Around 1420 the everyday English drink was ale, brewed without hops and sold fresh, often by women known as alewives. Hopped beer was a recent arrival from the Low Countries, and wine, mostly shipped from English-ruled Gascony, was the drink of those who could afford it.
Ale, the everyday drink
In the England of Henry V, ale and beer were two different drinks. Ale was the old native brew. As the philologist E. C. Llewellyn put it in a 1936 study of the brewing trade, it was made from malt, water and yeast and nothing else. It contained no hops, and that mattered, because hops help a brew keep.
The Museum of Oxford describes medieval ale as cheap, easy to make and low in alcohol, with a short shelf life. It could not travel far or sit for long, so it was brewed often and drunk close to where it was made. Cooks used it too: a fritter recipe in The Forme of Cury, the royal cookbook of about 1390, thins its batter with ale.
Did people drink ale because the water was bad?
It is often said that medieval people drank ale because water was unsafe. Some museum pages still say something similar, but the strong version of the claim is disputed. The history writer behind the Fake History Hunter site gathers the evidence against it: towns piped in water and built fountains and public wells, households collected rainwater, and Roberta Magnusson's study of medieval water technology finds that fountains chiefly supplied drinking water.
The same sources add a fair caution. Plain water was drunk, but it was not admired. Magnusson notes that ale, beer and watered wine were generally preferred, and a dialogue by the writer Ælfric has a boy monk say he drinks "Beer if I have it, or water, if I don't have beer." Ale was food as well as drink, and people chose it when they could.
Alewives and the alestake
For much of the Middle Ages, brewing was women's work. Alewives brewed at home, first for their own families and then for paying neighbors, and a broomstick displayed outside the house, sometimes called an alestake, showed that a fresh batch was for sale. The Museum of Oxford names one of them: Maud London, an unmarried brewer in 14th-century Oxford.
By 1420 that world was fading. In Oxford, women headed 20 percent of brewing households in 1311, but when twenty brewers were listed in 1447 only one was a woman, a brewer's widow. The museum points to several causes, among them the growth of larger, male-run breweries, a law making husbands answerable for their wives' ale, and the upheaval that followed the Black Death.
Beer arrives from the Low Countries
Hopped beer was the newcomer. Llewellyn traces it to Flanders at the end of the 14th century and finds it being imported into Winchelsea, on the Sussex coast, as early as 1400. Most of the beer brewers recorded in 15th-century England have Dutch or Flemish names.
It reached the army quickly. When provisions were sent to Henry V at the siege of Rouen in 1418, London supplied 300 tuns of "ber" against 200 tuns of ale. At home the new drink was distrusted for decades. In 1436 a writ had to order the sheriffs of London to proclaim that beer brewers from Holland and Zeeland should carry on brewing in spite of attacks on them, and Norwich banned brewing with hops in 1471.
Sources date the change differently depending on what they are measuring. The first imports belong to about 1400, while the Museum of Oxford places the wider spread of hopped beer in the late 15th century.
Wine from Gascony
Wine was a different matter. The economic historian Robert Blackmore calls it a luxury in the ale-drinking societies of northern Europe, bought by those wealthy enough to pay. Most of it came from Gascony in southwestern France, part of the duchy of Aquitaine, which the English crown ruled almost continuously from 1154 to 1453. Gascony's land suited vines above all else, so the region lived by selling wine and buying in food.
Prices swung with weather, war and money. Blackmore notes that a devaluation of the Gascon currency in 1413 and 1414, a few years before 1420, made the wine suddenly cheaper for English buyers and brought a noticeable rise in imports. A drinker in 1420 could not know it, but the trade had only a generation left: Gascony was lost to the French crown in 1453.
Hippocras and clarrey: spiced wine
For special occasions wine was sweetened and spiced. The best known of these drinks was hippocras. The Forme of Cury gives a recipe written in French that is really a shopping list of spices to be ground to powder, including cinnamon, ginger, galingale, cloves, long pepper, nutmeg and grains of paradise. Samuel Pegge, the antiquarian who edited the roll, explains that the name comes from "Hippocrates' sleeve," the cloth bag the wine was strained through, and that it could be white or red.
A fuller set of instructions, printed by Pegge from another manuscript, shows how rank reached even into the spice box. Hippocras "for lords" was made with ginger, cinnamon, grains of paradise and sugar; for common people, with ginger, cinnamon, long pepper and clarified honey. The wine was run through a row of cloth bags, tasted and corrected, then sent to the table with wafers.
Clarrey was a sister drink. In Chaucer's Merchant's Tale the old knight January drinks "ypocras, clarre, and vernage," the last being an Italian white wine. Spiced ale had its own Christmas role in the wassail bowl, which has a separate history.
Who drank what around 1420
Putting the sources together gives a rough picture of the English cup in Henry V's reign.
- Ale: the daily drink of most households, unhopped, brewed locally and drunk fresh.
- Beer: hopped, longer keeping, newly arrived from the Low Countries and brewed mainly by immigrants.
- Wine: mostly Gascon, a luxury for wealthier tables.
- Hippocras and clarrey: wine with spices and sugar or honey, for feasts and the end of a grand meal.
A goblet of ale or a glass of wine
The choice offered at the St. Nicholas Day Feast at Yuletide Medieval Festival, a goblet of ale or a glass of wine, is the same choice a guest in a great hall of 1420 would have recognized. A modern ale is hopped, which makes it closer to the beer that went to Rouen than to an alewife's brew, and a good deal easier to keep.
Simple Hippocras (Spiced Wine), a Modern Adaptation
About 6 small glasses
Ingredients
- 1 bottle (750 ml) red wine, or red grape juice for a non-alcoholic version
- 1/2 cup sugar (use 2 tablespoons, or none, with grape juice)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
- A pinch of ground black pepper or grains of paradise (optional)
Method
- Pour the wine or grape juice into a large pitcher or bowl. Add the sugar and stir until it dissolves.
- Stir in the cinnamon, ginger and pepper. Cover and leave at room temperature for about 2 hours, stirring once or twice.
- Line a sieve with a clean, dampened piece of cheesecloth or a paper coffee filter and strain the wine into a clean pitcher. Strain a second time if you want it clearer.
- Taste. If the ginger is too strong, add a little more cinnamon; if the cinnamon is too strong, add a little more sugar. This is the same correction the medieval instructions give.
- Serve in small glasses at room temperature or lightly chilled, with thin crisp cookies or wafers alongside. For adults only when made with wine.
This is a modern adaptation. The Forme of Cury of about 1390 gives only a list of spices to grind to powder, with no wine quantity or method. The fuller instructions printed by its editor Samuel Pegge call for ginger, cinnamon, grains of paradise and sugar for lords, or ginger, cinnamon, long pepper and clarified honey for common people, mixed into red wine and run through several hanging cloth bags. Red grape juice makes a pleasant non-alcoholic version.
Questions
What is the difference between medieval ale and beer?
Hops. Medieval English ale was brewed from malt, water and yeast without hops and did not keep long. Beer was brewed with hops, kept longer, and came to England from the Low Countries around 1400.
When did hopped beer arrive in England?
It was being imported into Winchelsea in Sussex as early as 1400, and London sent 300 tuns of it to Henry V's army at Rouen in 1418. It stayed controversial for decades and only spread widely in the later 15th century.
Did medieval people really avoid drinking water?
Not as a rule. Historians of medieval water supply point to wells, fountains and piped water built for drinking. Water was simply less esteemed than ale, beer or wine, which people preferred when they could get them.
What was hippocras?
A wine sweetened with sugar or honey and flavored with spices such as ginger and cinnamon, then strained through a cloth bag called Hippocrates' sleeve. It was commonly served with wafers at the end of a meal.
Who were alewives?
Women who brewed ale at home and sold it to their neighbors. They dominated English brewing in the early 14th century, but by the 15th century the trade had largely passed to male brewers.
Sources
- The Influence of Low Dutch on the English Vocabulary (1936), chapter 10: The Low Dutch in the Brewing Industry, by E. C. Llewellyn, DBNL (Digital Library for Dutch Literature)
- Alewives in Oxford: A History of Female Brewing, Museum of Oxford
- Wine prices in Anglo-Gascon trade, c.1337-c.1460, by Robert Blackmore, Economic History Society
- The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery, Compiled about A.D. 1390 (ed. Samuel Pegge), Project Gutenberg
- Drinking water in the Middle Ages, Fake History Hunter
- A brief history of mulled wine: from health tonic to festive treat, by Dr Sara Read, Loughborough University
