Ale
This is beer without hops being added. It could be brewed with fruit, grain mash, spices or hops. It was available dry, semisweet, or sweet, and in still, carbonated, and sparkling varieties.
Ale
Gruit—Ale + Herbs & Spices
Beer
Often called “liquid bread”, beer is a primary part of the medieval diet. Beer is usually brewed from barley or spelts, but sometimes also wheat, oats or rye. Hops, a bittering agent, and preservative, are added to make beer. Indeed, ale is beer without hops. Sometimes beer is flavored with cinnamon, rosemary, bog yarrow, juniper or heather. The beer’s mash usually goes through multiple pressings, with the first pressing producing the richest, darkest beer, down to the fourth pressing being called small beer. Small beer has a lower alcohol level and is good for breakfast and for children.
Mead
Based on honey, not grain or fruits.
Breakout/Bragget—Spiced ale like hippocras
Cinnamon Sizer/Apple Methegline—Mead plus apples and cinnamon
Honey Jack—Freezing mead and pouring off ice crystals
Mead—Honey Based
Melamel—Mead with fruit spices and herbs
Metheglin
Mulled Mead
Payment—Mead fermented with grape juice
Posed Ale—Ale plus hops
Spirits
From the 12th century forward, spirits were any distillate used as a beverage. It was often called the “water of life” or “burning water” for its higher alcohol content.
Brandy
Gin
Juniper
Vodka
Whisky
Wine
This alcoholic drink is typically made of white or red grapes, producing white, red, or rose wine. Sometimes it is made of apples, cherry, currant, pears, raspberry, plums, pomegranate, blackberry or mulberry. Sometimes, wine is flavored with filberts, milk of almonds, apricot, strawberry syrup, cherry and raspberry. The poorest wine is almost vinegar, and the most valued wine comes from specific regions and their grapes.
Apple-Wine—Cider Wine
Hydromel is a variation of cider
Caudell—Wine thickened with eggs
Clair
Claret—Red Bordeaux Wine
Hypocras—Wine with honey
Ipocras--white or red wine mixed with various herbs like cinnamon, cassia buds, ginger and galingale
Perry (Pears)
Posset—Modern Egnogg, wine plus warm, creamy ale
Prunelle—Fruit wine made of plums
Sack—Modern Sherry, this is sweet wine fermented in wooden barrels
Spiced or Mulled Wine—Wine with ginger, cardimum, grains of paradise, pepper, cloves, sugar, and/or nutmeg
Comments