Gunsmoke beer
John Vercammen
rerun of that old western classic -Gunsmoke- and watched Festus go to
the bar and order a big mug of beer. So Sam the bartender pulls the
fancy lever and Festus has his beer. Now this is about the year 1870 or
so. How would the beer even de remotely cool in a hot Kansas summer? And
how would that beer be dispensed? Did they have pressured kegs back
than. Yes I know it was only a t.v show but it must have been based on
some facts. Just curious and slightly tipsy after some excellent pale
ale. :-)
Ross McKay
>[snip]
>Yes I know it was only a t.v show but it must have been based on
>some facts.
Hmmm, interesting assumption...
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Hopsaddict
> This is probably a silly question but what the heck. I watched an old
> rerun of that old western classic -Gunsmoke- and watched Festus go to
> the bar and order a big mug of beer. So Sam the bartender pulls the
> fancy lever and Festus has his beer. Now this is about the year 1870 or
> so. How would the beer even de remotely cool in a hot Kansas summer?
My guess would be ice.
And
> how would that beer be dispensed?
You'd be suprised how long that whole "pressure" thing has been around.
Astrologer
invention shows up, accidentally usually, in a period piece of literature.
In one Shakespeare play, forget which one, set in Roman times, a character
refers to hearing the clock strike midnight. Great for setting the scene,
but bogus in that the Romans had not invented chiming clocks.
"John Vercammen" <jverc...@sk.sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:3B1B0D18...@sk.sympatico.ca...
> ...watched Festus go to the bar and order a big mug of beer. ...How
Marc Zienkiewicz
Interesting question, I have often wondered the same thing about old-time
brewing. I'm pretty sure they knew how to carbonate and keep beer cold in
the Old West, but my big question is what the heck did they use to sterilize
their equipment all those years back? They couldn't just walk over to their
local brewshop and pick up a sterilizing agent. Would they have just rinsed
all their stuff in strong alcohol?
Marc
John Vercammen <jverc...@sk.sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:3B1B0D18...@sk.sympatico.ca...
Dan Listermann
knew that the beer tasted better when they did that. I doubt that they had
the slightest clue as to why it tasted better.
--
Dan Listermann
Check out our new E-tail site at http://www.listermann.com
Take a look at the anti-telemarketer forum. It is my new hobby!
"Marc Zienkiewicz" <mzie...@callisto.uwinnipeg.ca> wrote in message
news:9fgcra$246$1...@titan.uwinnipeg.ca...
ar...@hpcvplnx.cv.hp.com
> Hi John!
> Interesting question, I have often wondered the same thing about old-time
> brewing. I'm pretty sure they knew how to carbonate and keep beer cold in
> the Old West, but my big question is what the heck did they use to sterilize
> their equipment all those years back? They couldn't just walk over to their
> local brewshop and pick up a sterilizing agent. Would they have just rinsed
> all their stuff in strong alcohol?
Probably boiling water, or nothing. If you drink the beer soon enough
sterilization is not a big factor, and folks used to drink a lot of
bad beer anyway.
--arne
DISCLAIMER: These opinions and statements are those of the author and
do not represent any views or positions of the Hewlett-Packard Co.
Astrologer
which led to pasteurization and sterilization. So it would have been
whatever had been handed down, master brewer to apprentice over the
centuries.
Marc Gaspard
Beer was made quick and served pretty quick back then (much
like 'real ales' are supposed to be served) so any real bad contam-
inates probably didn't have time to develop. And I'm sure the beer
was still pretty foul!
I have two favorite film/TV beer anachronism. On an episode of
Star Trek: The Next Generation, when some odd alien thingy is af-
fecting the ship, Data notices it while chief O'Brien is having an er-
satz "English pale ale" in the lounge and his mug looks like it melted.
Except the 'ale' was as light as a bud!
The one that really got me was "Shakespeare in Love". In one
scene they're in a pub drinking a 'golden' colored 'ale' out of clear
glasses! Yeah, right, in the 16th century! Not only was the color
wrong, they sure as hell wouldn't have had clear glasses back then!
Marc Gaspard
Dan Listermann <d...@listermann.com> wrote in message
news:thneu5i...@corp.supernews.com...
Nicholas Landau
>
> Most of the Old West takes place before Louis Pasteur discovered bacteria,
> which led to pasteurization and sterilization. So it would have been
> whatever had been handed down, master brewer to apprentice over the
> centuries.
I don't think this is accurate. Most Wild West sagas are set in the
1880s...that's after pastuerization, isn't it? In any case, Pastuer
didn't discover bacteria, Luewenhoek did...and that was *much* earlier.
Granted, Pasteur figured out that bacteria spoil milk. Actually, if
memory serves, he was trying to figure out a way to either preserve wine
or speed up the fermentation process when he discovered hear sterilization.
Nineteenth century engineers were easily capable of using steam
sterilization and things like that. What they were not capable of was
ice making or refrigeration.
Nicholas Landau
Marc Zienkiewicz wrote:
>
> Hi John!
>
> Interesting question, I have often wondered the same thing about old-time
> brewing. I'm pretty sure they knew how to carbonate and keep beer cold in
> the Old West, but my big question is what the heck did they use to sterilize
> their equipment all those years back? They couldn't just walk over to their
> local brewshop and pick up a sterilizing agent. Would they have just rinsed
> all their stuff in strong alcohol?
Sterilization in 1880 would have been easy. They were capable of
raising things to high temperatures and pressures. The autoclave, which
is the currently preferred device for hospital sterilization, was a 19th
Century invention. It was just a cylinder which filled with high
pressure steam.
It was easy to make stuff hot: burn coal. Not so easy to make stuff cold.
Refrigeration is a more recent invention. I'm kind of hazy on this, but
you need a powerfull compressor, and I don't think steam compressors
could od the job feasible. My granparents told me about the days when
there was no A/C and ice had to be harvested in the winter and stored.
They were born around 1910, so go figure.
Cold beer: the wonders of modern technology!
ar...@hpcvplnx.cv.hp.com
> Nineteenth century engineers were easily capable of using steam
> sterilization and things like that. What they were not capable of was
> ice making or refrigeration.
In bulk. Small ice making machines were available as early as the late 1700's.
They were incredibly expensive toys for rich people with servants or slaves
to work them by hand, but they did exist. They used expanding air to
cool and freeze water.
Hopsaddict
Couldn't ice be harvested and cellared, igloo fashion? Or better yet
Store the kegs in the basement, if it was deep enough the temp would
be constant. Although "natural" pressure probably wouldn't work then.
Maybe thats what they used the servants for.
ar...@hpcvplnx.cv.hp.com
> Couldn't ice be harvested and cellared, igloo fashion? Or better yet
> Store the kegs in the basement, if it was deep enough the temp would
> be constant. Although "natural" pressure probably wouldn't work then.
> Maybe thats what they used the servants for.
Ice was generally harvested up until the late 1800's, when machine-made
ice became cheaper. I was just making a small correction to the assumption
that ice-making machinery didn't exist before then. Like a lot of
technology, it was available to the rich well before it became common for
the hoi-polloi.
--arne
DISCLAIMER: These opinions and statements are those of the author and
do not represent any views or positions of the Hewlett-Packard Co.
John Vercammen
than they drank warm,flat infected beer. No wonder they were always
shooting at each other. ;-/
Marc Gaspard
and his method of fighting it (named in his honor) was on
beer, not wine! He hoped to help the French brewers with
improving their product and solving the bacterial contamin-
ation problem. But they ignored it. The English and German
brewers (and French winemakers) however DID read it,
much to their benefit.
Marc Gaspard
Nicholas Landau <nj...@virginia.edu> wrote in message
news:3B1C4E74...@virginia.edu...
> <snip>
> I don't think this is accurate. Most Wild West sagas are set in the
> 1880s...that's after pastuerization, isn't it? In any case, Pastuer
> didn't discover bacteria, Luewenhoek did...and that was *much* earlier.
> Granted, Pasteur figured out that bacteria spoil milk. Actually, if
> memory serves, he was trying to figure out a way to either preserve wine
> or speed up the fermentation process when he discovered hear
sterilization.
><end snip>
Astrologer
My memory of exactly when Pasteur discovered pasteurization seems to have
been off by 20 years -- I remembered it as in the 1880s; it was 1864. At
first recognized as benefiting wine, the best I could find without
brain-strain was that sometime shortly after it was applied as well to beer
and milk.
What I did remembered correctly at least was that Pasteur discovered three
major bacteria, staphylococcus, streptococcus and pneumococcus, and this was
in the 1880s.
So it's a toss-up whether the average western brewer would have been aware
of pasteurization or not. Depends, I would guess, on how recently he had
arrived in this country from Europe.
"Nicholas Landau" <nj...@virginia.edu> wrote in message:
Nicholas Landau
You sure about this? In MacAulay's _The Way Things Work_, he writes
that no "machine capable of reducing temperature" existed at all until
Harrison's ether evaporater was invented in 1851. He cites the first
practical refrigerator as having been invented in 1876 by von Linde.
Where did you read about the compressed air machines?
For the greater sake of the question, MacAulay also mentions that in
Australia, where Harrison invented the ether evaporator, ice was
imported from the USA at competitive prices (that's why Harrison's
machine was not practical). If we exported ice to Australia, then we
probably shipped it out West to those dingy little cow-poke towns where
Clint Eastwood and John Wayne used to recreate.
Jim Cook
questions about beer in the old west.
ar...@hpcvplnx.cv.hp.com
> You sure about this? In MacAulay's _The Way Things Work_, he writes
> that no "machine capable of reducing temperature" existed at all until
> Harrison's ether evaporater was invented in 1851. He cites the first
> practical refrigerator as having been invented in 1876 by von Linde.
> Where did you read about the compressed air machines?
I'll have to dig around some of my books to see where I got the reference.
A quick search of the internet gave me the 1851 date you mention, but
nothing earlier. Maybe I'm full of horse hooie on this one, but I seem
to recall a reference regarding a hand/foot operated machine dating from the
1790's.
ar...@hpcvplnx.cv.hp.com
>> You sure about this? In MacAulay's _The Way Things Work_, he writes
>> that no "machine capable of reducing temperature" existed at all until
>> Harrison's ether evaporater was invented in 1851. He cites the first
>> practical refrigerator as having been invented in 1876 by von Linde.
>> Where did you read about the compressed air machines?
> I'll have to dig around some of my books to see where I got the reference.
> A quick search of the internet gave me the 1851 date you mention, but
> nothing earlier. Maybe I'm full of horse hooie on this one, but I seem
> to recall a reference regarding a hand/foot operated machine dating from the
> 1790's.
Well, I got it pushed back a little further:
1834
Jacob Perkins, an American engineer living in London, patented (1834)
the first practical ice-making machine, a volatile-liquid refrigerator
using a compressor that operated in a closed cycle and conserved the fluid
for reuse.
(from www.geocities.com/NapaValley/6454/history4.html)
I'll keep digging. This is kind of fun. I wonder what the earliest
reference for using machine-made ice in brewing is...