Ale
The American colonists were not enthusiastic water
drinkers, and they soon imported malt and
established breweries to make the familiar ale and
beer of old England. The Dutch patroons found
brewing a profitable business in New York, and
private families in all the colonies built home
brew-houses and planted barley and hops.
In Virginia a makeshift ale was made from maize
as early as 1620. George Thorpe wrote that it was
a good drink, much preferable to English beer.
Governor Berkeley wrote of Virginians a century
later:--
"Their small-drink is either wine or
water, beer, milk and water, or water alone. Their
richer sort generally brew their small-beer with
malt, which they have from England, though barley
grows there very well; but for the want of
convenience of malt-houses, the inhabitants take
no care to sow it. The poorer sort brew their beer
with molasses and bran; with Indian corn malted
with drying in a stove: with persimmons dried in a
cake and baked; with potatoes with the green
stalks of Indian corn cut small and bruised, with
pompions, with the Jerusalem artichoke which some
people plant purposely for that use, but this is
the least esteemed."
Similar beers were made in New England. The
court records are full of enactments to encourage
beer-brewing. They had not learned that liberty to
brew, when and as each citizen pleased, would
prove the best stimulus. Much personal
encouragement was also given. The President of
Harvard College did not disdain to write to the
court on behalf of "Sister Bradish,"
that she might be "encouraged and
countenanced" in her baking of bread and
brewing and selling of penny beer. And he adds in
testimony that "such is her art, way, and
skill that shee doth vend such comfortable
penniworths for the relief of all that send unto
her as elsewhere they can seldom meet with."
College students were permitted to buy of her to a
certain amount; and with the light of some
contemporary evidence as to the quality of the
college commons we can believe they needed very
"comfortable penniworths."
Some New England taverns were famous for their
spruce, birch, and sassafras beer, boiled with
scores of roots and herbs, with birch, spruce, or
sassafras bark, with pumpkin and apple parings,
with sweetening of molasses or maple syrup, or
beet tops and other makeshifts. A colonial song
writer boasted--
"Oh, we can make liquor to sweeten our
lips
Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree
chips."
According to Diodorus Siculus, the ancient
Britons drank on festive occasions liquors made
from honey, apples, and barley, viz., mead, cider,
and ale. The Celts drank mead and cider--natural
drinks within the capabilities of manufacture by
slightly civilized nations; for wild honey and
wild apples could be found everywhere. Ale
indicated agriculture and a more advanced
civilization.
Mead, or metheglin, of fermented honey, herbs,
and water, has been made by every race and tribe
on this globe, living where there was enough
vegetation to cherish bees. It had been a
universal drink in England, but was somewhat in
disuse when this country was settled.
Harrison wrote:--
"The Welsh make no less account of
metheglin than the Greeks did of their ambrosia or
nectar, which for the pleasantness thereof was
supposed to be such as the gods themselves did
delight in. There is a kind of swishswash made
also in Essex, and divers other places, with
honeycomb and water, which the homely
country-wives putting some pepper and a little
other spice among, called mead: very good in mine
opinion for such as love to be loose-bodied at
large, or a little eased of the cough. Otherwise
it differeth so much from true metheglin as chalk
from cheese; and one of the best things that I
know belonging thereto is, that they spend but
little labour and less cost in making of the same,
and therefore no great loss if it were never
occupied."
Metheglin was one of the drinks of the American
colonists. It was a favorite drink in Kentucky
till well into this century. As early as 1633, the
Piscataqua planters of New Hampshire, in their
list of values which they set in furs,--the
currency of the colony,--made "6 Gallon
Mathaglin equal 2 Lb Beaver." In Virginia,
whole plantations of honey locust were set out to
supply metheglin. The long beans of the locust
were ground and mixed with honey herbs and water,
and fermented.
In a letter written from Virginia in 1649, it
is told of "an ancient planter of twenty-five
years standing," that he had good store of
bees and "made excellent good Matheglin, a
pleasant and strong drink."
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