Hops and History (continued)
The Tinsley House
Photo: Matt Parsons
I sit next to a couple from Livingston. Harold brews his own beer “once a year. We both like darker beers. I’ve tried to replicate [Madison River’s] Copper John, but there’s a reason these guys are pros and I’m just a hobbyist.” The chatter among members of the crowd indicates Harold is not alone. I overhear two men exchanging home brewing stories. There are plenty of people walking around with t-shirts advertising their favorite craft breweries. This is not the Budweiser crowd. A majority appear to be in their thirties and forties, but several are in their fifties, like Harold, or older.
Before long, the band winds down and Fox takes the mic at the top of the stairs. The crowd quiets and he quickly launches into the history surrounding ales.
A Brief History
“Ales were first brewed by ancient Sumerians in what is now southern Iraq about 10,000 years ago,” Fox says. Sumer saw the birth of commercial grain harvesting, a necessary component in the brewing of ales. There aren’t a lot of beer drinkers in Iraq these days, so I’m guessing it wasn’t that good.
About 800 B.C. the Germans must have caught wind of these ancient ales and began brewing and perfecting their craft, as Germans tend to like to do.
“Around 1200 A.D. Kolsch was created in Cologne, Germany,” Fox says. “This style was the result of the German Purity Laws, which stated that the beer must be brewed only from water, malt and hops.” Part of the purity laws were put in place to protect the price of wheat. If too many people were getting drunk, the Germans reasoned, the price of bread would skyrocket and the people might starve.