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Nordic Grog 1300 / 1500 BC

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Nice to see some scientific evidence of likely ingredients. Maybe it'll help put a stop to the idiots who want to drink "something like the vikings".......

Yet insist in using ingredients that wouldn't likely have been available until the middle ages....
 
I was over a friends house a few years back. Proud Italian family. He made me his families famous tomato sauce and claimed it had been in his family for more than 600 years!
His mother promptly agreed.
I shut my mouth, it wasn't that great anyway!

Columbus - 1492
Cortés - 1521
2008 (year of the dinner) - 600 = 1408!

Maybe Leif erikson brought their family the tomatoes.

I wonder how sweet that grog would've been? I know from some research that they would have transfered it a few times during ferment probably cutting it short, though this is from a few centuries later. Also it's pretty damn cold over there.
 
Bob1016 said:
I was over a friends house a few years back. Proud Italian family. He made me his families famous tomato sauce and claimed it had been in his family for more than 600 years!
His mother promptly agreed.
I shut my mouth, it wasn't that great anyway!

Columbus - 1492
Cortés - 1521
2008 (year of the dinner) - 600 = 1408!

Maybe Leif erikson brought their family the tomatoes.
Click to expand...

Ditto. My father in law was incredulous when I pointed out that the Spanish brought tomatoes back from the new world, and that they not only weren't native to good old Italia (or as he said, It-ly), but that for the first hundred or so years after the tomato had been brought to Italy from Spain, Italians used them only as ornamental plants because they thought they were poisonous.

Between that and the fact that spaghetti and ravioli were modifications of Chinese foods, I'm surprised he ever talked to me again... but man, I tried. <LOL>

Joe
 
It's the same everywhere that is "western". What with "we" discovering everything etc, when it
does seem that that should be termed that this or that was either "discovered for the western societies" or attributed to where a given individual discovered something and it was commercialised by the west, either first or just in the best way.

If it wasn't for what seems to be "oriental xenophobia" would the origins or first discoveries of many of the scientific principles, often in China, have remained secret so long ? Only to be discovered again by the western nations who trumpeted them ?

Dunno, but I'd guess that proper analysis of trace evidence puts an end to some of the Hollywood fantasy nonsense, whereby people try to use all the wrong elements in a batch.

it'd be really interesting if they could get DNA from the yeast traces, so the yeast producers would likely have to change the naming on so called "mead yeasts" so new makers weren't mislead into buying them, thinking they must be the right ones to use........
 
A lot of this historical misconception comes from the fact that humanls like to catorgize things. Tomato sauce is "Italian", potatoes are "Irish", mead is "Nordic", mild ale is "dark", etc. it helps us to make connections to things. We forget that mild ale simply meant young and lightly hopped, and that mead usually just referred to the fact that the beverage had honey (mel, med, etc.) in it. Over time vocabulary changes, and people who think they know history forget that a word can have a very different meaning even 100 years ago. Some times the actual minutia of history is not as important as the landmarks that change the meaning of the word (or what we associate it with); tomatoes may be South American, but their importance is due to the Italians; pale ale existed since the 1600s in englend, but our modern versions are based on the 19tg century burton brewers versions of this drink (interestingly, it would have been considered a pale beer in the 1700s, but an ale in the 1800s (ale meaning no, or little hops compared to beer)).

History is funny. :)
 
Kvasir was a god in Nordic mythology. Upon his death they used his blood to wash honey comes and made a mead from it.
I do recall something about it being a russian thing as well (maybe a type of mead?), but can't remember.
 
Chevette Girl said:
Tomatoes (and potatoes too) are in the nightshade family, so it's really no surprise that people thought they were poisonous.
Click to expand...

Apparently it also had to do with Europeans use of lead/pewter pots,plates and bowls. The acidity of the tomatoes drastically elevated the amount of lead that leached into peoples food and they could die of lead poisoning but people associated it with the tomatoes because their other food didn't produce the same results.
 
This reminds me of a old saying:

If barley be wanting to make into malt,
We must be content and think it no fault,
For we can make liquor to sweeten our lips,
Of pumpkins, and parsnips, and walnut-tree chips.

Just like the in the time of Colonial America the Scandinavians had a good idea.
 
I picked up a bottle (a whopping 2-pinter for about $13). I finished my pint, bragging rights achievement unlocked, but I'm not going to rush out to buy another bottle. There are a lot of flavors going on, least of which seems to be the honey. It's like it can't decide if it's an ale, a cider, or a beer. I think if I liked beer (at all) I might have liked this more.
 
Chevette Girl said:
Tomatoes (and potatoes too) are in the nightshade family, so it's really no surprise that people thought they were poisonous.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but once you give 'em to somebody, and the sombitch lives, wouldn't you kinda get the idea? <grin>

And the three really don't resemble one another, so I'm left to wonder how they were classified as all being in the same family.

Joe
 
The real question is why is tobacco in the same family?!
All night shades are poisonous to some extent. Tomato and potato leaves are poisonous, as are eggplant leaves.

On a side note, I once grafted 3 tomato varieties onto a Japanese eggplant. It was a very interesting plant!
 
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