and just threw them together and the results were alcoholic so they drank them and they didn't all taste the same
00:09:21
Speaker
But whatever, there was no universal flavor profile for an ale, a beer, a wine, whatever you want to call them at the time. They just knew that they needed to include a source of sugar, and at the time, most places used more than one source of sugar.
00:09:37
Speaker
And in beer, and just as a background, most of your sugar sources in beer come from starches, which is why beer is mostly made out of grains. Grains mixed with water.
00:09:53
Speaker
and yeast and today we use hops as well but when you boil the grains or you add hot water to these grains you're actually able to leach a lot of the sugar and enzymes in the grains out and these sugar and those enzymes are what are converted through yeast into alcohol and carbonation and so you need something that is going to be able to be
00:10:22
Speaker
used as a sugar source for saccharization, I think is the word, is how the process of taking sugar out of this starch. Oh, saccharification is the actual term. Although I think saccharization, somebody, whoever came up with that terminology, I'm going to vote saccharization is much easier to say than saccharification, and it makes more sense to me. So maybe I'll just say that, even though it's not technically correct.
00:10:53
Speaker
But anyway, the ancients were very bright people. They knew they needed a source of sugar and starch, but it left a lot of room for creativity as far as what kind of ingredients would give them the sugar that they needed to use to create the alcohol and carbonation in the drink. So they would use a variety of things for this purpose. A lot of the time it included grains, obviously, and then other food sources such as like honeys and syrups,
00:11:13
Speaker
Thank you.
00:11:22
Speaker
fruits were especially popular. And then there were other things they threw in for taste and
00:11:30
Speaker
some of the effects that it had on the alcohol such as herbs or flowers things like that and so especially what you can tell in the ancient ale series as you drink some of these different concoctions it becomes obvious that these sweet flavors that came from the grains the honeys the fruits they permeated these ancient brews
00:11:55
Speaker
a lot of the ancient brews, the sweetness is what really sticks out about them. A lot of these ancient drinks are more like a cross between beer and wine, or mead, which is made with honey, than modern beer.
00:12:11
Speaker
I'll explain why that main difference exists in a little bit. So yeah, because your main elements in these ancient ales are grains, herbs, flowers, syrups, honeys, just a lot of this stuff that is not used for the most part by a lot of beer production
00:12:31
Speaker
today, besides the grains obviously. So yeah, today we rely on grains, water, yeast, and hops as the main ingredients to our beer.
00:12:43
Speaker
And the variety in modern beer today, as opposed to the ancient world, mainly comes from the method of brewing, because there's different ways you can combine these ingredients, different ways you can brew as far as times and temperatures and amounts and all this way that you combine all of these different ingredients. And then also differences in the character of the grains and also the hops that are used.
00:13:11
Speaker
But I will go more into modern beer stuff later. So I'm going to go into a little background for you on drinking in general. And then because this is something I also know kind of a lot about, because my husband is a home brewer, he brews his own beer, which I've helped out on several occasions. And he actually is really good. He makes awesome beer.
00:13:40
Speaker
What can I say? I'll also explain to you a little bit about what the brewing process is like and so you can understand a little bit better how all of these ancient ales are made and all of this stuff. So you with me so far? Yay beer and ales and different drinks from the old days and the new days because they're still delicious, but they're kind of different. It's ancient ales.
00:14:37
Speaker
And I'm back, sorry kids. Because I'm a busy woman, I am simultaneously recording this podcast and making my world famous butternut squash soup. Well, perhaps not world famous, but it's famous in my house because it's delicious.
00:14:55
Speaker
but uh it it requires some attention from time to time so yeah i had to go make my soup but i'm back now and it's time to talk about alcohol um as that fantastic bear naked ladies song reminded you bear naked ladies a fantastic band i might add i was a big fan of in the early 2000s um i believe it was the year
00:15:20
Speaker
2000 when I saw them in concert in My home state of New York. I was on a college I think it's my spring break from college my sophomore year and I saw them in concert with my ex-boyfriend at the time because He had bought me the tickets to the concert as a present before he we broke up so
00:15:47
Speaker
It was kind of awkward, but we still went to that damn concert because he'd already bought the tickets.
00:15:55
Speaker
Oh, little things about me, now you know. Okay, anyway, so a little background on drinking. So, from the time that people figured out that naturally occurring yeast in their surroundings could magically convert materials with sugar in them into alcohol, they have been making some form of alcohol.
00:16:17
Speaker
Conveniently, this seems to have coincided with when they figured out how to domesticate and grow cereals, most of which are a main source of starch used for saccharification during the brewing process.
00:16:30
Speaker
So basically, our relationship with beer and ale goes back to the Neolithic era, around the time of the agricultural revolution around 10,000 years ago. Now, you wouldn't think that the creation of alcohol would actually be a good thing for the growth of civilization, but in fact, it was.
00:16:52
Speaker
Grades are hard to process, you see. So in order to produce enough of them to feed the people and make alcohol from them as well, you need labor. You need a source of labor, and you need some kind of infrastructure. And this is not something that can be done on a large scale by nomads or small groups of hunter-gatherers. Oh, no. This requires the settlement and growth of a population.
00:17:19
Speaker
So as we got better and better at farming, we were able to support more people and spend more time worrying about the things you worry about when you've got a lot of people to take care of. What about protection? What about social structure and laws and trade? How do we explain all of this great big beautiful world around us to our kids so they won't be terrified by the enormity of existence?
00:17:47
Speaker
Well, these are the kinds of questions that growing territories around the world could invest themselves in figuring out once they had a secure food source.
00:17:58
Speaker
Although to be fair, water's pretty important too, right? Well, yes. Unfortunately, providing water for a large population is difficult. And the more
History of Trappist Beers
00:18:09
Speaker
people, the more waste, and then the harder it is to keep your water source sanitary. Water wasn't very safe in the old world. Shocker, I know, right?
00:18:22
Speaker
So, alcohol actually seemed to be a way to provide a safer form of hydration to the populace, if not a more fun one. Am I right? Right? So, once ancient ales and wines were created,
00:18:37
Speaker
They basically became mainstays of the ancient diet. And they were also essential to the development of cultural and religious traditions, like festivals and rituals, which further cemented the bonds between peoples and cultures, which facilitated the rise of, you got it, civilization. So there you have it folks, how beer created the modern world! Now let's get back to how it got all regulated and stuff, right?
00:19:08
Speaker
So, until the middle ages, ales were all basically made locally and largely by women, with the exception of the production and sale of beer by, you guessed it, monasteries! That's right. You may be familiar with a beer enthusiast or two who lose their shit when they get their hands on real Trappist ales, and this is because some monasteries
00:19:34
Speaker
still continue to produce and perfect beers that they have been brewing for hundreds of years. Today, there are about 10 authentic Trappist monasteries producing traditional beers, and most of them are in Belgium.
00:19:49
Speaker
The oldest, Rochefort, from the Abbey de Notre-Dame de St. Remy, has been brewing beer since 1595. Although, there's an Australian Abbey called Engersville. It has a very interesting background.
00:20:05
Speaker
which just recently began producing trappistales. You see, the abbey, Ingersfeld, dates back to 1293. Very old, right? But it was out of service between 1786 and 1925, when it was refounded as a monastery by refugee monks fleeing Germany after World War I. Unfortunately,
00:20:29
Speaker
In 1939, it was raided by the Gestapo, and the 73 monks it housed were sent away. Yeah, that kind of away. Some to deck out concentration camp, some to join the Wehrmacht. And after the war, very few of them returned because they were all dead.
00:20:48
Speaker
And the abbey was again re-founded by refugee monks, this time from Bosnia. Today, they are mostly known for their beer, liquor, and cheese, delightfully called Engwelschweller Trappistenkaze. Yes. I'm sure that pronunciation was 100% correct.
00:21:13
Speaker
Did aliens build Stonehenge? Did the Easter Island statues walk? Did Vikings colonize Midwest America? What does mainstream archaeology have to say about all this?
00:21:40
Speaker
French monuments going to the park when
00:21:45
Speaker
So anyway, the cool thing about Trappist beers is that when they began making them, which we know dates at least back to the 9th century CE, they began trying to figure out how to fix the problems that had always existed in localized beer production. Things like why beers went rancid after a while and tended to taste kind of funky most of the time. These monks were the first to begin perfecting the process of brewing beer.
00:22:15
Speaker
An important factor in this evolution was the practice of sanitizing the equipment used to brew, which was previously non-existent and created all kinds of bacteria that could result in some pretty funky flavors. Funky in a bad way. All right, so
00:22:31
Speaker
Another important discovery made by monks was that there was this little flower called the hops, and it did cool things when you added it to brew. Hops are naturally antibacterial, which helped keep nasty bacteria away while the yeast did its thing. Yeast being the good bacteria.
00:22:52
Speaker
Hops are also bitter, which imparted an important flavor to beer that balanced out the sweetness of the starches and sugars used to create the alcohol. Remember, I said ancient ales were all very sweet for the most part because they used starches and sugars, but they did not usually balance them out with anything bitter like hops.
00:23:15
Speaker
So, during the Middle Ages, monks figured out this secret and they began brewing beer with hops that was finally balanced the way we like it today. And finally, hops was acidic. And that acidity acts as a preservative, which finally allowed beer to be stored for long periods of time without going bad. So generally, hops equals good.
00:23:38
Speaker
unless your beer is a hop monster, which means it was hopped repeatedly during the boiling process and imparted a very strong hop flavor, in which case I probably don't like it. Unless it's Dogfish Heads 120 minute. That is freaking amazing.
00:23:54
Speaker
Anyway, it was over hundreds of years of brewing beer in Central Europe that months perfected their own style of beer. Now, during the Middle Ages, almost everyone started brewing with hops, and recipes for beer became more common between cultures. In Germany, the mother of regulation and efficiency, they decided that one beer recipe would rule them all. And in 1487, they introduced a law called the Reinheitschkabat.
00:24:24
Speaker
known now as the Bavarian purity law, which required all beers to be made only from water, barley, and hops.
Beer Evolution: Bavarian Purity Law & Hops
00:24:33
Speaker
Since Germany was pretty influential after that in the world of beer, this became pretty standard around the world, which is why most beers today don't deviate from this recipe very much, except of course for the addition of yeast.
00:24:47
Speaker
which was, obviously, in beer all along, but they didn't really know about microorganisms in the 15th century, so I'll give them a break on that one. Once we realized that yeast was a thing, then we made it part of the recipe for Sirius.
00:25:04
Speaker
So in reality, the regulation was not because they believed this was the only and best way to make great beer. It was a practical attempt to keep brewers from using rye and wheat grains for beer because the market needed them to be cheaply available for the production of bread so people didn't starve to death, which I guess is understandable. So today, the law still exists, but it has been amended.
00:25:32
Speaker
and is not actually observed throughout all of Bavaria. So in essence, it still regulates the production of beer in Germany, but does not limit beer production throughout the rest of the world to those simple ingredients.
Recreating Ancient Ales: Pat McGovern's Work
00:25:45
Speaker
So that's how the beer of today evolved, or perhaps devolved, since now most people's idea of beer is Bud Light. But let's ask the question, what would have been the Bud Light of ancient Rome, or Babylon, or Luxor?
00:26:02
Speaker
Let's get back to Patrick McGovern and Dogfish Head and we can actually answer that question. And we can taste some of these delicious ancient ales.
00:26:16
Speaker
So once again, these Dogfish Head Ales are a collaboration between Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum and Dogfish Head Brewery of Reboath, Delaware, which is the brainchild of Sam Calagione, who is a really awesome brewer who runs the company and just seems to be an all-around awesome human being.
00:26:38
Speaker
And if you are interested in learning more about them, I would definitely check out the Brew Master series from the Discovery Channel that they did on Dogfish. And it actually follows them as they make some of their beers, some of their regular beers, which are all sort of, I think they call them off-center brews for off-center people or something like that.
00:26:59
Speaker
And they're all very experimental and delicious and exciting. And then I know there's an episode where they specifically talk about Tahankit, which is their ancient Egyptian ale. And they show Sam going to Egypt to collect the yeast strain that they used to create Tahankit. And it's just a really cool series. So if you're interested in beer and brewing, definitely check out Brewmasters.
00:27:24
Speaker
And that's my last plug for Dogfish Ed because they're just awesome. But anyway, let's talk a little bit about the Ancient Ales series and some of the ancient recipes that you can try if you head out to your local liquor store to buy them, if they are available where you live at least, I hope, because they're not available where I live.
00:27:45
Speaker
But anyway, let's talk about those ancient ales. The oldest ale offered by dogfish is a beer called Chateau d'Yahu. And Chateau d'Yahu is reconstructed from Pat McGovern's analysis of residue found on pottery from an archaeological site in the Chinese village of d'Yahu from the 7th millennium BCE. So it is very old.
00:28:13
Speaker
It actually constitutes the oldest actual fermented beverage discovered in the world. Although there's evidence of ale making at older sites, this is the oldest actual physical evidence of fermented beverage.
00:28:29
Speaker
And interestingly, they also discovered at this site some of the oldest musical instruments in the world in the form of bird bones that were manipulated to make sound through their hollow cavities. Because of course, bird bones are hollow and so naturally,
00:28:45
Speaker
have this inclination for the reverberation of sound waves inside of them that we use today to create music in wind instruments. So, very interesting, right? So anyway, Chateau Jayahu is created from, it's a very sweet and strong mixture of ingredients that includes rice, wildflower honey,
00:29:06
Speaker
hawthorn fruit and chrysanthemums, which is a flower. And I haven't tried this one yet, but I'm very excited next time I go back to the East Coast to get some of it.
00:29:18
Speaker
If you were wondering, for instance, how Pat McGovern knew that it happened to be these ingredients that made this old ancient Chinese ale, well, he's a biomolecular archaeologist. So he's really good at sciency stuff, which is the entire explanation, the end.
00:29:39
Speaker
No, no, really. So all of these different kinds of biological materials have chemical markers that we can read from residue samples and trace remains. And we can even read them what is left in our bones and our teeth, which is how we discover what kinds of diets our ancestors and ancient peoples had.
00:29:58
Speaker
Which is something we do, by the way, if you didn't know that. So McGovern has a sample of residue from an old drink from a piece of pottery that was used to store alcohol or serve alcohol in the old days. He uses a variety of methods to view the particle materials on that pottery, such as infrared spectronomy, liquid chromatography, mass spectronomy, and ion cyclotron resonance.
00:30:23
Speaker
And these are basically all fancy and expensive machines that allow us to see the molecules that make up the foods that made up the ales that made all the old people drunk and happy. Or maybe mad in like a, let's go over and butcher that neighboring village for spices kind of way. You never know.
00:30:41
Speaker
So anyway, that's how Pat does what he does. And so let's look briefly at some of the other ails in the Ancient Ales series that Sam and Pat have created. One of the ails that I have tried is Midas Touch, which is an ale recreated from residue from a drinking vessel discovered in the tomb of Greek mythologies King Midas from the 8th century BCE.
00:31:11
Speaker
This was actually the first ancient ale developed by Dogfish with Pat McGovern, and it's made primarily from muscat grapes, honey, and saffron. So you can guess this one is pretty sweet, but it was delicious, if I remember correctly. Then there's Tahenkat, which I mentioned earlier. It's a beer from ancient Egypt.
00:31:30
Speaker
Now this beer was actually devised after the recipe was found on a hieroglyphic relief. So it wasn't a chemical analysis that led to this recipe. It was actually written out in hieroglyphs on the wall of an ancient structure and those hieroglyphs were deciphered and the method of making their beer was revealed to us
00:31:56
Speaker
and Pat and Sam put it to the test and they created this awesome ancient Egyptian beer using wheat and hearth baked bread. And then they used chamomile, doom palm fruit, Middle Eastern herbs, and as I said earlier, a strain of native Egyptian yeast from Cairo. So very cool, also a really great beer. Next we have kavassir.
00:32:23
Speaker
And this is an ancient Danish grog from the pre-Viking period around 3,500 years ago. Now remnants of this beverage were found in a drinking vessel in the tomb of a young woman called the Ektved girl, believed to be some kind of priestess involved in religious ceremonies, which were likely to involve grog. Now McGovern re-created this grog using wheat, lingonberries, cranberries, mirica gale, yarrow, honey, and birch syrup.
00:32:52
Speaker
and the company named it Kvasir after a Nordic legend about a wise man who was created by the gods spitting into a jar. This wise man was later murdered by two dwarves. But his blood was mixed with honey to create a beverage that was said to convert wisdom and poetry to the drinker.
00:33:13
Speaker
So hopefully, next time you pick up a bottle of kavassir and drink, you will be imparted with wisdom and poetry, and perhaps hopefully not the blood of a man who was murdered by dwarves.
00:33:27
Speaker
but you never know. Next, we have Theobroma, which is an ancient chocolate-based ale that came from a 3,000-year-old pottery fragment from the Honduras. And this recipe includes Askinosi cocoa, honey, chiles, and annatto. They also make the Biera Etrusca bronze,
00:33:49
Speaker
which is a 2,800-year-old recipe from Italy. It has lots of ingredients, including malt barley, heirloom Italian wheat, hazelnut flour, pomegranates, Italian chestnut honey, Delaware wildflower resin, huh, clover honey, whole flower hops, Gentian root, and Ethiopian myrrh resin.
00:34:12
Speaker
that one is a mouthful and it's got tons of shit in it so I'm guessing it tastes good but I haven't had it I'm gonna guess because it's dogfish that it's awesome and then
00:34:25
Speaker
Finishing out the series, there are Dogfish Head's African Tej, which is an Ethiopian honeywine made with actual parts of a ground-up gesso tree, and Saati, a 9th century Finnish beer that's actually brewed over white hot river rocks with Finnish juniper and black tea.
00:34:49
Speaker
You'll never say that Dogfish Head is not devoted to creating awesome beers and ales and drinks because they went there, literally to Finland, to gather juniper from the woodlands and white-hot river rocks to brew the beer over.
00:35:10
Speaker
That's dedication to beer, my friends.
Podcast Promotion & Life Updates
00:35:14
Speaker
And that was the Ancient Ales series. Definitely check it out. Go and buy some and drink them for me, for I cannot. And enjoy your Ancient Ales.
00:35:26
Speaker
and oh my gosh sorry my throat needs a break and I think my soup needs to be condensed and so I'll be right back I'm just gonna go put some cinnamon and some nutmeg in the soup and I'm gonna stir it up and I'll be right back with you
00:35:47
Speaker
you
00:36:01
Speaker
Okay, and I'm back my soup is delicious But my throat's a little sore so what that's gonna be it for today for your history of alcohol lesson with Jenny the host of the struggling archaeologist guide to getting dirty and I'm not gonna do that accent anymore. Just so you know no that's done
00:36:21
Speaker
And moving on, if you have anything to add to the discussion on the archaeology of alcohol, you can email me at guide2gettingdirty.com with questions or comments. You can also contact me on Tumblr, thestrugglingarchaeologist.tumblr.com or Twitter at the struggling at struggling arc or on Facebook, facebook.com forward slash guide2gettingdirty. So yes, thank you for listening to that.
00:36:52
Speaker
Fantastic, amazing discussion on ancient alcohol, led by me, which I am going to just go ahead and say is probably the best discussion on the archaeology of alcohol that's ever taken place anywhere. And I'm going to pat myself on the back for that one. Good job, Jenny. You're awesome.
00:37:12
Speaker
And so the only other thing I wanted to touch on today was this little thing that I decided to do called the Struggling Archaeology Book Club. Now, if you don't follow me on Tumblr, you may not have heard about this, but I wanted to start a little book club.
00:37:30
Speaker
For, not necessarily archaeologists, but I know I have a wide range of listeners who are into history in general, and I love reading a little about me. I love to read, not just non-fictions.
00:37:48
Speaker
I love to read in general anything and everything. I especially love historical fiction and I'm also kind of a YA nerd. So I thought it might be fun to have a little bit of a historical archaeology book club or historical fiction book club rather.
00:38:09
Speaker
where I would suggest books for people who are also into reading and who like historical fictions to read and we could read them sort of together and then have a discussion on the book and I would love to hear back from you about what you thought from it and the things that we can take away from them.
00:38:27
Speaker
and just sort of to generally encourage reading all around and to encourage wonderful conversation to take place about the books that we're reading and enjoying. So I'd love to hear from you guys about books that you would like to see in the Struggling Archaeologists Book Club.
00:38:43
Speaker
And I'm not necessarily limited to only historical fictions because I'll read pretty much anything. So if it's a history, a nonfiction, a fiction that's not necessarily historical fiction, but it's also really just kind of cool and interesting and maybe has some historical aspects, I would still be interested in hearing about it. And I'll keep you guys updated with what I'm reading.
00:39:06
Speaker
And so speaking of, I have a book picked out to read first for the book club that I am super excited about because I have heard just awesome things on YouTube. I watched a lot of BookTubers and just heard great things about it. So it's called All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doar. And it's a story set in World War II Europe that follows the intertwining paths of a blind French girl and a German youth.
00:39:36
Speaker
And it's a beautiful story that illuminates the ways that, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. And it just sounds like a fantastic read.
00:39:47
Speaker
And I've heard that the writer just has a fantastic grasp on the World War II era European history and his literary talent is phenomenal and he's just amazing and descriptive and wonderful. And so that's going to be the first book for the club. If you can get your hands on it, go to your library, buy it online, go to your local bookstore.
00:40:11
Speaker
I'm just excited to give it a try and so I hope that you join me. I'm just about to finish up the book that I'm currently reading and so I will update you all shortly when I begin reading it and then when I finish we'll have a little discussion hopefully on the social medias and Tumblr and Twitter and I'll probably make a YouTube video about it, my review, and then hopefully you can also join me on YouTube
00:40:38
Speaker
to comment on what you thought and you can respond to the things that I'm going to be touching in the YouTube video. And so if you want to, you can actually view some of the books I've already put on the Struggling Arc Book Club list on my Goodreads account. Goodreads is a website for readers.
00:40:59
Speaker
It's a way of keeping track of the books you're reading, looking into books that you want to read. You can keep lists and bookshelves of things that you want to read, your favorites, you're currently reading, you want to read, all of that different type of stuff. I have a bookshelf specifically for this book club on my Goodreads profile, which you can access.
00:41:20
Speaker
at www.goodreads.com forward slash books and cleverness 81 which is my profile. Books and cleverness being a line from Harry Potter because I'm a Harry Potter nerd just like Hermione.
00:41:37
Speaker
And so Books and Cleverness 81 is both my Goodreads profile name and my YouTube name if you wanted to follow me on YouTube to look forward to that review video. I don't, I only have I think maybe one other video up or two on YouTube right now, but hopefully I'll be adding more and this will be probably one of my first ones. So I'm very excited about it and I hope that you join me in this book club to read all the light we cannot see.
00:42:05
Speaker
And so that I believe is all I have today for the struggling archaeologist's guide to getting dirty. I know it's a shorter episode this week, but that's probably a good thing because I am still not entirely well. And speaking for this long has caused me to spasm into coughing fits.
00:42:23
Speaker
several times which have interrupted my recording and I'm probably losing my voice again so as I'm sure you don't want this to be happening to me as much as I do not want it to be happening to me I'm just gonna stop talking now and so I just want to thank you guys for listening once again
00:42:42
Speaker
make sure that you are going to the archaeology podcast network.com, home of the new archaeology podcast network that the struggling archaeologist is glad to be a part of to find out about all the other fantastic archaeology podcasts that are featured by our
Conclusion & Sign-Off
00:43:01
Speaker
By our little group, you can find this podcast there, as well as past episodes, and you can also find great other shows like the CRM Archaeology Podcast, the Archaeotech Podcast, the Anarchiologists Podcast. There's just tons of great things going on over there, and we're very excited that it's been just going so well, and the network has just been wonderful.
00:43:25
Speaker
Definitely go and check it out and stay tuned for the 22nd episode of the struggling archaeologist's guide to getting dirty, which should be coming out on the first Tuesday of next month, unless something crazy happens to me, in which case I'll just let you know. So...
00:43:40
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening, and I'm sorry I couldn't sing on today's podcast, but again, I don't really have a voice. I would like to sing, but my voice is awful right now. Yeah. So that'll be it for me, Jenny. I'm signing off. Have a really great night. Thank you so much for listening. This is McNiven signing off.
00:44:12
Speaker
I think I'm dying. Can you die from a cold? I mean like 21st century cold. Why me? Why?
00:44:37
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com