Beer in Yonderre
Beer in Yonderre is a very common and culturally and historically important part of Yonderian cuisine and society, with countless local and regional breweries producing a wide variety of beers. Imported beer accounted for only 8% of total volume sales in 2016, indicating that beer sales in Yonderre are dominated by domestic brands. The lasting impact of Yonderian beer brewing is seen worldwide; S. tuburgensis, the yeast instrumental in brewing modern Lager beers, was developed by chemists at Toubourg Monastery in service of the Toubourg Brewery in 1866, and indeed the word Lager itself is of East Gothic origin, with Lagerbier, literally “Camp beer”, being the beverage of choice of encamped Yonderian armies since the early renaissance.
Beer is known to have been brewed in Gothica since at least 3000 BC, although early Gothic beer might not be recognised as beer by most people today, often being spiced with fruits and herbs and the primary difference being the usage of bayberry in place of hops. Hops were introduced from the Holy Levantine Empire in the early ninth century and prompted more organized brewing. Beer was brewed on a domestic basis, with many households brewing their own relatively low-alcohol beer in cellars, nicknamed Kellerbier, literally “Cellar beer”. Stronger ales were generally only brewed at courts or alehouses, supplemented by either locally brewed or imported wines and liqueurs.
Beer is today a several billion Taler industry in Yonderre with beer brewed both for export and internal consumption netting several billion Talers each. The largest and most succesful brewery in Yonderre is Toubourg Brewery which consistently ranks in the top 20 of Yonderian companies by revenue.
Name
Beer is known as Bière in Burgoignesc and Bier in the East Gothic language, both stemming from a common Latin root bibere, "to drink". Lager is a commonplace nickname worldwide for a style of bottom-fermenting beer which takes its name from Yonderian Lagerbier, literally "Camp beer" in the East Gothic language.
History
Ancient and medieval Gothica
The earliest known direct evidence for beer in Yonderre comes from chemical testing of residues on ancient Gothic pottery jars from c. 3000 BC. As almost any cereal containing certain sugars can undergo spontaneous fermentation due to wild yeasts in the air, it is probable that beer-like drinks were independently developed by the Goths soon after they had domesticated cereal. The precursor to beer was soaking grains in water and making a porridge or gruel, as grain were chewy and hard to digest alone. Ancient peoples would heat the gruel and leave it throughout the days until it was gone. A benefit to heating the gruel would be to sanitize the water and the temperature required to denature grain proteins would also denature disease microbes. Leaving the gruel to sit would change it. Fermentation would occur and they noticed the change in taste and effect. Yeasts would settle on the mixture and rapidly consume the oxygen in the mixture. The low oxygen would was a significant consequence of allowing the yeast to digest sugars by anaerobic respiration. The yeast would release ethanol (alcohol) and carbon dioxide as by-products and, hence, beer was born.
One of the few examples of very early medieval sources available is in a c. 750 AD tome written by Opthéin, a monk of Canaery. Opthéin travelled through much of what today constitutes the Yonderian Counties Amarre and Montgebirre and recounted his tales in the Gesta Gothica. The Gesta Gothica includes countless references to ales and ciders being brewed in eastern Gothica. Dan Lärdmann writes in his ninth century Chronica Gothica about the practices of organized beer-brewing in modern Toubourg County. Since taxation in medieval Gothica was largely based on what was produced, inkeepers and proprietors of alehouses were generally expected to pay their liege lords in ale, a tradition that continued well into the pre-modern period.
In the late Middle Ages, the brewing industry in Gothica changed from a small-scale domestic industry to a large-scale export industry. The key innovation was the introduction of hops, which began in modern Yonderre in the ninth century. Hops sharply improved both the brewing process and the quality of beer. Other innovations from Gothic lands involved larger kettle sizes and more frequent brewing. Hopped beer was perfected in the medieval towns of Dericania by the 13th century. Western HLE towns pioneered a new scale of operation with standardized barrel sizes that allowed for large-scale export. Previously beer had been brewed at home, but the production was now successfully replaced by medium-sized operations of about eight to ten people. This type of production spread to Gothica in the early 14th century. Consumption went up, while brewing became more concentrated because it was a capital-intensive industry. Thus in Toubourg per capita consumption increased from an average of 300 liters per year in the 15th century to about 700 in the 17th century.
Pre-modern period
With the late fifteenth century Conquest of Joanusterra, the new ruling class of Yonderre sought to bring brewing more in line with how it was done in the Holy Levantine Empire. Some breweries were amalgamated into larger centralized breweries such as Toubourg brewery which still operates. Many of these were centered around monastries, which in turn brewed wines and liqueurs. Because of the monasterial nature of brewing in the pre-modern period, most organized breweries dedicated themselves to a patron saint, more often than not Gambrinus who was at the time considered patron saint of beer. A famous written authority on beer brewing in this period is Knight of the Realm Siegmar von Willing, whose autobiographical manuscript Lebenserfahrungen und Erinnerungen des Reichsritters Siegmarns von Willing (Life experiences and memoirs of Knight of the Realm Siegmar von Willing) includes chapters of illustrated descriptions and recipes for brewing beers and the liqueur Chevaleuer Verte.
A style of bottom-fermenting beer, Lagerbier, literally "Camp beer", was invented on accident in the sixteenth century after beer was stored in cool tavern basements for long periods. S. tuburgensis, the yeast instrumental in brewing modern Lager beers, was developed by chemists at Toubourg Monastery in service of the Toubourg Brewery in 1866. Combined with advances in refrigederation in the mid-nineteenth century, Lagerbier has entirely outpaced top-fermented beers in terms of volume in Yonderre, both for consumption and export. The brewing of "artisan beer", a forerunner of the modern "craft beer", took off during the Yonderian Golden Age of the nineteenth century with the creation of new experimental flavoured beers and ales.
Principal styles
- Lager - a bottom-fermented pale beer with a prominent hop character.
- Vollbier - "full beer", a lager-style beer with more flavour and higher alcohol content (typically around 5.2-7%).
- Biére neir/Schwarzbier - a bottom fermented black lager beer, typically stronger than regular lager. It takes its name "black beer" from the roasted malt which gives it its characteristic dark colour. It is marketed as biere escuride (obscured beer, indicating that it is dark) in Burgundie.
- Bock – a heavy bodied, bitter-sweet lager that uses dark coloured malts.
- Biére cellier/Kellerbier - an unfiltered lager which is conditioned in a similar manner to cask ales. Kellerbier tends to be more sour than filtered lagers, but can take on more flavours from the casking, such as when casked on casks previously used for liquor. The name literally means "cellar beer".
- Bière blanche/Weizenbier - a top-fermented beer which is brewed with a large proportion of wheat relative to the amount of malted barley. The name translates to "white beer" in Burgoignesc and "wheat beer" in Gothic.
- Blanche levure/Hefeweizen – an unfiltered wheat beer. Levur is Burgoignesc and Hefe Gothic for "yeast".
See also