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The Æthelmearc Gazette

~ Covering the Kingdom of Æthelmearc of the SCA

The Æthelmearc Gazette

Category Archives: Brewing

The Return of Artisan and Scribal Playtime at Æthelmearc War Practice

11 Wednesday May 2022

Posted by aethgazette in Arts & Sciences, Bardic, Brewing, Uncategorized

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AEthelmearc War Practice, Bardic, Brewing, scribal

One more weekend, and it is time to pack the camping gear, head out of town and enjoy the copious A&S activities at the Æthelmearc War Practice! With the Return of the Great Hall, boy, do we have a line up… There will be Artisan Playtime, there will be Scribal Playtime, there will be Brewing, there will be Bardic – as well as a woodworking demo and whatever other projects the populace brings for show and tell. Reserve some time out of your busy schedule of martial activities and classes for the many Cool Things happening in the Great Hall yet once again!

Brews and Bards in the Barn Social from 4-8pm in the Great Hall

Master Morien MacBain performs on the field.

To start the weekend off with a bang, the Brews and Bards in the Barn social will happen Friday from 4-8 PM in the Great Hall. Sylvan Bards THLady Maggie Rue and Master Morien MacBain plan a bardic circle together with the pouring of libations by the Brewers Guild. Master Morien would invite prospective Bards to partake of his Eleanor of Aquitaine Challenge! He offers a pair of prizes, one for Joglars or Best Performance and one for Trobars or Best Poem or song Composed on-site, during the evening! He will announce the topic at 5PM and composers may either present their work themselves, or designate another to do so. Eleanor of Aquitaine was the great patroness of the troubadours; the trobars were the writers, the joglars were the singers and a person could be both.

 

The Æthelmearc Guild of Brewers, Vintners, and Meadhers is working hard on restoring the Pennsic Bar and intends to have it up and running to be able to serve cold brews and fruity meads during the Brews and Bards in the Barn revelry. The first part of the evening the Brewers Guild plans a social get-together or round table for all our brewers old and new to meet and greet the many familiar and perhaps not so familiar faces we have not seen since far too long. Have you kept on brewing? Bring something to share. Are you looking for feedback? Definitely bring something to share! We welcome all, and will also have non-alcoholic beverages available.

Artisan Playtime from 1-5 PM in the Great Hall

A plow plane used for cutting the groove for a panel in a frame.

My personal favorite, woodworking virtuoso Master Robert of Sugargrove will bring his collection of hand tools to demonstrate commonly used period techniques. He shared with me: “I usually do a little stock prep – rough scrub plane & finish smooth plane – how we make a flat, true board; then either some dovetail work or mortise & tenon joinery.”

Master Robert likes to get random folks to try plane work; to give them a sense of what is involved in just getting out a board for a project. He hopes woodworkers will stop by with questions, like what type of wood to use, which joint where, how do I lay out for joinery and such, which Master Robert does not think “really anything unusual or cool,” but I beg to differ!

Teaching the populace the proper way to handle a plane.

Scribal Playtime from 1-5 PM in the Great Hall

Is woodworking not really your thing? THLady Eleanore Godwin is coordinating Scribal Playtime during the same time slot of 1 – 5 PM. She recently secured supplies from her locals the Barony of the Rhydderich Hael (thank you, Mistress Cori!) and looks forward to sharing her tables with the populace. Would you like to get feedback on an existing project? Bring it and share! Are you new to the art but curious to try your hand? Choose a bookmark or perhaps a scroll blank and give it a swing! You never know until you try, right?

At Artisan Playtime, everyone is welcome set up a table and chair and share what they are working on, or to stop by and be inspired by what others are working on. Artisan Playtime is a most wonderful way to see artisans in action, to socialize and network – and to get out of the rain / sun / whatever Pennsylvania Spring has in store for us!

KMoAS Consultation Table from 1 – 5 PM in the Great Hall

A reminder, the Kingdom Ministry of Arts & Sciences will arrange for an A&S Consultation Table during Artisan Playtime for those new, and not so new, to the arts & sciences to chat about projects, progress and inspirations. Come hang out with us, ask questions about research, documentation and entering for future events, or just plain enjoy the view of art happening in real time!

Hope to see you there.
Elska

Please Contact Me if you would like to know more.
It is probably not a bad idea to bring a comfy chair.

 

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Change of Office at the Æ Brewers Guild

30 Saturday Apr 2022

Posted by aethgazette in Arts & Sciences, Brewing

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AEthelmearc Brewers Guild, Arts and Sciences, Brewers Guild, Brewing

Greetings Populace and Brewers of Æthelmearc!

As of Thursday April 28 at 7PM, Master Madoc Arundel stepped down as Head of the Royal Æthelmearc Guild of Brewers, Vintners, and Meadhers, and we, Mistress Elska á Fjárfelli, assisted by Guild Deputy Lady Violeta de Valencia, are taking over leadership of the Brewers Guild.

Lady Violeta and I would like to thank Master Madoc for the awesome job he did with the Guild, growing its presence in person as well as online. I can’t think of saying our thanks any better than old-time brewer Master Artemius of Delftwood: “You fostered and advanced guild and mentored many of the members. You encouraged many of us to try new recipes and gave honest feedback that helped us all grow as brewers. The kingdom has benefited from your efforts on many levels. Thank you very much for your service and guidance over the years.” Thank you from the bottom of our heart!

Naturally, we jumped right into the job and are busily coordinating Guild participation both at Æthelmearc War Practice and of course at Pennsic Royal. Our new Guild Chamberlain Lord Jean Phillipe from St. Swithin’s Bog started inventory of the Guild equipment right away to make sure everything is spic and span come Pennsic Bar time, with a hopeful early appearance of the bar at War Practice. And don’t worry, we will track down you active brewers and see what we can coordinate for Pennsic bar donations soon (please PM or email us).

For those who are not as familiar with the two of us – or just itching to get out and share a good home brew – the Brewers Guild, in collaboration with Bardic Champion Master Morien MacBain, will host a Brews & Bardic in the Barn Social Friday evening from 4 to 8PM in the Great Hall during War Practice (stay tuned for more on this event). Come say hi, share a brew, admire the Guild bar & taps, and hang out to enjoy the song & stories! After two years of Plague, I am betting there are some stories…!

Again, thank you, Master Madoc, for your service to the Æthelmearc Brewing community, and for your offer to stay on as Guild Webminister. We hope to do you proud. Understandably, the Guild is not quite the same now as when we the Plague first manifested and we figure it best to start back up with a clean slate. If you consider yourself an active brewer and/or active Guild Officer, please reach out (sooner rather than later) so we can update the Guild Roster, etc.

Lady Violeta and I look very much forward to help the Guild back on its feet, and welcome back our brewers, vintners and meadhers. Now go forth, and ferment All The Things!

Mistress Elska and Lady Violeta
Head of the Brewers Guild, and Deputy

Learn more about the Æthelmearc Brewers Guild here

 

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Behind the Scenes at Kingdom Champs: Krupnik

17 Thursday Feb 2022

Posted by aethgazette in A&S Champs, Arts & Sciences, Brewing, Research

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arts & sciences, Championship, Champs

by Elska á Fjárfelli

A closer look at Krupnik with Lord Cassiano da Castello in the 2021 Kingdom of Æthelmearc Arts & Sciences Championship.

Could you tell me a little about you, your persona. Is your entry something your persona would use?

I am currently a mix of personas, trending towards 16th C. Polish. The working story is that my persona traveled to Italy in search of new trade connections/ flavors, and due to a customs error, got stuck in Northern Italy with an Italian name. Lord Cassiano is still trying to get home to Poland, but alas, the records are mixed up and he is still trying to find his Polish name to leave.

My Kingdom A&S entry, a Lithuanian honey Krupnik made with rye vodka, is something that I think he definitely would drink and be familiar with. The research beyond the making of the drink argues that home distilling of this beverage occurred prior to the late period, and was available on special occasions like holidays. I have not proven this fully and entirely, but work continues.

Lord Cassiano’s yummy entry of honey Krupnik (sampled outdoors, of course).

What inspired you to make your entry? Did you have a specific need? A desire to try a new skill?

Several years ago, I was introduced to Krupnik by members of the Lithuanian diaspora in Pittsburgh, where many found work in mills, or in PA’s anthracite coal regions– that coal and steel barons may have also imported workers because of ethnic biases (Slavs work hard and don’t complain) is another story for another time. Regardless, I tried the drink, liked it, and thought I might try to track its roots back into medieval period.

There go some famous last words, as tracking it into medieval period has been difficult. What became a “I just wanna try this and see how it goes” became a real quest to try to give some small voice to a particularly marginalized and historically silenced area of the world. The more I dug, the more that I came to understand how another ethnic group came to be systematically hamstrung and erased from the medieval socio-political landscape. The Krupnik project, in attempts to use primary source documents, became a discussion of how to find answers in the land and in local hearsay, when the footsteps of life ways for a living, feeling people had been wiped from the landscape.

This line of inquiry kept me going where I might have been sincerely frustrated.

Did the entry throw up any unexpected issues?

Yes and no, all the issues and none at all. Krupnik is blessedly easy to make, and to make well. It has a flexible and robust recipe, capable of accepting additional and varied ingredients (I’ve made the recipe substituting honey with maple syrup, shagbark hickory syrup, and molasses, all have turned out delicious). It is very fun to play with, trying new flavors and new combinations because it holds up so well. So no issues in the project journal aspects of the project.

The research aspect will always have an asterisk, however. Certain folks have remarked that my documentation approaches thesis-length, and half of it is explaining leads that should be taken with a grain of salt, adding caveats, and extensively providing secondary resources where I lack a formal recipe. It’s not ideal. I know it isn’t. But I think that proper justice can be given with the source material provided, it just requires all that much more care and precision.

Did you learn something specific, something you would do differently, or would recommend others to do again?

In the last iteration of the project, I used rye vodka instead of another grain vodka, as I surmised that if a vodka was made in period, it would be from the most available, cheapest grain in the area, and thus rye. The resulting flavor change I think is the best version I have put forward. Rye has a spiciness/ sourness to it that I think really balances out the strong honey character. I would recommend this to anyone making Krupnik.

What do you think of the difference between entering an in-person or a virtual competition?

I have entered virtual competitions with tastings and I do prefer in-person for this. It takes so much more effort to ship out samples or drive them to people. Much easier for in-person!

What motivated you to enter the Kingdom Championship?

I try to enter everything I can. Feedback is necessary for sure, and I am chasing growth and direction with this project. It is also important to me to see benchmarks in my scores of how they change and what I can do to affect them. Even if they do not demonstrate growth, they are a marker of consistent effort, and that is meaningful.

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Virtual Known World Cooks and Bards Symposium

01 Sunday Aug 2021

Posted by aethgazette in Arts & Sciences, Bardic, Brewing, Cooking, Event Announcements & Updates, SCA @ Home, Tidings

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Welcome to the Ninth Known World Bardic Congress and Cooks Collegium, to be held online on September 10th, 11th, and 12th.  We are hosted this year by the Mid-Realm’s Barony of Ayreton.

Join us for a weekend filled with classes, concerts, and bardic circles. In addition to cooking and bardic, we will also have brewing & vinting, along with instrumental & choral music classes –and more!

We encourage attendees to register on the website.  Much like Pennsic, you can use your account to offer classes, suggest others, request stage time, or create your personal schedule.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/359545818902748

Webpage: http://tilted-windmill.com/kwcb2021/

Host Webpage: https://ayreton.midrealm.org/

Event Steward: Cerian Cantwr (Charles Grab) via email

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A Smorgasbord of A&S at Ædult Swim

05 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by aethgazette in Arts & Sciences, Brewing, KMOAS

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A&S, Advice, Brewing

Tired of fighting all morning? Feel like doing something else for a bit while partner is off having fun smacking people? Come check out to the Ædult Swim Arts & Sciences smörgåsbord! Ædult Swim Arts & Sciences will have the whole second floor to themselves to hang out with fellow artisans! Once again, Ædult Swim Arts & Sciences has numerous arts & sciences activities on the menu, including the Kingdom Ministry of Arts & Sciences Consultation Table with an on-site library to peruse, as well as Arts & Sciences social circles, each devoted to a particular arts or science topic.

Come check out the:
–Costuming Social: planning on updating your look or fighting clothes? We might be able to help! Sewing machines, books, and advice available to help your persona look top-notch. Accessories included!

–Fiber Arts Social: Learn more about the variety of Fiber Arts available in period and how to incorporate them in your persona.

–Viking Age Social: Are you a beginning Viking persona and want to be more authentic? Are you an experienced Viking and want to show others how you pulled it off? Come join the Viking Circle and share in current research on this fascinating historical period.

–Medieval Sciences Social: The Medieval Sciences are often under-represented but no less fascinating. From Chemicals to feats of Engineering, bring your specialty to help share the love! Books and research on a variety of subjects should be available.

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If the Roaming Library does not have what you need, perhaps the merchant book shelves do – and  bring your precious home!

And don’t forget the…

KMOAS Consultation table, hosted by the Kingdom minister of Arts & Sciences Hrólfr á Fjárfelli. He welcomes anyone with questions about Arts & Sciences! Like, how do I enter an A&S display or competition? What do I need to do to enter an A&S display or competition? What is this thingy called documentation? Can I get some feedback on a project I’m working on? I have trouble (re)searching online, do you have any suggestions? …?  For this, and more, visit the KMOAS Consultation table.

Roaming Library, also hosted by Master Hrólfr á Fjárfelli. He will bring two book cases, and a couple crates of books on Costuming, including Viking and Anglo-Saxon eras. Bring a camera if you hope to bring back a chapter or two for research. And if you have something you think others would enjoy to take a peek at, please bring and share too (with name) – he and his minions will stand guard all day to protect the Hoard!

Region 3 Brewing Round Table, hosted by Master Gille MacDhonuill. Want to talk about making brews of all types stop by and share your recipes, ideas, or learn more about the art of alcohol? Then this is where you want to be, starting at 3 pm – home brews not required but always welcome, of course.

Yours in Service,
THL Maggie Rue

Ædult Swim V on Facebook
Ædult Swim V on the Kingdom calendar

 

 

 

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Region 5 Æthelbrewer’s Social A Barreling Success

04 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by aethgazette in Arts & Sciences, Brewing, Competitions

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Brewing, Brewing competition, Region 5

2020-02-01 13.43.28

Enjoying the spoils of our labors – a small barrel of Robert’s hopped gale ale, and a large barrel of Elska’s grape mead. Photo by Robert of Ferness

This past Saturday on February the 1st, the Region 5 Brewers Guild organized their annual Championship and Round Table and the Feast of the Seven Deadly Sins at the Barony of Delftwood. Each year, the different region brewers representatives host a Brewers Championship Round Table to find the best their region has to offer, as well as share the spoils of many hours of fermentation magic with their drinking friends. Region 5 generally uses round table style judging where everyone judges everyone, with forms available from the Æthelmearc Brewers Guild Competition Corner, and we decide the scoring collaboratively. This year, region 5 excelled with 14 participants, 5 competition entries and another handful of bottles to share, and the experience was once again very enjoyable! We had a great variety of brews to sample and a number of new people to enjoy them with.

The results of the AS54 Region 5 Brewing Championship are as follows: the winner of the Beer category, and overall Region 5 Champion was title defending Robert of Ferness with a hopped bog myrtle cask ale – walking away with 4 bags of specialty malt and hops; and the winner of the Mead/wine category was Fuego with Satyr’s Cyser, who also received specialty malt as well as a bottle of grapefruit Craft Puree. All this loot of course we hope to see back in liquid form as next year’s entry!

michael higgins

Brewster Fuego receiving her accolade and prize in court. Photo by Michael Higgins.

Runners up were Richard Baldwin with Buzzerbee, a wonderful chamomile kveik beer, Justin Lymner with a Red Currant Cordial, and Elska, with a documented non-period Framboise. There was also, among others, a 5 gallon barrel of concord grape mead – 3 month old grape mead aged for 2 and half weeks in an oak barrel which was as smooth as a 3 year old vintage (only about half of the 5 gallon barrel made it back home) – two yummy melomels by Robert l’Etourdi including a black currant mead, and a wonderful dry cider as well as some rumtopf liquor by Katerin Starcke.

As you can see, Æthelbrewers sure know how to party! Keep in mind: the next brewers Round Table will be in Region 3 at Ædult Swim in just a few weeks. The Region 3 Round Table will be hosted in the mid-afternoon by Master Gille MacDhonuill in the general A&S area, and there will be signage to help you find us, in the unlikely event our merriment is not enough!

IMG_7779

Say “hi” to your Region 5 brewers and tasters!

The official website for the Æthelmearc Brewers Guild.
The official facebook page for the Æthelmearc Brewers Pub.

 

 

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Wassail, all Æthelmearc Brewers!

09 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by aethgazette in Arts & Sciences, Brewing

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Tags

Brewing, Brewing competition, Seven Deadly Sins

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THL Robert of Ferness serving from his mini-barrel at the 2019 Seven Deadlies brewing round table & competition.

The Feast of the Seven Deadly Sins, hosted by the Barony of Delftwood February 1st, 2020, will once again host the Annual Region 5 Brewing Championship! Everyone and every beverage type is welcome. We will use the round table style judging format; even if you have no entry you are welcome to join in and partake.

The round table format means that the competition is both a round table, where we taste each others work and provide feedback, as well as a competition, where the entry is scored and the feedback noted down on paper for the entrant to take home. Each participant, whether or not they come with an entry, can partake in the tasting and discussion, giving constructive feedback for each others work. We find it is often the entry’s brewer who judges their own work the most critical, and find the format to be quite an effective way for beginner, as well as established brewers, to advance their research and brewing techniques and sources.

We will have entry forms at the event but you are also welcome to fill one in before coming so you can make good use of your brew book.

Best brewer wins overall, and best Region 5 brewer will win the Regional Championship. And depending on what I can find hiding in my stash, there will be winner’s loot too…

Come all and bring your best!

 

Entry form: http://brewers.aethelmearc.org/EntryForm.pdf

Scoring rubric: http://brewers.aethelmearc.org/24ptRubric.pdf

Score sheet: http://brewers.aethelmearc.org/24ptScoring.pdf

More on the event

For more information, please contact Region 5 Brewers Representative Elska á Fjárfelli at elska.a.fjarfelli AT gmail DOT com

 

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Behind the Scenes – The Kingdom A&S Championship: Krupnik, by Lord Cassiano da Castello

29 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by aethgazette in A&S Competition and Display, Arts & Sciences, Brewing

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A&S Champs, Brewing, competition, krupnik

Earlier this month, I had the fortune and privilege to enter Kingdom A&S Championships with an entry that had been in progress for the better part of a year.

After multiple entries into other displays and competitions, trial and testing of different methods, and sifting through possible ingredients from a terroir that spans two continents, I selected the two recipes I thought would give me the best chance. The krupnik that I made, flavored with fruits and spices, might stand a chance to win.

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For those unfamiliar with krupnik, it is an alcoholic drink that begins with a neutral grain spirit. As in nearly any area of the study of food, alcohol has long been a staple of human existence and has taken a variety of forms. For the people who settled East of the River Elbe and North of the Caucasus Mountains, their cultural liquor contribution was vodka, as well as its various adjacent types. These were created by using additives such as herbs, spices, or honey. Honey, popular in its own right for its use in mead production, was a useful addition for softening the bite of grain spirit. Eventually, the practice became common enough to earn the right to a separate classification of alcohol. Called krupnik by the Poles, Barenfang by the Germans, and krambambula by the Belorussians, honey liquor culturally came into its own.

Many of these liquors are difficult to trace the origins of. Krupnik is no exception. Allegedly, it was created by Benedictine monks in a monastery in the northeast of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, now known as Belarus, in the 16th century. After its inception it presumably became very popular with the nobles of Poland-Lithuania, called szlachta, who modified and expanded their personal recipes for the drink and passed them down through. However, as I read through various books related to the Pre-Christian period of Poland-Lithuania (pre-15th Century), this story became less and less credible to me.

While the Teutonic crusades did their best to erase pre-Christian religions and cultures from the Baltic areas, some evidence of the animistic Romuva religion does survive. Analysis of the primary sources closest to the period indicated that the Romuva faith had a loosely organized pantheon and was highly animistic, allowing for the incorporation of deities of all kinds. While authoritative lists of canonical gods are difficult to come by and often don’t agree with each other, they still demonstrate consistent themes.

Among these consistent themes were gods and rituals directly tied to the healthy production of honey, its fermentation, and storage. Using the logic of sympathetic magic and post-structuralism, or “if people had gods that they prayed to about this thing, this thing must have been important and had some serious cultural bearing to it,” I came to the conclusion that krupnik was likely a drink made by the common folk long before some enterprising monks picked it up as a monastic trade item. Thus, it is unsurprising that I couldn’t find a direct recipe or method. And so, I wrote up my research, added justifications from my ingredient choices, and wrote up my method for making this drink.

I should note here that I do not have a documented method for this beverage as it stands. I learned how to make this drink from my and my partner’s family traditions, us both coming from long lines of Eastern and Southern European Slavs. We have both drank our share of strange brandies and cordials made by enterprising family members, and have been informed of the “correct recipes” with some ethnic muttering about who’s culture’s liquor is best thrown in. I cannot tell you with precision how period our recipes are. I can only tell you that Slavs have traditions regarding liquor that are assuredly more pagan than Christian, and that there are more ways to earn good luck and a good harvest than to properly drink a shot. It was a test of research and primary sources to find any contemporary recipes from the later end of the time period, and some of those were barely in the period definitions of the Society. In previous competitions, I had been heavily docked for providing no supporting method documentation, so I was on the hunt for nearly anything that I could use. Thanks to some timely and incredibly helpful recommendations, I was able to find some instructions from a Russian manual of household management. So, I wrote them into my method with caveats and headed to Kingdom A&S.

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Lord Cassiano serving at the A&S Championship.

I was honored by visitors to my table, curious and effusive royalty, and by my insightful and exacting judges. Their feedback was supportive and precise. As a bolt flees from the firing string, so did they swiftly seek and certainly find the weaknesses of my project. Modern choices of fruit and modern processing tools, only partial documentation of the herbs used, and the usual dagger, a lack of a single recipe. Across all judges, I consistently lost points for this one. Despite written caveats, despite the tightening circle of supporting evidence and points for probability, there was no smoking gun, so to speak, of how this drink would have been made in period.

I have to note here. This is the SCA. We are in the business of the recreation of historical artifacts, methods, and techniques. We strive for this; it is perhaps our calling card amongst the class of medieval play-acting groups. It is a facet of the society that drew me towards it and keeps me engaged day after day. However, it is one particular rock that I also keep tripping over. In my mundane life, I am an Associate Principal Investigator for a cultural resource mitigation company. The title is a mouthful, but means that I work as a historian, anthropologist, and archaeologist all in one. I am in the business of collecting historical and archaeological data, synthesizing it, and presenting the best possible picture of what it can tell us folks in the modern day. As one puzzle piece does not make the picture, neither does one data point make a conclusion, and thus do we do our research and draw conclusions in my field. Very rarely do we get that “smoking gun,” but piles of spent shell casings often are ample substitute.

So, what to do now, with several months until the next Festival of the Passing of the Ice Dragon yet still bearing the same ultimate feedback that I received at the last one? Thanks to the diligence and support of my judges, I have a handful of new leads for other weaknesses in my work, but that pack of lost points that a recipe would ensnare is a frustrating target. There still exist more historical monographs about the Teutonic Crusades than the Lithuanian Empire that preceded them. There still exist paywalls over university-led research into these kinds of anthropological puzzles. I still can’t read Polish. These same roadblocks led me to the indirect methods of problem solving that I first began this project with, and now 40 sources and 4,000 words later I am running out of clever ideas to defeat this final boss. I can hear my thesis advisor from years ago asking me where my ethnography is to contextualize this data, but in this moment, it feels like I have none of the data and entirely too much context.

Ultimately, I have four months to seek another, more complete answer. I’m not ready to set this project down and there are stages of maturation techniques and more period methods that I want to use and try, but this question of authenticity is one that needs to be nailed down. But for now, as the holidays roll in and I prepare to celebrate three religions’ Christmases in the space of a month, it is time to step back. Friends, family, and ancestors all need to be toasted, and I have several bottles to empty.

May trouble never find you in the new year,
Lord Cassiano da Castello, Order of the Sycamore, Shire of Nithgaard.

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The Happy Wagon, where Lord Cas and the other alcoholic entries, could legally sampled even though entered in a dry site. Lord Cas’s Russian clothing came in useful in the unheated cabin, as did their wonderful krupnik sufficiently warm the judges.

For complete documentation and bibliography check the pdf at:
http://danikaulakisart.com/documents/krupnik-documentation_kingdom_AS.pdf

A Partial Bibliography, For Those Interested:

  • Maria Dembińska, William Woys Weaver (1999). Food and Drink in Medieval Poland: Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past. University of Pennsylvania Press.
  • Rowell, S. C. (1994). Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within East-Central Europe, 1295-1345. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series. Cambridge University Press.
  • Greimas, A. (1992). Of Gods and Men. Indiana University Press
  • Pouncey, Caroline Johnston (2001). The Domostroi: Rules for Russian Households in the Time of Ivan the Terrible.”

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The Viking Celebration of Yule

25 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by aethgazette in Brewing, Esoterica, Food

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holiday, Viking, Yule

By Elska á Fjárfelli, of the Dominion of Myrkfaelinn

Going down the rabbit hole can result in some interesting finds. During my digging into historic brewing techniques, I came across the following story. I thought it offered a nice peek behind the curtains into the life of the modern Viking — what is Christmas without a ghost story — which is why I am sharing it now with you.

Historians believe that the way of life of rural Scandinavians did not significantly change for hundreds of years, if not more, and that many of the traditions and techniques as found in the 19th and early 20th century could even go back as far as Viking times. The following account is called “Christmas preparations and Christmas” and is written by Norwegian Guro Hoftun Narum. The chapter is part of the book Livet i en fjellbygd omkring århundreskiftet (Life in a mountain village around the turn of the century), which was published in 1965.

Juleforberedelser og jul

 

In the good time before Christmas, the pigs were slaughtered. As a rule, it was the wife of the garden who cooked the cracklings and made pork stew and meat baskets (sausages). In part of the Christmas baking, they used pork dumplings.

One time before Christmas they bought a bunch of lutefisk, which had to lie [soak] in strong ash [potash lye] until it had swelled. New water had to be refreshed until the water was completely shiny and the fish was light and glossy as well.

Then the containers of Christmas beer were prepared. First, they sprout barley grain with some water. The grain grew, sprouted, then became lofty. They had it in a big wooden tray inside the living room, because it was warm. While the grain was growing, they sometimes touched [checked] it, and when it was fit, they dried it in the sauna. From the sauna they put it in the mill and got it roughly ground.

The women brewed beer from the malt. […] The beer fermented a little in the barrel as well, and there was some yeast on the bottom of the barrel. When the beer was drunk, they emptied the yeast into a dish and let it dry out, and when this yeast had dried out, they kept it until they had to make bread dough. Before it came from the cookers [could be purchased], baked fermented bread was preferred only for Christmas.

It’s Christmas Eve I remember best of the days of Christmas. Early Christmas Eve morning, we dragged the children into [listening to] a lot of Christmas [stories] around our kettles. We had the fireplace full and even something beside the fireplace. Most days, father set up one or more Christmas nights.

I can’t remember we had Christmas trees, and we didn’t get gifts outside of new clothes.

The evening meal was the same every Christmas Eve as long as I was a kid, namely lutefisk, a little fried pork and “dipping”, which was thick white sauce of good milk. Mother probably had some cream in it. Furthermore, there were peeled potatoes and beer in coffee mugs. Every day, the potatoes had to be peeled.

At Christmas, the adults talked about Christmas ghosts that came out of Hahaug during Christmas Night and came back on the thirteenth day. Hahaug is a large mound in the garden of Viko. There were many legends about undead (underground) people living in this mound. It was the legend of Christmas Eve, and I will bring you a couple more.

When the undead people in Hahaug were visited by other undergrounders, they held feasts. The music-man sat on top of the mound and played, and the others danced a kind of ring dance around the mound. Some of the people kept burning torches in the room.

Another legend is about a man who rode away to Hahaug on Christmas Eve. He saw a light shine inside the mound. The man greeted and called out Merry Christmas, and then he asked for a Christmas story. “It’s old custom and use here,” he said. Many women and men came out of the mound, and one of them handed the man a silver-plated drinking horn. He accepted the horn, but sprinkled its contents behind him so some of it hit the horse, and the horse was scorched on both hair and skin where the contents hit it. He should not have taken the drinking horn.

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Iron Age Stone Brewing at Myrkfaelinn Summer War Practice

11 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by aethgazette in Arts & Sciences, Brewing, Research

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Myrkfaelinn, Stone Brewing

By Elska á Fjárfelli, of the Dominion of Myrkfaelinn

My interest in anything Viking age, and anything early-period brewing merged last weekend when Myrkfaelinn hosted an Iron Age stone brewing demo at its annual Summer War Practice. Lord Ulf Barelegs traveled from afar to help THLord Robert of Ferness and me work our way through the different steps of successfully brewing an all-grain beer with nothing modern but a thermometer – and honestly, we did not even truly need that! Inspired by a Facebook post by a Texas brewer who shared his interpretation of an Iron Age brew in northern continental Europe around 2,000 years ago that he brews for an Iron Age immersion week each spring, I figured we could give it a try too.

While 2,000 years ago is a wee bit past the Viking age, it is unlikely the way of brewing changed all that much from the Iron age until Middle age monastic breweries started pushing the boundaries of brewing volume and shelf-life. And while there might not be a whole lot of recorded history, with only a single example from the Icelandic Ljósvetninga saga telling of milk warmed by stones, there is plenty of archaeological evidence for the brewing of beer in Viking age context. Residues of a fruit & honey beer from northwest Denmark of circa 1500-1300 BCE, found in 2014, included honey, bog cranberry, lingonberry, bog myrtle, yarrow, juniper, birch tree resin, as well as wheat, barley and/or rye. And there is nothing archaeologist like better than rubbish heaps and trash middens, of which the old farmsteads have plenty! It seems in central Norway the rubbish suggests Vikings and their descendants brewed beer by tossing hot rocks into wooden tuns. Many a fire-cracked stone is found at most of the farmyards of old, historically named farms. Unfortunately for the archaeologists, since most archaeological digs are initiated by construction sites, as developers are required to check for cultural artifacts before beginning construction, most construction sites avoid developing through a farmstead. This means most of the archaeological information we have about the Viking age comes from graves, and most of the archaeological information about the Middle ages comes from excavations in cities – which misses a large chunk of data as most people back then lived in the countryside. Recent small-scale excavations in farmyards found that the oldest farmsteads carbon-14 date to 600 CE, the late Iron age.

Our own Robert of Ferness admitted to having found and handled many FCR – archaeologist-speak for fire-cracked rocks – at various sites, including in Iceland. Not provable as stones used in brewing per se, but probable to have been used to heat a liquid. They could also have simply been stones put too close to fire in a hearth, or even stones cracked by intense heat in a structure fire.

fire cracked rocks.PNG

Mounds of fire cracked stones, or “brewing stones”, on Ranheim, Trondheim
(Grønnesby 2017, 135)

Nineteenth century Sociologist Eilert Sundt recorded an encounter on a farm in 1851 in Hedmark, Norway after seeing a pile of strange looking smallish stones. “What’s with these stones?” he asked and the farmer replied “They’re brewing stones. Stones they used for cooking to brew beer, from the old days when they did not have iron pots.” Sundt noted that most of the farms he visited had piles of burned or fire-cracked stones, and every time he asked about them, he was told the stones were from brewing, when they would be heated until they were glowing hot and plopped into the wood vessel to heat things up. The stones were everywhere, Sundt wrote, and so thick and compact in places, houses were built right on top of them! A modern excavation at Ranheim, near Trondheim, Norway, found 700 cubic meters of stones from just one portion of the farmstead. A test sample of 24 farms found that 71 percent had fire-cracked stones. Hot rock brewing would not be as obvious in the archaeological record elsewhere as with Norwegian brewing stones because of the types of stones used, as most regions use stones which tolerate heat without fracturing, like the igneous rock granite and basalt. Brewing beer with hot rocks is nothing unusual, and traces of brewing with stones have been found in England, Germany, Finland and the Baltics.

And thus, in the great tradition of Gulating’s law – the Gulating being the Norwegian governmental assembly which met from 900 to 1300 CE – requiring three farmers to work together to brew beer, Ulf, Robert and I set up our brewing at the Myrkfaelinn Summer War Practice to make some Viking beer! For those who could not make it, this brewing session was a trial run for the Pennsic Iron Age brewing workshop which will be held at Aethelmearc Royal, war week Saturday, starting at 2pm.

Our grainbill:

  • 18 lbs of 2 row barley malt
  •  lbs of malted oats
  • 1 lb of acidified barley malt
  • ½ lb of peat smoked barley malt (very smoky, use sparingly)
  • ½ lb of malted rye (left over)

The grain was milled on-site, and by hand.

With an infusion of:

  • Yarrow (big handful)
  • Baby spruce tips (handful)
  • Mugwort (less than a dozen sprigs)
  • Henbit (small handful)
  • Aged, yellowed hops (handful)

The herbs were fresh and picked the day before. The hops are homegrown and have been sitting in the dark in my basement for about a year. This way the brew gets minimal flavor, while still benefiting of some of the preserving qualities.

Now what did we actually do? Let me show you!

First thing we did was start a fire to make coal bed.

Then we used that fire to make a juniper infusion and clean out the wood tub (the mash tun) with the scalding infusion to clean and sterilize.

cleaning the tun.PNG

Then we put a layer of juniper twigs covering the bottom, concentrating around the plug (there is hole in the bottom of the mash tun, kept closed with the plugging stick).

infusion

We milled the grains by hand: we used 2 row barley, malted oats and some random leftovers, including some rye, as well as some peat smoked malt.

Robert of Ferness.PNG

Then we added water. We added it cold from the tap – it could also be pre-heated in sun, especially at Pennsic.

Next, we put stones on the coal bed and built another fire right over top of them, with a hardwood / pine mix I had brought from home to make sure we had dry wood.

Ulf at fire
In the traditional Scandinavian style, we made a separate tea, or infusion, with the herbal bittering agents. We used yarrow, some mugwort, aged and yellowed hops, some henbit, and baby spruce tips.

Mash on table

When the fire was mostly burned down again, we start pulling stones, and added them to mash (the soaked grains) 3 or 4 at a time. Ulf really enjoyed this bit, as did my kid when we did a water-only trial in the back yard. We tried three metal grabbers and found the funky accordion style firewood grabber worked best.

pulling stones

We kept checking the temperature, especially the top and bottom as the mash & juniper was quite insulating and there often was quite a heat difference between the top and the bottom. It was difficult to stir with the juniper branches covering the bottom. At around 130F we observed protein break – thank you Ulf for pointing that out – which made the surface of the mash all foam up.

Mash foaming

We kept adding hot rocks until overall temps were at or over 160F, and then we kept it at this level for an hour and a half – adding more stones as needed.

Boiling mash

By now, whenever a new hot rock is added, the wort (the liquid surrounding the grains) surrounding the rock immediately went to a boil, creating lots of steam, a wonderful smell of sweet malt, lots of sizzling & sputtering, and quite the surface boil. This part, which takes about an hour and a half, is spectacular to watch!

Boiling mash

At around the end of the protein rest (the hour and a half) we noticed the protein foam had dissipated, and the wort started to settle. So, we put the draining bucket under hole, carefully wiggled the plug stick, and slowly drained the wort into a sterile bucket. I would plug the drain back up each time the bucket was ready to dump the filtered wort into a sterilized fermenter bucket. This traditional way of having a combined mash tun (where the grains are soaked) and a lauter tun (where the infusion is drained off the grains) worked surprisingly well.

draining mash

We sparged with boiling water. We intended to use juniper water but ran out of cooking vessels as we started to cook dinner while waiting for the protein rest. We drained about 4 gallons from the initial wort, and another 2 gallons were sparged, by trickling boiling water over the mash to wash out any remainder sweetness. The last sparge we handed around for anyone to taste.

Crowd view

We made about 8 gallons of wort from about 25 pounds of grain, including 4 pounds of oats I sprouted and roasted (called malting) over the winter, and bittering adjuncts grown and harvested from the backyard. All in all, it took about 6 hours from start to finish, but we also took all the time we wanted and ended up cooking dinner over the hot stone fire as well – rabbit with spring onions, over barley, nettle and plantain. It was a good day, and I can’t wait to taste the results!

The things we learned:

  • Making the first coal bed took a while. In case of restricted time start with a bag or two of charcoal, add rocks, and built a wood fire over that.
  • We need more pots to boil water, and/or vessels to store juniper tea for sparging.
  • Stones crack, but slowly, crumbly, and pose no danger (apart from sharp edges when fishing them back out of the wort). It is no wonder the farmyards had layer upon layer of discarded stones, as from two trials I already have half a bucket of small gravel! Brewing stone beer means keeping an eye out for replacement granite.
  • When the wort reached about 130F, we saw foam (protein break). When it reached about 160F the surface was really steaming (and too hot to touch easily). When it had sat for about the right amount of time, the foam had also started to dissipate and the wort was starting to clear.
  • The sugar conversion went fine, the wort did not seem weak at all (none of us brought a hydrometer, so we did not check starting specific gravity).

Back home, I added some Nottingham dry ale yeast, and Robert added Safale WB06 dry ale yeast to his batch. When we tried the wort at about the 5-day point (same as for Pennsic), we found it to be more acerbic and herbal tasting than expected. I checked back in with the Iron age brewer and he suggested not to boil the herbs, but to only steep, and to add the infused tea as a sparge, not during heating. We will do further testing before Pennsic and look forward to sharing our results with you then! Skål!

For anyone who would like to try Cy Phorg’s Iron Age interpretation:

  • 4 lbs of 2 row barley malt OR a mix of light and dark Munich malt
  • 1 lb of rye malt
  • ½ lb of peat smoked malt
  • ¼ lb acid barley malt

Mash for 160F or more for 1.5 hours.

Steep in ½ a gallon of water a combination of:

  • Juniper branch tips (handful)
  • Meadowsweet (several handfuls)
  • Sweet gale
  • Heather (handful)
  • Henbit / deadnettle (handful)
  • Yarrow

All preferably harvested in spring, use with flowers and buds when possible.
Sparge with the herbal tea.

He uses kveik yeasts, farmhouse/saisson style yeasts, and Belgian/Trappist style yeasts to good effect, often in a mixture and often with a health addition of bread yeast. It will be ready to drink in as little as 48 hours, though in his experience he finds 72 hours is a good spot to start pouring. It is not intended to be carbonated, and should be consumed in a day or two.


More on brewing with stones:

  • Perinteisen Oluen Seura ry – The Finnish Beer Portal. http://www.posbeer.org/oppaat/sahti/
  • Lars Marius Garshol. How stone beer was brewed. Posted in Beer on 2016-12-18 12:47 http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/361.html
  • Geir Grønnesby (2017) Hot rocks! Beer brewing on Viking and medieval age farms in Trøndelag. Frode Iversen & Håkan Petersson (Eds.) The Agrarian Life of the North 2000 23–56 1000. Studies in Rural Settlement and Farming in Norway. Cappelen Damm Akademisk.
  • Patrick E. McGovern, Gretchen R. Hall & Amen Mirzoian (2013) A biomolecular archaeological approach to ‘Nordic grog’. Danish Journal of Archaeology, 2:2, 112-131. Routledge.
  • Heritage Daily. Brewing Viking beer — with stones. Some of the best archaeological finds come from rubbish heaps. Throughout mid-Norway, these rubbish heaps often contain cracked stones that have been used to brew beer. June 15, 2017. https://www.heritagedaily.com/2017/06/brewing-viking-beer-stones/115551
  • Mika Laitinen. Viking Age Brew: The Craft of Brewing Sahti Farmhouse. 2019. https://www.amazon.com/Viking-Age-Brew-Brewing-Farmhouse/dp/1641600470
  • Erin Mullally. Letter from Ireland: Mystery of the Fulacht Fiadh. Volume 65 Number 1, January/February 2012 (https://archive.archaeology.org/1201/) https://archive.archaeology.org/1201/letter/fulacht_fiadh_ale_bronze_age
  • The Oxford Companion to Beer definition of steinbier. https://beerandbrewing.com/dictionary/nUyejPyA9C/
  • Billy Quinn & Declan Moore. Ale, brewing and fulacht fiadh: Archaeology Ireland. Billy Quinn and Declan Moore of Moore Environmental and Archaeological Consultants in Galway present a bleary-eyed experimental reassessment of the nature and function of fulacht fiadh. http://www.mooregroup.ie/2007/10/the-archaeology-ireland-article/
  • Asle Rønning. Brewing Stone Age beer. Beer enthusiasts are using a barn in Norway’s Akershus County to brew a special ale which has scientific pretensions and roots back to the dawn of human culture. July 20, 2012. http://sciencenordic.com/brewing-stone-age-beer
  • Jereme Zimmerman (2018) Brew Beer Like a Yeti: Traditional Techniques and Recipes for Unconventional Ales, Gruits, and Other Ferments Using Minimal Hops. https://www.amazon.com/Brew-Beer-Like-Yeti-Unconventional/dp/1603587659

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