17th century brewing

[anevilgiraffe]

am thinking my settlement needs a brewery, anyone got any links or resources on how beer was brewed back in the day? am kind of assuming large wooden barrels, but any pointers would be useful... have large copper vessels in my head, but I assume that is more spirits.

[mrtn]

A memory (I think it's from an old Michael Jackson documentary. No, not that Jackson) tries to tell me it was done in big open wooden vats. They didn't add yeast consciously (and didn't know what it was), it just dropped down from the air of the brewery.

[white knight]

Probably not massively different from these medieval woodcuts:

[white knight]

The following brewing history page has some useful illustrations too:

http://www.germanbeerinstitute.com/history.html

[anevilgiraffe]

hmmm... some conflict on yeast being known or not, but this seems to say vat and copper:

To make beer, malt was soaked in a large wooden mash tub at low temperatures then separated out of the liquid and ordinarily used for animal food. The liquid, called "wort," was transferred to the keeler, a large copper pot to which was added hops and other ingredients. After boiling the mixture for several hours, the brewer cooled it to about 70° F and sprinkled on the yeast, which began to digest the sugar in the solution and excrete it as alcohol. Bacteria and foreign yeast could spoil a brew, so it was important to keep the keeler covered. Stirring took place periodically, traditionally done with a bunch of broomstraw which was impregnated with yeast and quickened the action.

http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/brewing-in-the-seventeenth-century.htm

[fastolfrus]

You probably need to ask Stuart Peachy, he has tons of stuff on all things C17th:

http://www.stuart-hmaltd.com/

[Hobbit]

Large open vats with walkways above would, of course, have lots of dramatic potential...

[Damas]

The Tudor Monestary Farm series covered this in detail.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03k3mww/Tudor_Monastery_Farm_Episode_3/

From about 20 minutes onwards.