The last months have been rather busy, mundane life has taken it's toll but I finally see an end to the stress and will have more time to focus on brewing and what I want to do with this. I have been brewing but not much, only 3-4 batches in about 6 months which is not enough by a longshot. Although I have been able to read quite a bit and learned more about the history of brewing and how it has helped (and sometimes not helped) human society to develop. I've read through two books with about 600 pages each and working on a third one with 700 pages and still have a couple more books to go so there is no shortage of material. And the long term project of learning Icelandic so I can read the Icelandic Sagas in the original language to find out their drinking habits and view on drinking and alcohol is still active, although a bit slow. Thats not the only reason to learn that language mind you, I do want to be able to read,write and speak a period language just for the sake of it.

The idea for this year is to publish at least one new recipe a month and a new article per month. I guess that sometimes there will be two months before a new article will be published but hey, it's a goal and it's not written in stone. A new section on the webpage will be opened for just that purpose.

I also plan to give some more lectures, perhaps during Double Wars if there are people interested, on the impact alcohol and brewing have had on human society. If not during events then perhaps when visiting Holmrike for fighter practice then it's possible to do it on saturday evening, I mean whats better to warm up for fighting than by having a few drinks with friends? Certain kind of beers can even be considered medieval sport drinks.

While reading a book called "Alcohol and it's role in the evolution of human society" I came across some interesting thoughts on why we ferment things (not just for drinking):

1. Enrichment of the diet through the development of greater range of flavours, aromas and textures.

This does makes sense to me, if you get a different taste to it you might eat or drink things that you normally wouldn't. For example, I might not drink something that is just boiled barley. However if you make it into beer, sure enough I would drink it!

2. Preservation of food via lactic acid, acetic acid, ethanolic and alkaline fermentation.

Oh yes, fermenting things does preserve your food, be it drinks or otherwise. Preserving food when you have lots of it and saving it for sparser times can be the difference between life and death.

3. Biological enrichment of food substrates through proteins, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids and vitamins.

We do know that things change in the food when you ferment it and you are able to get other kinds of food as you do. Vitamins that you might lack otherwise.

4. Detoxification of some foodstuffs and degradation of anti-nutritive matter.

As stated in number three, things change when you ferment them. By removing bad things in the food, like the poison in the shark that the Icelanders did but also other not as bad ingredients, that helps you to stay healthy and was perhaps one of the reasons people thought that beer kept you in better health than if you were drinking water.

5. Expedition of cooking times (reduced fuel use). Related to this last point is the fact that fermentation often improves the digestibility of food.

If your body can take care of the nutrition in the food/drinks easier it must be a positive thing. Now since I'm mostly into brewing I don't think that the notion of less fuel usage is relevent.

Lately I have been quite a lot of stuff, just havent been that good at writing here. That is something that needs to be remedied, as well as updating the recipes. Well, I have been updating those every now and then as I go along but to make it a habit is slightly hard. Perhaps I should have a computer next to me so I can write it down as I'm going instead of writing it on paper.

Anyway, I have bought some new interesting books! One about how beer brewing throughout history has been developed and also what role alcohol has played in human evolution. They are bout 6-700 pages each so it will take a while to get through them but the one about alcohol is the one I've started with and it seems to be very good. Extremely detailed on how different genes in the yest cells have changed throughout the years, some parts are way to advanced and you might need some kind of chemistry or biology degree to get it but nevertheless it's very interesting. The end goal with those books is to write a longer article or perhaps series of articles on what role beer and brewing have played for us in Europe.

At an event called Double Wars I held a class on how to use beer as a food source and also provided some samples to try. They were beers completely without hops, reason being I wanted to be as close as historical beers that the common folk had in medieval Europe. I think I went on talking for roughly an hour which was nice. Also got some nice input from a person who is very much into cooking and we could see a lot of similarites there.

And now I need to figure out what my next project will be, at the moment I have nothing fermenting at home. That is bad, very very bad.

Sometimes life happens and the A&S in the SCA will have to slow down slightly. But it has not stopped, to be honest comparing how much I do these days during a slow period is a lot more than I did 7-8 years when I thought I did a lot of it so perhaps I shouldnt feel all that negative for not being able to start a new batch of beer every week I guess. Anyway, it feels rather strange not having something fermenting at home, this is the first time in at least a year that everything is done. I have 4 kinds of beer, 1 mead and one cider that is done and I've finished off 3 different kinds of beer the last month. The last beer was a juniper version that I will continue to work on and develop to see if I can replace the hops with something else in order to make it into a poor mans drink where you can find all the ingredients out in the wild. Or at least would have been able to. This week I shall set another batch and see what will happen, the goal is to have it ready by double wars so that I can offer it during my class.

Speaking of Double Wars, this year my goal is to bring beer, mead and cider that is home made that will last the entire event. Not sure I can live up to the goal but it would be very nice to not only live in a tent, try and cook more or less period but also to drink period. Now it sounds like I'm a heavy drinker, I'm not really but sitting by the fire and sharing a beer or three with good friends during the evening is very nice.

Now, back to preparation of next batch of beer. Cant call myself a brewer if nothing is brewing at home now can I?

It was a long time since the last update now unfortenately. Although I have not been that idle in the A&S department but the time I've had to update this blog has not been much. So what have I been up to so far? Done some more reading up on different techiniques on how to brew beer and got many more ideas and hopefully will get time to make reality of them. I find it all to easy to start one down track and think that it is the only way to do it so somtimes it is good to take a short break and look back at what you have done from a different angle. That way it is easier to change things and improve so perhaps this little break has been good. Well, break from doing things in not break from pondering and thinking about it.

During the past month I have been to Iceland and visited lots of interesting places, and boy is it wonderful to step on the ground where you know great and important things in history have occured! That is really inspiring and makes you want to continue and put in a higher gear in living the dream. During the visit I visited a microbrewry and that was something. Tasting their beer, talking about brewing, how they do it, what ingredients they use etc. And they acctually wanted my recipe for coffee beer! So I will send it to them and hopefully they can make something out of it, that would be something to be proud of.

We (me and my girlfriend) bought lots of books, icelandic sagas, and yes they are in old icelandic so now I have an even greater reason to increase my pace in learning that language. I did want to learn it to begin with and I have started, mainly because it's my girlfriends first language but also because it's period. Now, also because I can read the books as they should be read. Maybe I can find ideas to other a&s projects in them and use them as a source?

And finally today I held a brewing course for my home shire, there was room for two people to brew and some other who were interested in learning the theory. I think it went well, hopefully there will be two batches of nice beer that I might get so sample and I have inspired more people to start the wonderful art of beer making.

Now it is time for some more icelandic lessons and then take it easy I think, somehow it's exhausting to give a course that lasts about 5 hours.

Yet another batch of beer is fermenting happily in my kitchen! Don't think I have ever been this productive when it comes to brewing, if I continue like this I'm going to run out of bottles very soon. Perhaps I need to invite friends to help me empty them so I can brew more since I have so many interesting experiments to conduct. I think I have about 5 projects that are going to be started as soon as I can find the time to make it happen. Maybe I should stop reading and coming up with new ideas until I have finished off the ones I am working on?!

A good thing with making beer is that I can do other things at the same time. Finished off the last buttonhole on my new fencing jacket so during the week I'll try to attach the buttons to it and it just might be wearable for our fencing weekend. Although I am not really counting on that. But if I don't sleep, that might do the trick, then I'll have the time for it!

I have also decided that from now and until Crown tourney this spring I will do 10 minutes of pellwork every day. Although I have realized one thing that I really, really need to work on and that is the mental game. A tournament where I knew I couldn't fight full speed and was just going to take it easy and try out a few things, I was very relaxed, not nervous and just did my thing. Didn't lose a single bout but when I really try to win and I face someone I usually lose against, well I defeat myself before it has even begun. 

Over and out.

This year has started out as a very productive year, I have made this page, bottled a few different kinds of beers, one mead etc. I guess making this page makes me want to do more so it doesn't become an empty shell. Although from time to time it will be rather slow as mundane life takes up quite a lot of time. 

The experiments on the different kinds of beers that might have been made during medieval times continues and I come up with more ideas faster than I can brew! Which is quite interesting and challenging. The past two weeks I have started two new batches of beer and will start another tomorrow using juniper berries. I am not entirely sure how much to use or what it will do with the beer but that is a different matter all together. 

Pondering on giving a class at Double Wars this year, basically the same class as I taught at Drachenwald 20 but slightly improved. Adding tasting as well as improving on some parts of it. Perhaps I should try giving it in my shire first, using them as test subjects? 

On a side note, being more active with brewing also makes me more active in other A&A areas so I am finally trying to finish a good looking fencing garb! Haven't worked on that in quite a few months but finally I feel the urge to sew, that hasn't happened in say at least 6 months. Also finishing a silver necklace but ran out of silver thread and need to get some more. 14 meters of silver thread for one necklace is quite a bit but it will look very nice I hope!

Oh well, time to clean some brewing equipment so it's prepared for tomorrow.

Yesterday I started another batch of beer, this time using gale, malt and yeast. Might not become a great tasting beer but it's just an experiment to see what kind of flavour gale will produce.

So what has been going on? Well fixing this website more, but it has been going slow. Added some more recipes and updated the latest project.

And also started planning on the long, on-going project. The next kind of beer will be a beer without hops but instead using herbs that was common to this area in medieval times.

So now there is some general brewing information, lacking a picture or two and the more detailed information about mead and beer brewing, but things are moving along.