Beer for Breakfast? A Working Class Morning: London Print Shop Circa 1725
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- Опубліковано 3 кві 2022
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“You’re drinking beer at 10 am!?”
“Babe I’m reenacting.”
LMAO
You’ve never been to Vegas, it’s just starting at the time you want
At work we drink beer at 9:30 am
I work in a brewery. Someone has to taste the batches we’re releasing to market that day!
No big deal
"Babe, I'm Irish*"
"When we think about breakfast, we don't usually think about beer, bread and cheese" - You have obviously never been to Germany
Indeed 😀🇩🇪✌️
Students in the UK are still like this add in a potnuddle as well
I once heard that the drinking age for beer in Belgium was 8.
Or Wisconsin
@@EthanL21800 It's 5 years old in Pennsylvania!
Ah, fermentation, without which none of these wonderful breakfast foods could be possible.
Just need to a pickled anything
@@drawingdraws618 Real pickling: fermented, unpasteurized, and soaked in brine (not in vinegar, which is a form of pasteurization). The probiotic bacteria of modern-day "pickled" foods are destroyed in vinegar.
@UCLuek6Hknm2MstY0n82_VVw No. That wouldn't work. Pickles are just fermented cucumbers (cucumbers soaked in a salt brine for a specified period of time, as the bacteria developes and eats the naturally-occurring sugars) Most modern manufacturers pasteurize their pickles in vinegar because it kills the bacteria and stops the fermentation process and allows them to be stored at room temperature (unpasteurized pickles must be kept refrigerated). There are still a few brands out there that don't pasteurize their pickles in vinegar. Moishe's is one that comes to mind, but there are several brands out there.
proof that god loves us, wasn't it franklin who said that
@@miltonbates6425 ehh i prefer vinegar pickles to lactic acid pickles (way better crunch), and it's all still fermentation of SOMETHING even if the pickles themselves aren't fermenting in the vinegar version.. that kind of pickling has always been done, it's just a different option.
Breakfast with beer.
Second breakfast with beer.
Elevensies with beer.
Luncheon with beer.
Afternoon tea with beer.
Dinner with beer.
Supper with beer.
And a nice beer for dessert.
You would be so thirsty after that.
@@kellysouter4381 Drink water while you're drinking beer, at a 1-to-1 ratio. Has saved me many a hungover morning over the years.
8 beers over a sixteen hour day would never make you drunk. Even at 5%abv you will burn off 16oz of beer in about two hours.
Sounds like my student years.
@@houstonhelicoptertours1006 Minus the food :-)
Cheese and bread is still a breakfast in most of Europe
We just need to bring back the beer part :-P
tbh, it beats the sugary garbage that people stuff themselves with in the US.
@@loveableheathen7441
Why? People here eating tons of sugary, artificially flavored cereals and white bread...can't be good for you.
@@loveableheathen7441
I do, but I'm not drinking anymore. I was physically active in my 20s and 30s, being a bodybuilder and (later) a decathlete.
Just don't sit around inactive all day...and the occasional beer won't do you any harm.
@@houstonhelicoptertours1006 to be fair, it seems like actually eating breakfast is becoming increasingly less common in younger age groups.
That's not to say they're eating better, just not eating as much breakfast food at breakfast-time
@@loveableheathen7441 Right, I forgot about how rampant diabetes was in colonial times...
Honestly the more I think about this as breakfast, the more sense it makes. Beer is basically just a liquid Bread, Bread is nothing but carbs, and carbs are very calorie-dense. A pint of beer, a loaf of bread, and some cheese probably had the same amount of, if not more, calories than a full modern breakfast. It's probably far quicker and more efficient to eat as well
Makes sense, bread for some faster acting energy to get started and cheese to hold you until you start running out.
strictly speaking, all hydrocarbons are equally calorie-dense except lipids, which are significantly more calorie-dense (simply by being less dense overall)
but carbs are what you wanna call _very energy-available._ you don't have to do as much to convert them to sugar fuel.
you'd need a ton of stuff floating around in that beer for it to be comparable to bread, to the point that it would be more like a smoothie.
even what goes for "rich" beer is nutritionally very far removed from bread and the alcohol itself is nutritionally worthless and metabolically harmful. It's really a terrible way of getting calories into your body (and as they mentioned in the video expensive as well), so they likely drank it because they were alcoholics, simple as.
Milk and cereal, just the same as the modern breakfast, except nicer.
The cheese adds a lot of necessary fat and protein nutrition to the carbo dump.
While in the Army and stationed in Germany (1970's) I worked in a black and white photo lab run by an "old" (40?) German. He would bring a wooden box with a handle on it that Germans use for delivering beer door to door like milk use to be delivered in this country. He would start his day by opening the lid of a bottle of very strong German beer and taking a sip. He would finish that beer almost exactly one hour later and start on the next and so on all through the day, probably 8 or 9 beers at work per day. Strange to say his work (photo printing by hand, one picture at a time) was magnificent, he worked faster than I could do and never seemed drunk. True, he never talked much, so I could not tell if he slurred his words but I found it amazing.
9 beers over the course of an 8 hr day wouldn't really get a person drunk.
German beer would. Our bottles are usually 500ml in volume with ca. 4.5%(vol) of alcohol. The guy described was a high-functioning alcoholic.@@AZ-kr6ff
❤I AM THE SAME … WHEN I DRINK AT OR BEFORE WORK ,I WORK SO MUCH FASTER AND I AND NOT DRUNK.. I DO NOT SLUR … THE MANAGEMENT KNOWS, ONLY BECAUSE OF THE SMELL..
HOWEVER THEY DO NOT CARE FOR I WORK LIKE 6 MORTALS. AND I DO NOT FATIGUED LIKE THE OTHERS.
I BELIEVE IT I BECAUSE , MY BRIAN IS RELEASING DOPAMINE 😂
@@superflyp0brother you might be doing something else
@@TerryWhisk 🫢🤭😃😂
After a high school day, when staying after for study or group projects, I'd hit the nearby grocery store for some juice, a small block of cheese, a personal loaf of sourdough, and a summer sausage (salami, ham slices, or other portable meat) and happily call it dinner.
I like the way you think :) I've done the same throughout my life as well!
I did something similar when I was in grade school...only my parents' refrigerator was my "store." 🤣 On days when I was in my dad's church acolyte class, I stopped at home and would grab crackers, cheese, a Coke and a knife (don't worry, I was in 4th grade and learning how to handle sharp things for cooking.), and head over to the church.
i love that meal, i equally share your love for the simple pleasures of food
I would call it a “Ploughman’s Lunch” as a kid, nowadays “charcuterie”. 🧀 🫒 🍞 🍻
Even better with a nice red ale! I actually used to bring bread & cheese with me when I walked to my first freelance landscape jobs. That was a great lunch.
Al Capone's first job was being a beer boy for construction workers.
wait really?
@@somedude5422 Yeah that's actually true.
@@owllymannstein7113 _You see, beer will get you in jail one day_ *. . . ;-)*
And he remained a beer boy his whole career when you think about it.
@@letoubib21 Al Capone went to prison for tax evasion, not bootlegging
Honestly, my favorite meal is Traveler's fare, esp when getting into a good fantasy novel: hunk of Miner's sourdough bread, soft cheese, IPA, apple, and dry aged salame. Nothing beats it as a fantasy meal.
That sounds absolutely heavenly. I'd take a lager or a stout over the IPA but the theory still stands. Such a simple, yet wholesome and enjoyable meal.
Apple is a nice touch
“Beer and Bread” is common i fiction I’ve written. It happens elsewhere, i.e. “off-world.”
Note that the beer in question has *much* less alcohol - typically about 1% or so - and a significant amount of amino acids, as well as b-vitamins - and in *some* cases, it also has *anti-infective agents,* similar to certain earthly *MOLDS.*
It is commonly given to *sick* people, and those who have been severely injured, in a setting that resembles a time roughly 200 years ago.
My favorite fact about human history is that for as long we have been around, we have constantly been looking for anything to ingest to make life just a little more tolerable.
and that's the drug business and prostitution go hand in foot from the inception of the leg
@@WeThePeopleMaricopa what
@@frozendogfood it's all inherent
@@randomguydoes2901 the reason they created a war on drugs is cuz they know that it was an unwinnable war because the logic behind it is completely flawed. how about just in force in the laws doing your job and secure in the border and make sure traffic or stay out of your town and then you'll be all right but we don't even want to do that because the cops are just as high
Brother Herion makes you feel like floating on a cloud while bathing in the light of the sun. Drop the alcohol do herion it's quite easy to find.
I am so happy that my meal of beer, butter and bread is considered a meal. Not just an unhealthy snack.
As long as your active!
i had heard that beer was also store-able at room temp or in a cool cellar and had more calories and more importantly more protein than modern beer which made them good food. also a lot of the workers were kinda broken people working hard labor and alcohol numbed them. it's a little dark.
It’s why we still drink it
@@theodoricthegoth4027 "we"???
When they utilized hops they got to extend the shelf life of the beer (transforming ale into the "modern" beer), leading to it being commercialized successfully.
@@alexhurlbut didn't they always use hops?
@@marcwilson1052 in the History (stretching many thousands of years back) of Beer, addition of Hops is relatively recent. It become widespread in the Middle Age when people figured out it made the beer last longer.
(Hobby) Printer here. A few minor details to clear up from Jon's description. Working "at press" Franklin would have not only had to crank the rounce to get the forme in position, he would also have had to PULL the "Devils' Tail" (aka handle) back with all his strength to close the press & make an impression. A block affixed to the floor would enable a stronger pull by bracing his foot on that as he pulled. The fellow pictured on the right has ink balls in his hands. He would beat out the ink and beat it onto the type. Beater & pressman would exchange places periodically to avoid overfatigue. Now, regarding carrying the FORME-- Jon says it is a 'box' full of type, which is inaccurate. A forme is the completed type, all set up and ready to print. It consists of the chase (metal frame), the type, and any necessary spacing, all locked together. If the forme contained enough type for two complete pages of a book it would be quite heavy indeed, but the type was NOT loose in a box. The box containing the font (fount) remained in the composing room, while the forme would be taken to the press for printing. So theoretically, if Franklin could carry 2 formes at a time, he would probably be holding them by the chase and they would be more or less at his side (rather than the two-handed front hold of a box with content inside).
I've been eating this breakfast all throughout college and I never knew I was celebrating older traditions at the same time
Bread, cheese, butter, and a thinly sliced raw onion. Unbeatable and filling. If you can get a rosemary sourdough and a really good Vermont cheddar? BOY!!
Just heat them up and you have a fancy grilled cheese sandwich!
I took Print shop in HS in the 70’s . When I got to the shop I got a big tray with edges along the sides and inside were almost a hundred little compartments each had one kind of letter or sign in them on lead type. If you accidentally dropped it you “ Pied your type” . It took almost the whole class period to return each little piece of lead type to its own little compartment. We had 3 hand presses and 2 larger ones. We made every printed form, Etc. For the entire school as well as our weekly newspaper. I Never got to drink a drop !
Of course you didnt drink alcohol in school.
@@DrummerJacob Says who?
@@DrummerJacob Shop teacher at my HS put vodka in his coffee.
@@SpencerLemay what does that have to do with what I said?
@@johnlafleur9251 Says the OP, if you can read.
Sounds like a student in the UK still, add in a pot nuddle as well
What's a pot nuddle?
@@PyrusFlameborn I think ramen noodles??? Idk I'm an American guessing
@@missouribushwhacker9449 Pot noodle would be the usual spelling, basically dried noodles plus flavourings in a plastic pot with a foil lid. Boil a kettle, pull the foil off, add boiling water, stir and leave for a few minutes before eating. Not the greatest thing you'll ever eat but they do the job.
When you say most of us are not thinking of beer, bread and cheese for breakfast. I'm pretty sure we all are now.
How about just beer? A.m. ale is all you need
It's what I used to have for breakfast back in college lol
Maybe not for breakfast, but it does sound pretty tasty.
Yep! I'm going to try this one day. Firstly though, I need to brew the gallon of ale required.
Add 1 sunny side up egg and it'll be perfect
Small beer? Seems quite logical if one is consuming that much per day. When I was young, my grandma would send me out to play in the summer mid-morning with an apple, homemade bread, and hard cheese from an actual cheese wheel she used all week. Sometimes she would put in my lunch sack hard salami.
_But unfortunatelly grandma forgot the small ale_ *. . . ;-)*
Adult lunchables
If you aren't aware, "small beers" are made by brewing the grains of the "big beer" a second time. It's like using tea or coffee grounds twice to extract more from it.
After a brewery made a beer, they'd use the grains in a second boil and that would result in a weaker, "small beer" that they could sell. It was lower in flavor and alcohol.
The only American example I've ever run across is "Anchor Small Beer" where Anchor Brewing, out of California, runs the mash from their Old Foghorn English style barleywine a second time. Old Foghorn is like 8-10% alcohol and the Small Beer brewed from those "spent grains" is like 3.3% alcohol. The vast majority of breweries toss those spent grains in the dumpster. A few bake them in to dog treats. Anchor is one of the few that re-use the spent grains to create a "Small Beer."
@@DonOblivious _Thanks, indeed I didn't know that _*_. . .,_*
@@DonOblivious would it make the beer less strong?
What Mr Franklin may not know that in London, drinking beer was safer than water by a long shot. Were they not mistaken they may have found out that the lightest beers were healthier.
The book mentioned “sallets.” Could you do an episode on 18th century salads?
That would be very interesting
Agreed!
Printers and beer haven't changed in 300 years. I worked in a print house from the late 1980's until the early 2010's. You would not believe the number of empty 6/12/18/24 packs were found around and in the area of the presses, paper warehouses and grounds.
I started working at a printing place just over a month ago and I've found already found an empty six pack or two.
That's a time when you need to just get a friggin keg.
@@KairuHakubi Or hire an Ale House boy, to fetch your drink.
Hey, I worked with a crew of painters years ago, one of whom had the idea that a perfect lunch was a six-pack of Shaefer (beer) and a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes! I watched him for about two weeks, and man that guy knew how to WORK!
What does a modern print house look like?
I remember, while just a boy with my Father in the small tavern near his work, the old woodcut titled "a Ploughman's Lunch". It showed a ploughman (!) sitting under the shade of a tree with his pint (growler) of what would be warm ale, a large slice of bread, a chunk of cheese, and a pickle! The bar with no kitchen is where most of the workers from the machine shop "ate lunch". There were bags of chips, peanuts, nice hard pretzels, and .... pickled eggs, pickled sausage, and pickled pigs feet. As I grew older I started to reason the reason for the woodcut.
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" ~ Benjamin Franklin
Indeed.
There is a level though between having beer and increasing one's income by up to 50% with less.
so what about the rest (like guns, hunger, misery, hatred)? I think Benjamin was already a heavy drinker when he said that xD
Weapons (guns, swords, daggers, clubs, stones, you name it), misery and hatred have been, unfortunately, the most loyal companions of the human race since times immemorial. There is only one difference between back then and now. Back then people hated each other and fought for territory and political power, both were legit reasons back then, today they are not. Some people sometimes fought for religion, which I in my 21st century do not understand. Especially when both sides had the same belief with small differences. Why should someone fight and die for ideological dogma. But today people are obsessed about hating others and giving them orders what others should eat and wear, what they should watch in circus and what not, and of course, why they drink something that others don't. In 20th century some regimes confiscated food and put people in forced labor/concentration camps without any food at all. But can anyone name one dictatorship in the 20th century when people who were not arrested and not under enemy blockade would be not allowed to eat, or have to hear propaganda against, food that they could afford, was not banned by the government and was available in stores?
@Toadskin you strike me as jewish yet you use hashem in vain. He loves the gentiles too y'know
I was going to quote this but you already did. 🍺
That looks like some of the softest orange cheese i've ever seen. reminds me of that pimiento cheese spread stuff.
Sounds like ale was the coffee of its day. hiring an intern to run around getting it for you, drinking it all day, blowing huge amounts of money on it, and probably not doing the best things to your body by keeping the habit quite that high.
My guess was longhorn colby. Good stuff :p
Great observation regarding the comparison to coffee!
coffee was also incredibly popular around this time period.
@@HarrDarr And strangely enough, not considered a good morning drink, it was best reserved for evening drinking and Sundays (when it was less acceptable to get a beer after church). But also much more expensive for the working class to access.
I would say that it seems like beer was drank not only like coffee today, but like all soft drinks. We all know now that water is the best for you in terms of drinking all day, but most people will be happy to have just about any excuse to drink something more flavorful/exciting, whether that be iced tea, sodas, seltzer etc. Heck, even spending money on expensive bottled waters even if we have access to perfectly fine filtered water. It's funny how people really haven't changed all that much throughout history.
Good bread, cheese, and beer is an incredible combination.
Real French cheese with home made whole grain bread and a light beer is a delight for summer mornings.
You can even try beer-oatmeal with some sugar if you prefer, it turns much better than you'd think.
It's similar to using beer in you baked foodstuff.
Beer, cheese, and bread for breakfast? A Townsends recipe I might actually try for once!
Just when you thought you'd never want to live in the 18th century, beer seals the deal.
My father always told me Mustard was always used with Cheese and bread, as bread has many forms, along with Beer, Cheese and mustard.
That's a very German way to eat it.
Mustard with cheese is a delightful combo🥰
Red Dragon english cheddar cheese made with mustard seed and ale. DEE-liskus! Especially good with brotchen and mortadella.
A nice mustard goes great on breads and cheeses, for sure.
And with braunschweiger!
Were i live, cereal is dessert, and bread with cheese and a cup of milk/tea/coffee is breakfast (same for the last meal of the day). Crazy how that changes
So, what happened in America is: the common man would break up old stale bread and soak it in milk (often old "sour" milk), which makes a quick grab-and-go breakfast that's also delicious (if you know the old techniques for dairy and bread). This was very common for often you had so much to do or had to leave so early for work you didn't have time to light the wood fire and get a full breakfast going. When industrial snacks and foods began filling the shelves of stores, the stale bread was replaced with cereal and once people had fridges they would only drink milk. Also, the cereal didn't become ubiquitously sweet until years later, and of course nowadays Americans are so uncontrolled with their sugar consumption that their "breakfast" is sweeter than most places' dessert.
I have yet to watch the video, only going off of the notification title but I can 100% get behind beer for breakfast.
I actually like to have bread and cheese to start my day. I’d recommend it, with the addition of a nice Granny Smith apple.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking--all these "but I LIKE living on bread and cheese!!!" people need some fiber and vitamins in their diets
sourdough, cheese, beer...all fermented items. In America, Cider was similarly loved where hops were hard to come by. I learn so much on Townsends.
today it would be white bread and cheese "product" so what they ate was far different from what we would substitute for that same stuff
@@mikepette4422 not really. Nutritionally they would be probably pretty similar. The only real difference is the textural eating experience, and that's mostly because Americans at least prefer softer sandwich bread. It's also worth noting that cheese singles are made of real cheese, Cheese product is used to indicate the way that they were processed, not the amount of "real food" that's in them.
Calories are calories no matter how you get them.
The water in many of the wells in London became polluted as the population increased, but they didn't know it would make them sick for almost another hundred years. So drinking ale or beer might have been better for them. It definitely added calories to the diet.
The Great Stink of 1855. Investigating cholera’s spread in Soho in 1854, the physician Dr John Snow deduced that the cause was contaminated water. His evidence included the 70 workers in the local brewery who only drank beer and all survived.
There is a fantastic documentary on the Great Stink and Sir Joseph Bazegette who created a new sewer system to solve the problem. It can be found on youtube.
Ben Franklin's co-worker is just like, "I drink a pint in the morning, I drink a pint at night. I drink a pint in the afternoon, it makes me feel alright.
Skip the pint and have a gallon before bed
Sublime nice 👌
When he wanted to get drunk and not just keeping a mild buzz, he would go to a gin house
I'm always so pleased when I find a breakfast place that will pour me a pint of lager with my salmon and eggs.
Oh, the days I lived on sharp cheddar cheese, Syrian bread, cold water from the tap and big dreams. Some of the happiest days of my life. Loving your presentation along with Ken Burn documentary on PBS.
I woke up this mornin and I got myself a beer.. cause the futures uncertain and the end is always near.. great content as always!
Jim Morrison knew the good things
Hell yes Lol 🤣😆🤣
Ill drink to that!
@@gtbkts Cheers!
@@j.robertsergertson4513 Sure did!
When I was doing work at a Victorian Manor House it was noted that servants were allotted 8 pints of beer a day. Some were noted to have more, which gave the expression "One over the eight." Interestingly, this was common for a good while both above and below stairs and they cited the water being unsafe as the reason.
'Strong beer makes strong men."
Arnold Schwarzenegger would drink beer with his body-builder chaps all day at Gold's Gym while working out. Ah, the good of days.
"Strong beer made you strong" When my grandmother was having kids (1950s-60s), her doctor and the older women in her family recommended she drink Guinness to keep from getting anemic (and smoke cigarettes to keep her nerves calm...I know she smoked, but I don't think she took them up on the Guinness)
My eldest was born in the 2000s and my doctor told me if I want to have a drink make it Guinness which suited me as I’m fond of the stuff
The occasional bottle was considered fine during pregnancy until very recently when it was decided a single drink is too much.
"When we think of breakfast today, I'm not sure that many of us are thinking about beer"
* laughs in Bavarian *
One of things that makes sense why they thought it made them stronger is the amount of calories in Beer if they went by Ben Franklins suggestion the workers would have around 1,290 less calories a day. On top of that higher alcohol content generally means higher calories meaning it made sense why they thought the stronger a beer made stronger man. It was actually just stronger beer gave them more energy.
And if you took the most calorific beer you can get now that would be a whopping 4,765 calories a day extra! You can see why you could believe it's strong men imagine the beer belly on that guy and how many calories he can burn off
Beer back then was naturally fermented and unpasteurized. It was a probiotic drink, unlike the 95% of beers sold today.
It doesn't work like that lol
Gasoline is very high calorie
Does it make you stronger?
@@Stomach1488 shhhh, gas prices are high enough. Don't let people in on the secret to becoming stronger by consuming gas
@@Stomach1488 exactly it gives you more energy which would give you the idea that you are stronger. And technically in the long term it will make you weigh more which should make you stronger, not a particularly efficient or healthy strength though.
Oh man that cheese looks amazing 🤤
My maternal grandmother [b.1895] used to regularly lunch, on bread cheese and apple, a habit I still partake of myself on occasion
Save for the beer, bread and cheese ( or something else to put on the bread ) are a very common breakfast and lunch in the Netherlands
Jon, you and the team 100% need to release a cookbook with all your favourite 18th century recipes in it. I would buy that in a heartbeat!
Also, I noticed Australia isn't listed in your country selection on the website. We're real, I promise. Not just paid actors 😉
In the 20th century, I remember helping dig out a mud slide in Belgium and we we were offered beer by the residents, Stella, at that time basically water, a morning beer, back in the USAF. Jupiler was another, a wee bit stronger, 3%? The lowlands has bad water from the sea 😉 and mineral content, like Wyoming with nasty soft water
Stella's 5.3 perfect not a weak beer
@@Mrmallet777 when it came over to the US, but thanks for telling me something you don’t know about, Son. Always one in the crowd who doesn’t know what 30 years ago, IN BELGIUM, is as it’s longer then they’ve been alive 🙄
Maybe if you spoke English I could understand you oap?
Every guy, "That's weird, what kind of guy would drink beer for breakfast?!?"
(Also every guy....I have totally had beer for breakfast at least once before...)
A "guy" is something we burn in the UK.
Beer on cornflakes. Has to be had at least once :)
I only relate to the latter
Irish guy, "j-ust a' normal daaay laddy!"
German guy, "vunderful is it not?"
Thank you bringing your love of history and food together and making these awesome videos
Thanks for this episode. Limburger cheese, a slice of red onion, on pumpernickel bread. I’ve heard this combination is very good and with a beer? Wow! Thank God his Son was a working man. He understands life in this body. Matthew 26:29.
Bread and cheese has always been a winning combo!
Thank you for your wonderful channel! Combining history and beer … it can’t get any better!
I really like these short 10 min or so snippets of history. Very well done, good sir.
John, of course strong beer makes you stronger. Hell, when I drink tequila, I can pick up a bus.
Pressmen needed a lot of urine to wash the ink balls every day, so a couple of beers could also help with production requirements…
Thank you for bringing us along on your adventure! Keep'em coming!
I toured a brewery in the UK about ten years ago. The workers started their morning shift early and took a break for morning breakfast in the canteen. They washed down breakfast with a pint of beer.
In past times in Britain the workers drank " small beer" which was very weak and cheap and collected from the pub in a big jug.
Small beers came over to the new world as well, and gave us the original ginger beer and root beer.
Franklin states strong beer several times
In 18th century London the beer drunk was predominantly either Mild, a fresh, unaged, beer of about 3% - 3.5% or a stronger beer called Porter (at 6-7%) named because it was favoured by London porters who carried cargo. These were stout men, and so Porter was also called Stout - London Porter is the model of Irish extra stout like Guinness. It stopped being brewed in London due to grain shortages in London during WWI.
@@elliotvernon7971 um no, stout is just thick porter, not named after the men
Drinking beer throughout the day does not sound like a bad way to live to me! I think Ben was wired a little tight in his youth. 👍🤣👍
Yeah,but Ben lived to be 84 When 50 was really old and he was in his 70s during the American revolution and sharp as a razor.
@@j.robertsergertson4513 Some say it was all the French women keeping him young and healthy all those years.
A few centuries ago in the UK, farm labourers were part paid in cider/hard cider.
This one was quite interesting. I love listening to this channel while out having a fire in the backyard. Some of these are really immersive and really transport me back. Such a cool experience since I work as a coder for a giant company. I really like this channel and its immersive style of bringing back the old days.
Well considering that the Thames River in London back then was nothing more than a sewer I can understand why they would drink beer you didn't want to drink the water in that City it was polluted nothing more than a sewer back then
Which is also a good recommendation for tea and coffee. Boiled water would be safer.
Reading about London's water system in the 1800's was a stomach-churning experience. Thinking that bad smells were the source of illness, they embarked on a plan to connect homes in the city to sewer systems which drained into the Thames. Then they connected their water supply pipes to the same river. Then wondered why there was still so much disease....
@@Raskolnikov70 like I said the Thames River back then was nothing more than a sewer they couldn't understand back then what it meant to have clean water but hey what are we drink nowadays still isn't clean there's still a particulates in it that causes problems they even got poison in it it's called
@@Raskolnikov70 it was supposed to say fluoride but my phone keeps screwing up on me but that poisonous is fluoride
@@Raskolnikov70 LMAO
Perfect timing. I just woke up at 4PM now i can have beer
thanks for all your good work!
Yours is my favorite UA-cam channel to watch hands down. So entertaining and educational. I just love it!!
Wonderful video, which also inspired me to have a proper breakfast with cheese and bread (but without the beer)!
From an ancient history POV, workers in ancient Mesopotamia were paid in beer and grain rations (the latter for making bread). Men got ~ 2l beer, women and children ~ 1l. The beer back then had way less alcohol content than the modern stuff; I always figured it was about both caloric intake and avoiding water which could carry parasites and all that jazz.
Really took me by surprise to hear about the beer drinking in this autobiography - seems like mankind has been having beer breakfasts for a few millennia! 😀
I love how he said we wouldn't have a bread and cheese breakfast, the first example he gave was cereal and milk... literally the ingredients needed for bread and cheese haha
I live in Lancashire and will regularly eat this for lunch with an apple or some chutney or pickled onion. A dark malty ale in Autumn or Winter and a pale ale in spring or summer. A nice fresh Lancashire crumbly cheese and home made wholemeal bread.
As you said this is a meal that is portable, it can be stuck in the pocket of your jacket for a walk over the hills or through the woods.
Sat beneath an old oak by the river sharing the bread and cheese with my dog is some of the best meals I ever had.
So I work at a grocery store. When I was unloading the trucks by hand, I would grab a loaf of bread for a dollar and some cheese and call that my lunch afterwards. Bread and cheese is an amazing combo when you're working hard.
Sounds like a Bavarian. 😉
Until a couple of years ago, it had been pretty common in bavarian factories to offer beer at the cafeteria and vending machines. So many working men had their (second) breakfast "Brotzeit" with beer and later they went back to their machines and did their job. That sounds pretty strange today and was really weird for the rest of Germany in the early 2000's years.
But i can remember when we got our house built in 1991, it was still normal that the builders had their beer crate standing around. So it's not so long time ago, drinking beer while working had been usual to at least special parts of working class.
If you think of all the business wo-/men who have their lunch with a good glass of wine and then they go back to their offices and make decissions or buy/sell stocks or anything else...
I guess there are more alcoholics than you would guess. 😉
But it's really interesting they had special beer boys around. I know in the english world of the early 20th century, there were women who offered tea to the workers of the factories.
I attended college in Germany in the early 70's and at lunchtime enjoyed the beer from a vending machine in the cafeteria there
My dad still cooks up hard tack (hard bread) in boiling water, and after draining it it coats it in butter and sugar. Now that's an old type Newfoundland breakfast. My mom will make a meal of of bread and cheese. I like both breakfasts too. Perhaps rural Newfoundlanders are more behind the times?
I’d say it’s likely!
And then for supper a big piece of Newfoundland steak with spicy mustard.
@@Rat-mk6fk haha...you mean baloney lol?
@@applegal3058 yup then after supper we can have a party in the kitchen lol
@@Rat-mk6fk sounds good!
I absolute love every video you make about beer drinking/making in the old days in the US, keep em coming! Thanks!
Your channel is one of my favorites now. The information you gift us will soon become essential.
Very cool.
This reminds me that one of the breakfast foods of the period is found in *House of the Seven Gables* by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The novel opens with the scene of the elderly woman baking a fish for breakfast.
While Hawthorne is outside your time frame, he does write about it, so it might be interesting to do an episode or Livestream featuring him somehow. I wouldn't go too deep into it, just because his writings are covered in so many literature classes in high school and beyond. The facets of interest are what would be considered "background noise" in literature classes -- the references to life in the period he writes of.
What time period was he? The channel, while normally sticking to the 18th century, does venture into the late 17th century and early 19th century on occasion.
"When we are thinking of breakfast today, we probably aren't thinking cheese, bread and beer"
what? Maybe not Beer, but cheese and bread? what's abnormal about having that for breakfast?
It has been not a normal breakfast staple since about post ww2 in the US. Ive been to a couple different continents, fortunately, so I have come to realize that most of the world over, it's a staple part of breakfast, and anything more is 'extra'.
It's too bad, I always quite like the breakfasts in other places, but to be honest, it can actually be somewhat difficult to replicate in the US. Many places ive been have less processed local cheese varieties like 'farmers cheese' which is robust and fresh, or milder varieties that go well with breakfast. And less processed simple breads. Those things are hard to find unless you're in a big metro area with European or slavic stores catering to an immigrant community.
@@samwise1790 Thanks, that's interesting, I didn't know that
I love your videos, thank you for what you do.
Insightful comments - love the genuine interest in these topics
The whole "they drank beer because the water wasn't safe" also ignores the idea of tea and coffee, which were available in the period (though I'm not sure how affordable it would be for an average workman)
Tea and coffee aren’t fermented, therefore unsafe.
Legal tea wasn't very affordable at all, thanks to taxation, but smuggled tea was abundant and comparatively cheap. However, tea smugglers were every bit as wicked as drug smugglers today, resorting to murder and torture to keep the police off their backs and the competition from stealing their products. Wherever a product is illegal, the suppliers have to be ruthless, working outside of the law as they must.
Tea was a luxery good until after the 1850s when the British get their tea farms in India going. In the 18th century tea was kept in small special chests that the lady of the house had the keys to. You could also go to tea houses, but it was also expensive. Usually the clientele of these places where the rich and/or the intellectual men of the periode. I am not sure when coffee stops beeing a luxury product, but it is probably somewhere during the 19th century also.
@@crtnyp Uh... Boiling water would like a word.
@@crtnyp While Germ Theory was still being fleshed out during this period and wasn't widely accepted, people were aware that boiling "bad" water made it less likely to harm you.
Ah hah... I've been making a habit for years to eat some kind of meat along with my usual cold coffee for breakfast, so I can burn the calories over the course of the day while awake than let it linger while I sleep. Especially on the days I work, since my main transportation is riding on a bike for at least an hour total between coming and going, and the retail job itself is fairly physically active more often than not. Breakfast like a King, dine like a Plebian, as some would say.
Love listening to you.
Just finished watching Ken Burns' "Benjamin Franklin" on PBS.
Purchased his Autobiography and am enjoying it, thanks Townsend's...
There's a great beer called Kentucky Breakfast Stout that's wonderful with pancakes. Beer at breakfast has been on my radar for a while. Cheese and bread for breakfast sounds wonderful though!
That was a great segment. Full of slot of wonderful historical information. I'll have to try to make time to binge watch the Benjamin Franklin autobiography segments.👍
I love this format! 😍 please do more like this! 😊
I really like to drink a beer now, thanks
It's amazing how we humans went from accidentally dropping fruit in a jar full of water to having the luxury of enjoying beer with your breakfast if you wanted.
Thank you for the validation…
…now, maybe my wife will quit harassing me for having beer and cheese in the morning
You are crushing this! ❤️ From Michigan.
Thanks for the video
If this guy has 1700's outdoorsman classes, I would pay a lot to take them...
It would be cool to see a video of you guys making beer / wine / spirits using methods and tools from that time period!
Totally agree. I know craft brewing is a big thing and it would be cool to see the recipes of yesteryear recreated.
I've heard a story about bad castings being produced from a particular foundry. The tellers grand or great grandfather was sent to see why parts from the one foundry were constantly porous and brittle.
During their visit they noticed that beer was handed out in buckets to the various workers as part of their payment. The ones who worked with the sand for filling the molds didn't really have access or care to find a bathroom, and would remove the used beer from their systems into the sand. The extra moisture and nitrogen content was enough to make bad castings...
The more you know…and you wish you didn’t. 🤣
Thanks Jon I enjoyed going through that book.👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Beer, bread and cheese is such an awesome breakfast. Is it really any worse than fried bread, sugar and greasy salty meats?
🎶 The beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad so I had one more for dessert 🎶
Sunday morning, coming down.
Great clip and insight into 18thC London - and elsewhere!- working life. Thanks for all these smashing insights into 18C food life
I've had this meal for supper a thousand times but never thought about it for breakfast!