The Familiar Ingredients Vikings Used To Make Beer

Vikings are often associated with being ruthless colonizers, seafaring pirates, and raiders, and their feasts viewed as drunken and debaucherous affairs, tables groaning with food, with beer, mead and ale flowing like water. Incidentally, water was the main beverage drunk by these Scandinavian warriors, but they didn't have the filtration systems that we have in our current day, so they actually consumed these alcoholic beverages as a safer alternative to water.

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Beer brewed in the Early Medieval Period and Viking Age, between 775 and 1,050 A.D., was actually very similar to the beer we enjoy today. The same four base ingredients were used then as they are now — water, grain, hops and yeast. For the Vikings, the grains varied as they discovered new types on their travels. Trading across Europe, Asia, North America and Africa introduced them to different varieties of domesticated grains that they then applied to their beer-brewing process as well as for making bread.

Malted barley is often considered the staple grain used by the Vikings to brew their beer and mead, with malted rye and wheat also being used. Many historians believe that Viking beer had a spicy, floral flavor, imbued through the addition of botanicals (called gruit). These were ingredients like juniper berries, bog myrtle, wild rosemary, and even yarrow, which were easily found in their natural surroundings. Modern-day beer doesn't usually have these wild additions but rather gets its flavors from the types of yeast used in the brewing process, although craft beers do sometimes use fruits and other ingredients for novel flavor.

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Viking brewers' process

Beers drunk by the Vikings are believed to have had different alcohol levels – those for daily drinking with a low alcohol by volume (ABV) of around 2.6%, and those for celebrations, feasts, and ceremonies with a higher ABV at about 13%. Historians think that the Vikings made their beer in six stages, which again are similar to how we make beer today, though today's processes are far more sophisticated.

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The first stage was malting, where the grains were soaked in water to encourage them to germinate, before being dried in a kiln. This process converted the starch into natural sugars. These were then crushed and mixed with hot water, activating enzymes in the remaining starches which created a sugary liquid called wort. Wort was boiled, which helped to sterilize it, and all the spices and herbs that the brewers wished to add went in at this stage. The boiled wort mixture was then cooled and the yeast added, with the mixture being left to ferment for a few days up to a number of weeks, depending on the fermentation process and how strong the Vikings wanted their beer to be. The yeast converts the sugars in the mixture into alcohol and carbon dioxide over this fermenting period. The final step was to let the mixture rest in a barrel or other container to let the flavors mature. When it was ready, it was served — straight from the barrel into a drinking horn, wooden cup, or pottery jug.

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