Posted on 10/20/2008 5:05:51 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Scholars have always suspected that the ancients had odd tastes. If you believe Homer, wise old Nestor, veteran of the Trojan War, enjoyed a few scrapings of goat's cheese and a dollop of honey in his wine. And Homer might have been right: archaeologists often find little bronze cheese graters in later Greek graves which they think were part of a drinking kit. But until now there has been no good evidence that the Minoans and their mainland neighbours the Mycenaeans knew how to brew beer or mead, let alone mixed them into cocktails.
After painstaking chemical analysis of cups, goblets and pots from all over Bronze Age Greece, there can be no doubt about it. These sophisticated people produced some of the world's first, and strangest, cocktails. Hidden in the pores of ancient bits of pottery are the chemical signatures of those drinks...
More intriguing than resin-flavoured wines were the mixtures that the Greeks were drinking, both on Crete and at mainland cities such as the great citadel at Mycenae, in the Peloponnese. A famous 3000-year-old drinking vessel from Mycenae, known as the "beer mug" because of its shape, had held both mead and wine - but disappointingly no trace of beer. Numerous goblets and conical cups from a cemetery at Armenoi in northern Crete contained an even weirder mix - wine, mead and beer. "We have a good idea of what's going on here," says McGovern. "This is something that's not just wine. It has added extras - grain, fruit and honey."
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Brock University professor anxious to dive on Iron Age shipwreck
The Standard (St. Catharine’s Ontario) | Saturday, December 29, 2007 | Samantha Craggs
Posted on 12/29/2007 6:52:12 PM PST by SunkenCiv
14 posted on 01/02/2008 10:56:06 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1945781/posts?page=14#14
[snip] Apropos of nothing, I re-watched that Helen of Troy documentary with Bettany Hughes; she and an archaeologist discussed the analysis of some Mycenaean jars which had been used for a mixture of retsina, barley beer, and honey mead. So of course they had to try it, and both praised the flavor. Of course, it must be pretty potent. Maybe this is what Homeric characters were doing when they’re described as “mingling wine” (it’s generally thought it refers to dilution with water). [end]
How do they know the Greeks drank beer, mead, and wine at the same time, instead of at different times from the same cup?
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I had always thought that fermented beverages were more meal than recreational drink in the ages prior to upgrades in food preservation abilities/technology.
You damned libertarians. /joke alert! joke alert!
The team is confident that the ancients really were quaffing some sort of cocktail from these cups, and that the residues aren't just the remains of a succession of different drinks. "So many of them show the same mix," says McGovern. "It's hard to imagine how all of them could have accumulated the same compounds unless the drinks were mixed up at the same time."
That makes sense. Not conclusive, but it's certainly a reasonable deduction.
I have had homemade mead before—I’d love to drink nothing but it (if I were much of an alocholo-drinking person).
Helen of Troy
Starring: Bettany Hughes
Amazon search
One of my classmates started brewing his own beer at an early age (perhaps after he got his house, so maybe not so early), and by the time he gave me a full rundown on his homebrewing, he’d been making mead for a while, along with the beer, and possibly other brews. I’m pretty sure that, when he and his wife built the house, they should have put a ramp into the basement, rather than stairs. No reason.
I’ve nev retsina nother person argue the case better.
Dr.Elizabeth Greene, please dive on Sunken Civ ! The barnacles come off easier.
LOL
They must be liberals. Can't think straight, so they conclude that the drinks were mixed.
Try quaffing a mixture of beer, mead and wine, have 2 or 3 in an hour , and you might as well be drinking mustard and water. Not to mention that if you manage to keep it down, there's hell to pay on the nether end.
I doubt that human physiology or gastrointestinal metabolism has changed that much.
Its a no brainer that the vessels were used to drink different beverages at different times. What you drank was driven by the seasons.
Beer in winter, wine in late summer and fall, and mead in the spring and summer.
Only the wealthy could afford to store and brew out of season.
Wait a minute. Did I type what I was thinkin’?
;’)
Dr. Green has just increased the enrollment of Brock U!
Lines will form to service her ballast tanks.
LOL.
Retsina:
WORST
HANGOVER
EVER
Excellent analysis. Well said.
Not trying to be argumentative or any such...
Mostly just checking an assumption against folk who know more on the subject.
Wasn’t beer, for example, considered a food item in ancient Egypt? I had gotten the idea, somewhere, from something... cant remember exactly. But that idea was that beer of the age this thread refers to was lesser in alcohol and not purified so had more food nutrient in it and was used as a meal item. Same with the wine and other fermented beverages.
Only the very rich drank for pleasure with filtered beers and wines for party reasons. For everyone else it was unfiltered stuff and was produced because of difficulties in long term storage of produce prone to rot and the difficulties in distributing large quantities of baked goods before they became too stale or molded for consumption.
Is that completely off?
Beer has always been considered “liquid bread” since the beginning. The main ingredients; water, grain, and yeast are the building blocks of any advanced society and its local variant of bread.
Furthermore, that the alcohol content pretty much guaranteed that it contained few if any harmful bacteria when water supplies of the day were a stew of them was a happy side benefit.
Cheers,
knewshound
Gentlemen (and Lady), your services are required.
On or off the homebrewers ping list, let me know.
Cheers,
knewshound
Well, it’s not as though adulterated festive beverages died out with the Greeks...
“Egg Ale Recipe includes (for twelve gallons of ale) ‘the gravy of eight pounds of beef’, ‘twelve eggs, the gravy beef, a pound of raisins, oranges and spice’ and sack.”
“Cock Ale According to Pete Brown: They used to get a cock (i.e. a male chicken), stick it in a sack and bash it against the walls until it was completely pulverized. It was important that the bones were shattered and the whole thing was a bloody pulp. They they’d chuck in a load of spices, such as cloves and mace, and drop the bag into a vat of ale while it was fermenting, and age the resulting brew for longer than normal to produce a much richer, heartier beer than normal.”
http://teaching.shu.ac.uk/ds/sle/altered/glossary/drinkglossary.htm
Retsina/mead/beer trashcan punch sounds potable compared to this.
REALLLY loathesome!
I can’t imagine that anything containing retsina in any amount possess a good flavor. That stuff is ghastly.
If you’ve never had it, imagine a glass of Chardonnay, with a couple of spoonfuls of Pine-Sol stirred in.....
That’s an excellent alternative view from the one presented in the article. As I said in another post, their position was reasonable, but hardly overwhelmingly persuasive.
Although I think that, given the diet and sanitation in the Bad Old Days, anyone who survived to adulthood must have had bowels of iron.
Please keep me on the Homebrewers’ Ping List.
Ouzo + Retsina = WORST HANGOVER EVER!
LOLOL! (ouch)
Oh, man are you ever right. That’s how the evening began, with ouzo. The Doc (who was tossing them back with us) told us the next day that basically we’d have to get better to die.
:’) I’m not too sure there is one, but check cgk’s profile page for the link to the List of Lists.
Dogfish Head brewing of Delaware markets a beer called "Midas Touch" which is barley wort (raw beer) fermented together (not just mixed later) with honey and saffron...
I've served it at parties and its a big hit...even with people who really don't like beer.
From Dogfish Head's website:
This recipe is the actual oldest-known fermented beverage in the world! Our recipe showcases the known ingredients of barley, white Muscat grapes, honey & saffron found in the drinking vessels in King Midas' tomb! Somewhere between a beer, wine and mead, this smooth, dry ale will please with Chardonnay or I.P.A. drinker alike.
9.0% abv
20 ibu
Calorie content (per 12-ounce serving): approx. 307
Tasting Notes: Honey, saffron, papaya, melon, biscuity, succulent.
Food pairing recomendations: Pan-Asian dishes, risotto, curries, baked fish and chicken.
Glass recommendation: White Wine
Comparable wine style: Sauterne Champagne
If you like our Midas Touch, try our Zwaanend'ale - it has some similar honey characteristics! Of course, you'll have to come to Delaware during the 2006 375th Anniversary celebration because the beer is limited release (only in Delaware, only in 2006!)
More on Midas... His golden touch may have conferred fabulous wealth on King Midas, but he nearly starved to death when even his food and drink were converted into the precious metal. The well-known legend is based on an actual ruler of the ancient kingdom of Phrygia in central Turkey around 700 B.C. Under a huge mound at the capital of Gordion, a University of Pennsylvania Museum expedition in 1957 excavated an intact burial chamber which likely belonged to King Midas himself. The body of a 60-year-old male was laid out in state on a thick pile of purple and blue-dyed textiles inside a unique log coffin.
Most remarkably, the tomb held the largest Iron Age drinking set ever found--157 vessels, including a ram-headed and lion-headed situla--for preparing, serving, drinking and libating a special beverage at the funerary feast of the king. The secrets of the beverage were revealed by the new methods of Molecular Archaeology. Dr. Patrick McGovern of the Museum discovered that the residues inside the vessels belonged to a "Phrygian cocktail," which combined grape wine, barley beer and honey mead. Starting with the ancient chemical evidence, Dogfish Head Brewery "re-created" a marvelous golden elixir, truly touched by King Midas.
Here are just some of the comments made about Midas Touch by world-renown beer expert, Michael Jackson... "A wonderfully complex beer, a wonderfully delicate beer, a dangerous thing, a great drink to welcome people to a party... Fill your bath full of ice, put some bottles of Midas Touch on there a serve it in champagne flutes. Not some freak of nature, not some gimmick, it's something to be taken very seriously... It used to be wine... but King Midas touched it and turned it to gold!
CHEERS!
Wow, thanks! The ratio we found tasted best was 3:2:1, beer, mead, retsina.
I just thought that you would be happy to know that I made this brew last night. 2:2:1 Retsina:Honey Mead:Boston Lager and it tasted great! 6 other people agreed that it tasted great, while 1 thought it was a bit to bitter and another was asian and only had a few sips before she felt too tipsy to continue. The rest of us had three tall glasses a piece finishing off 2 bottles of retsina, 2 bottles of honey mead, and about 4 Sam Adams Boston Lagers. I type this message to you with no hangover and no explosive intestines. MAKE THIS FOR A GREEK FRIEND’S BIRTHDAY THEY WILL BE FOREVER GRATEFUL!!!!!
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