Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 1 (2006), p. 176

In Beer in the middle ages and the renaissance, Richard Unger sets out to explore the production and consumption of beer during pre-modern times in northern and western Europe, the region where beer was, and often remains, the preferred drink. During that period, ‘beer was a necessity, a part of life, a drink for everyone of any age or status, and a beverage for all times of the day from breakfast to dinner and into the evening’ [p. xiii]. As such, it was much prized as a source of nutrition, widely regarded as a healthy beverage when drinking water was not, and consumed only incidentally for its intoxicating effects. Indeed, Unger contrasts beer’s intimate association with subsistence in earlier times with its close modern association with primarily recreation and intoxication, especially revolving around sporting events and university life.

After brief introductory remarks about beer production in ancient times, Unger quickly moves on to the medieval and early modern periods. Most of the book is dedicated to tracing the development of brewing from the early middle ages to the seventeenth century, by which time it had become integral to a complex and prosperous commercial economy. As an aid to understanding such development, Unger suggests that it went through stages similar to those identified by Roman historian and archaeologist, D. P. S. Peacock, in his study of the developmental stages of pottery production. Accordingly, Unger identifies six stages in the development of brewing, ranging from domestic production and household industry through individual and concentrated workshop production to manufactory- and factory-based commercial production. Only the last stage, factory-based commercial production, associated with the industrial revolution and massive production scales, occurred after the period Unger considers. While there was a chronological sequence to these stages of development, they did not occur simultaneously in all places. In fact, he says, by the end of the period in question, all stages still could be found in some place or another. Though these stages were not synchronous, they did mark increments in the scale of production. Even so, until the seventeenth century, production levels remained relatively small, the largest perhaps on the scale of microbreweries today.

The most significant change to beer production during the Middle Ages, according to Unger, was the gradual introduction and eventual domination of hops over other flavouring and preserving agents in the brewing process. While a number of large monasteries apparently made some beer with hops from the ninth century onward, it was the brewers of Hamburg, Bremen, and other cities of north Germany who made it commonplace after 1200. Until then, most beer was flavoured and preserved by mixtures of herbs known collectively as gruit, usually including leaves of bog myrtle or wild rosemary and one or two additional herbs, but varying greatly from one place to another. Gruit continued to be the preferred additive for many: consumers because of its familiar flavours; brewers because it worked with known methods and equipment; rulers because they taxed it and derived considerable income from it. Still, hops possessed one attribute that eventually permitted it to win out over gruit, its enhanced preservative qualities, which allowed hopped beer to become a reliable and lucrative export product. In short, hops gave beer a longer ‘shelf life’. As a result, the use of hops in brewing began to predominate in the increasingly concentrated workshops of north Germany during the thirteenth century, in Holland during the fourteenth century, in the rest of the Low Countries during the fifteenth century, and in England and elsewhere after 1500.

Besides the changes in beer production associated with the adoption of hops, Unger also discusses changes over time in the types of grains used in brewing, usually combinations of wheat, oats, and barley, the kinds of equipment used, the frequency of brewing, and many other aspects of beer production. He also pays attention to what sorts of people brewed, how brewers organized their workplaces, and what organizations they formed in support of their trade. Further, Unger includes extensive discussions of the importance of beer trade in the late-medieval and early modern commercial economy. In addition, he examines the role of beer, as well as its ingredients, as a source of tax revenue over the entire period. The result of all of this is a book that is impressive in both breadth and depth. He has assembled a rich variety and quantity of material, partly based on his earlier detailed study, A history of brewing in Holland, 900–1900: economy, technology, and the state (Brill 2001), and supplemented by the work of many other scholars from primarily England, France, Germany, and the Low Countries. Unger’s book is not an exhaustive study of pre-modern brewing in northern and western Europe, but it is comprehensive and exemplary. And because it is well-organized and well-written, it provides a useful and accessible introduction to a vast subject that at the same time provides a solid context for the work of other specialists in the field.