Articles – H

H

“Hansen, Emil Christian” lager yeast has been re-named again and is now Saccharomyces pastorianus.

“Harvest” this entry says simply “See BARLEY HARVEST”. Shouldn’t there also be an entry for HOP HARVEST?

“Harwood, Ralph” entry at page 422 states:”A popular drink at the time was “three threads”, a dark beer mixture drawn from three different casks and blended in the customer’s glass at the pub.” ‘Three-threads” is always hyphenated in contemporary sources, which say that it was a blend of two beers, not three. The Dictionary of the Canting Crew by “BE”, published around 1697/1699, called three-threads “half common Ale and the rest Stout or Double Beer” (both “stout” and “double beer” meaning “strong beer”.) This definition was repeated in Nathan Bailey’s Universal Etymological English Dictionary of 1737, which again said that three-threads was “half common Ale and half Stout or double Beer”. There is no suggestion that three-threads was a combination of three beers until John Feltham in 1802, writing in a guidebook called The Picture of London, more than 40 years after three-threads had vanished. There is certainly no evidence to suggest that three-threads was dark. It also states: “Harwood produced his “Entire” beer which matched the flavour of this mixture in one, labor-saving cask. Entire rapidly became popular…” This misunderstands the meaning of “entire” in 18th-century brewing terminology. Entire” meant a beer brewed from all the mashings of one batch of goods, or malt, mixed together. “Entire” would not be the name of a beer, therefore, but an adjective used for a beer – “entire butt beer”, for example, or “entire small beer”. In addition there is no evidence at all that Harwood, or his brother, concocted a beer to replace three-threads, until Feltham again, writing around 80 years after the event, made this evidence-free claim.

“heather” entry at page 426 refers only to Calluna vulgaris, otherwise ling or heath, and should also mention bell heather, Erica cinerea, which has also been used to flavour ale. In addition it says: “associated with heather itself is a specific fungal growth (colloquially called ‘fogg’ or simply ‘white powder’ …” “Fogg” is the Scots dialect word for moss, and the “fogg” growing on the heather is moss. The white powder or fungus is associated with the moss.

“hectoliter” in this entry the US beer barrel is given as 117.35 litres but in the conversion table on p870 it is given as 117.34.

“Heineken” in this entry the fact that Heineken have more than 125 breweries in 70 countries is mentioned twice in the same paragraph.

“herbs.” in this entry it states that “commercial brewers are only allowed to include herbs upon approval by governmental authorities.” It does not however state in which county or countries these regulations apply.

“Hildegard of Bingen” entry at page 435 states: “Hildegard died in her beloved Rupertsberg in 1179 at aged 81 – an incredible example of longevity at a time when the live expectancy was merely 30 to 40 years.” This is a misunderstanding of the statistics of life expectancy. High rates of infant mortality in the medieval period meant low life expectancy, of only 30 or 40 years, at birth. By the time someone had reached the age of 21, however, their life expectancy was up to 64. For a nun, living in a sheltered environment, 81 might have been unusual but was certainly not “incredible”. Also her writings may well “still be considered valid by homeopaths” but I certainly hope that the are not, as stated, considered valid by physicians.

“history of beer” entry at page 438 has an alleged quote from Pliny’s Natural History: “So exquisite is the cunning of man in gratifying their vices and appetites that they have invented a method to make water itself produce intoxication.” This is a common, but madly over-elaborate and very poor translation of two sentences from Book XIV, chapter 22: “heu mira vitiorum sollertia! inventum est quemadmodum aquae quoque inebriarent,” which is more succinctly translated: “O, our marvellously ingenious vices! Even water has been made intoxicating.” It also states at page 439:”Hops moved into England in the 1400s, and although many people clung to unhopped ale for more than a century, British beer was largely hopped by the mid-1500s.” This is confusing ale with beer: of the two malt liquors, beer in Britain was always a hopped drink, ale was not. It would also be wrong to say that British malt liquors were largely hopped by the mid-1500s: the evidence is that ale remained generally unhopped well into the 17th century throughout Britain, and that it stayed largely or entirely unhopped in the North of England and Scotland until the start of the 18th century. Ale continued to be generally more lightly hopped than beer until the 19th century. See also the comments on the ST. GALLEN entry.

“Hoegaarden” entry at 441 states:”Hoegaarden (pronounced “who garden”) us a Belgian witbier named after a small town in the Flemish region of Belgium that is famous for the rebirth of the Belgian white (“wit”) style of beer. The entry does not relate as it might that the town, Hoegaard, had been the source of the style of beer and not just the site of a revival. Richard Unger in A History of Brewing in Holland 900-1900: Economy, Technology and the State by Unger at page 131 shows that in 1550 “Hoegaard” was listed in a Dutch translation of a list of classes of beers and wines along with other descriptors including “…Hamburg, Mom, English, March…”, etc. Unger further explains in his book Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance at page 96: “In 1513 Leuvan itself imported about 78,000 litres of beer from Hoegaarden, a small enclave of the bishopric of Liege in the duchy of Brabant, an enclave which was able to ignore rules of both Liege and Brabant about brewing…” and also at page 245 “The village of Hoegaarden was a small enclave able to evade the supervision by any authority and so, by the closing years of the eighteenth century Hoegaarden exported some 3,250,000 litres to the neighboring Austrian Netherlands alone. It is quite reasonable to suggest that the style which was revived was the village’s own indigenous product. And, for what it is worth, its Flemish pronunciationis described as ˈɦuʝardə(n)] while the English is /ˈhuːɡɑrdən/, the Flems starting the word with a voiced glottal fricative.

“hogshead” entry at page 443 states:”It contains no less than 54 Imperial gallons and was in common use in Britain, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries.” This is, again anachronistic (see the correction under “firkin”), as the Imperial gallon did not exist in the 18th century or for the first quarter of the 19th century, and it also ignores the difference (until 1826) between cask measurements for ale and beer in London and the rest of Britain, and the Irish hogshead, which was different again. It also fails to point out that a hogshead is one and a half barrels and half the size of a butt. It also states that “a full cask weighs close to half a ton”. The contents of a hogshead weigh just under a quarter of a ton. A full hogshead weighs less than a third of a ton.

“homebrewing” in this entry US gallons are used but it is not always stated that this is the case.

“hop breeding and selection” in this entry it states “the Slovenian Institute has released Aurora, Celeia, and Styrian Golding”. Though a number of hop varieties have been sold with “Styrian Golding” in their name the original Styrian Golding hop is not a result of a Slovenian breeding programme as it was found to the the same as the English Fuggle. On page 454 in the second paragraph there is a space missing and the content is incorrect in that male hop plants are used in commercial cultivation in England.

“Hops” entry at page 459 states:”Hops are the flowers or ‘cones’ of Humulus lupulus, a Latin diminutive meaning roughly ‘a low [slinking] little wolf [plant],’ so-named for the plant’s tactile qualities, progidious growth and wide range.” Humulus lupulus is not “a Latin diminutive” but the plant’s botanical name, and should, under botanical naming conventions, be italicized. It does not mean “a low [slinking] little wolf [plant]”, even roughly. It was named by Carl Linné (Linnaeus) using a Latin version of the hop’s name in Swedish, humle, and a Latinised version of the hop’s name in Italian, lupulo. There is no good evidence that “lupulo” is connected with the Italian for wolf, “lupo”. At page 461 it states that “Male plants are tolerated in hop yard only when an open pollination breeding project is underway” when in fact in commercial English hop yards and gardens male plants are deliberately planted. On this page it also states that “Alpha acids are divided into three analogues” and mentions humulone, adhumulone and cohumulone but according to The Handbook of Brewing (Priest and Stewart) there are also minor alpha acids such as posthumulone, prehumulone and adprehumulone. Also at page 462 it states: “Lupulone provides potent antimicrobial properties and is active against Gram-negative bacteria such as Staphylococcus and Clostridium.” This is a technical error. Staphylococcus and Clostridium are Gram positive not Gram negative: see Bergy’s Manual of Determinative Bacteriology, of which some is online here. And the main antibacterial effect of hops in beer comes from isomerised alpha acids (iso-humulones) not beta acids such as lupulones. See, for example, Enhancing the Microbiological Stability of Malt and Beer, Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Vol 111, no 4, 2005. It also states at page 464: “The first recorded use of hops in brewing dates from 822 AD when Abbot Adalhard of the Benedictine Monastery of Cornie in the Picardy, in Northeastern France, made a record stating that his monks added hops to their ales.” He did not state that the monks added hops to their ales. In 822, Adalhard wrote a series of statutes on how the abbey should be run. The many rules covered areas such as the duties of the abbey’s tenants, which included gathering of firewood and also of hops – implying wild hops, rather than cultivated ones. Adalhard also said that a tithe (or tenth) of all the malt that came in should be given to the porter of the monastery, and the same with the hops. If this did not supply enough hops, the porter should take steps to get more from elsewhere to make sufficient beer for himself. The implication is pretty clear, that the hops went into the beer, but it was not “a record stating that [the] monks added hops to their ales”. It also states that “Kings Henry VI and Henry VIII both banned the use of hops in English ales altogether during their reigns… “This is misleading, since it appears to assume ale and beer were the same thing in 15th and 16th century England, and implies a complete ban on hops altogether. Far from banning hops, Henry VI ordered the sheriffs of London in June 1436 to protect the city’s beer brewers against attack from “malevolent attempts” to stop them brewing, with the king declaring that biere was “a wholesome drink, especially in summer time.” In addition, while Henry VIII (or his court officers) did forbid the use of hops in ale brewed for the royal household by the royal ale brewer; no such restriction on the use of hops was applied to the royal beer brewer. It also states: “[Henry VIII] …justified his antihop stance in the 1530s by declaring the hop an aphrodisiac that would drive his subjects to sinful behaviour.” Henry VIII never made any statement about the aphrodisiac quality of hops: he was never anti-beer or hops, there are documents showing supplies of beer being arranged for his army, and in 1532 an act of Parliament was passed legislating on the size of the beer barrel in England. See Martyn Cornell, Beer: The Story of the Pint, chapter four. See also this article at the Zythophile blog for details and see also English Hops.

“hop shortage (aroma varieties) in this entry there is unnecessary repetition of “aroma varieties” in the first sentence as it reads: “The hop shortage (aroma varieties) in 2007 and 2008 hit craft brewers particularly strongly, especially where aroma varieties were concerned.”

“hot liquor” in this entry temperatures are given in Fahrenheit only.