Mulling over hot beer

From mulled wine and warm beers, the association of such balmy Yuletide spirits and Christmas goes beyond the season pretext, notes Sandeep Singh

Hot beer may sound like an oxymoron these days, or at best a cheap publicity stunt. Everyone who drinks beer or has a beer-loving tippler knows well that beer tastes best when served cold — the colder the better. In fact, the right temperature for this oldest dram known to mankind is one where you can feel the beer trickle down the throat and onwards, leaving behind that nice, icy feel of being alive. And for most lager beer and fresh beer drinkers these days that is the best way to enjoy a beer — irrespective of the weather outside.

Yet, reverse the time wheel a few centuries back, and one would realise that cold beer is a rather recent phenomenon that began with the advent of refrigerating technology in 1913 (although we knew the use of ice in preserving food by the early 15th century and the use of vapour compression by the mid-18th century). In that era, beer, which shares its ancestry with wine or soma, was had warm, especially during the winters. In fact, culinary excavation and discoveries are aplenty with incidences when any winter celebration, especially those around the winter solstice, was celebrated with a warm dram — wine or beer, depending on the region and the favourite tippler. In fact, according to most culinary anthropologists, “beer was the popular beverage of celebrations and was made across different ancient cultures, including that of India, especially North and Northeast of India where the cold months are more severe than the rest of the country. The Mayans in fact celebrated their winter festivals with a dram that was akin to the IPA (Indian Pale Ale) that travelled to India around late 1780 created by a London brewer called Hodgson. The heavily hopped beer that went by the name October Ale was aged like wine by adding sugar that gave it that characteristic bitter taste, which in India became the benchmark of any strong beer.

In olden times, however, this process happened on its own because most beers, like Roman (and later Tudor) wines, were made through fermentation. Because of this, the beer if not consumed within a limited period, could go bad. Thus, began the culture of warm beer that was a few notches higher in warmth than the regular jug that was had at room temperature. Warming beer, curiously, wasn’t just to ensure better shelf life, but for taste enhancement as well as with spices, fruits and in some cases, mustard as well. Adding to the popularity of warm beer, especially in the West, was the bone-chilling winters that left little to do, and a voracious drinking culture. Almost every culture back in the ancient and medieval times made their own drams and regularly consumed it thanks to the drink’s curative and good sleep-inducing properties. Such importance was given to the drams that those making the drinks were specially trained to understand not just the fermentation process — Chuwak in Tripura and Gruit in the Tudor court were considered the finest examples of warm/mulled beer — but also the ingredients that it was fortified with. Special care was taken especially during winters when ancient civilisations including the Vikings celebrated the holiday from the time when days were shorter to when nights became shorter. This period of festivity was a time of feast when communities would get together to create and store food with precious, hard-to-find spices, nuts, dry fruit and even honey. All of which would not only make the feast and the treat but were used especially to create a stock of warm, deliciously balmy beer that would last for days akin to the merrymaking of the Gaul Village of Asterix and Obelix.

(The author is a designer and the co-owner of a microbrewery.)