Grog of the Greeks [ barley beer, honey mead, retsina wine ]

New Scientist ^ | November 27, 1999 | Stephanie Pain

[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."

[Grimmy]

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?

[knews_hound]

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

[knews_hound]

Gentlemen (and Lady), your services are required.

On or off the homebrewers ping list, let me know.

Cheers,

knewshound

[decal]

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.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

REALLLY loathesome!

[Renfield]

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.....

[Tax-chick]

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.

[NaughtiusMaximus]

Please keep me on the Homebrewers’ Ping List.

[Species8472]

Respectfully, You are wrong!

Ouzo + Retsina = WORST HANGOVER EVER!

LOLOL! (ouch)

[Billthedrill]

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.

[Species8472]

I should mention that there was rather large ship and heavy seas involved too...........

[SunkenCiv]

:’) I’m not too sure there is one, but check cgk’s profile page for the link to the List of Lists.

[AnalogReigns]

You and I can actually buy "mingled beer" based on the residue found in vessels the article is talking about.

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!

[SunkenCiv]

Wow, thanks! The ratio we found tasted best was 3:2:1, beer, mead, retsina.

[Octavianus]

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!!!!!