What's the difference between medieval inns, taverns and alehouses?
2024 ж. 7 Мам.
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Jason Kingsley, the Modern Knight, discusses three very popular medieval institutions, the Inn, the Tavern and the Alehouse. Many people think these are the same, but they're not really. Each had it's own place in medieval society. #historyfacts #history #medieval
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Wish you'd post more often. This is what I remember the history channel being like, before it turned into a reality show.
Remember when TLC actually lived up to it's name?
YES
Ah Yes. Those were good days.
Heck yeah man. History used to be great! They really need to change the channel name now, not sure what to but definitely NOT History.
@@Zygmunt-Zen TLC was where I originally watched The Day the Universe Changed. They've fallen so far.
That's easy. Alehouses are frequented mostly by dwarf patrons and give a modest health buff; inns are run by halflings and frequented by adventurers on their way to their latest quest, in order to rest and stock up on healing food; and taverns is where adventurers gather to drink, level up and tell tales of how they finally defeated the Necromancer Lich Queen after 30 times of trying and dying and getting frustrated and ragequitting
😂😂
I cant find those references in any history book, gonna take your word for it.
Silly!😸
source: Trust me bro I def trust@@jm9371
HAHAHA 👍 😆 😂 😂
I was born in 1952 in the southern Netherlands. Europe was bombed back to the Middle Ages then and people were poor. We had a small farm with lots of fruit trees and berry bushes. My mom made wine from everything. Apples, pears, raspberries, gooseberries, elder berries and even rhubarb. We had two or three big glass containers of 80 or 100 liters which were always fermenting something. The neighbours in the street would collect bottles to fill up and buy the wine for a few cents. My dad had an outside job, but in his spare time he kept chicken, rabbits, ducks. That's how people got through the fifties and early sixties. Best years of my life.
_"Best years of my life."_ So jealous, I hope Putin bombs us Europeans back to the iron age again so we can share the experience.
Fascinating. Thank you for sharing.
That sounds so amazing! Thank you for sharing your story! I’ve never been much of a wine person, but that was before I just learned there is wine made from pears…may have to track that down!! 🤍
I lived in Finland where alcohol was horribly expensive so I made wines from different fruits too. I also had a still. It saved me a fortune in drinking bills.
For all the privation of those years, my folks also seemed to look back fondly on those days. When I was young, they always had a huge garden, had many fruit trees and my father kept bees.
When I was in Brazil, in a small village, they didn't have restaurants. Some families would make a ton of food (beans, chicken, rice, veggies) and sell it to people. Everyone would just grab a plate and eat in that backyard on simple tables and chairs. It felt like a family pot luck or superbowl party and you got to meet a bunch of travelers. It was great!
I believe it was like that in many communities around the world, I miss those times
I'm Brazilian, and can confirm, several small villages and "first gear towns" do this.
@@DinnerForkTongue what's a "first gear town" ?
@@aadil3569 A town that, by the time you engage the second gear, you've already left it behind 🤣 It's Portuguese slang for very small towns or villages.
@@DinnerForkTongue lol that's a cool thing to call them 😂 I love how you Brazilians are always ready to share about your country and culture, I think you are proud of it 👍🏻 We Finnish people do that also 😂
Jason was born to be a history teacher. I could listen to him talking about medieval history all day.
Indeed. History is the most important class by far in my opinion. Unfortunately, it is also one of the least popular. We truly need more people like him who can make it interesting enough for people become engaged. The world would become a FAR better place for all just on account of so many people not repeating the past mistakes of others alone.
He reminds me of a great professor I had who taught medieval history, scholarship plus the ability to engage listeners.
I always felt that when the teaching of history was reduced to memorization of dates as opposed to why something occurred is what made it boring. Major events don't happen in a vacuum; there are always reasons, motivations, etc. I would suggest that knowing the story behind an event is far more important and more likely to lead to a deeper understanding. And yes, Jason is a great storyteller!
@@pdqmusic3873 That style of teaching history has not been employed in the Western world since the 70s if not before. When it was, it was in elementary to high school, and certainly not universities. Either you are very old and/or you had to suffer a terrible education system.
@@pdqmusic3873I think that all of existence itself is a story. Depending only on who is around to hear and tell it and when.
There is still a similar custom to alehouses in southern Germany. The "Besenwirtschaft" (broom tavern) or short "Besen" (broom), which is basically a ad hoc Pub, typically by farmers with some vineyards. They serve wine from their own production and a very limited array of food (typically Schlachtplatte, slaughter plate, sauerkraut, blood and liver sausages, meat etc). And they advertise by hanging a broom outside to signal there's food available, hence the name
In Austria it's called Heuriger and when they're open we say "ausg'steckt is", as in a broom or similar is sticking out of the window.
interesting-what's the origin of advertising with a broom, though? i read that a holly-bush painted on a sign, or sometimes just a holly-bush on a stake, was a medieval advert for an ale-house
@@EastEndBen my guess is, it was something cheap that was lying around anyways. I checked Wikipedia and in other regions they use bouquets from flowers and twigs, crests from vines or old wooden wheels.
In Switzerland the Besenbeiz is known too.
Sounds like an Italian trattoria.
My father being the youngest of 13, had the additional chore of walking the mile or so from the farm to the tavern to purchase a gallon pail of beer. I seem to remember that this was an end of week thing. Times were different back then I suppose, he'd talk about how the kids would take their hunting rifles to school so they could hunt after school.
Wow! What country was this?
@@jonathangibson9098I know my father in the US mentioned hunting after school. Heck, until 9/11 kives were allowed on planes, and the policy was to follow the Hijackers directions, since they just wanted to get to Cuba or something similar. That's why people armed with box-cutters were able to take over the planes.
They still took shotguns to school in the New Jersey Pine Flats in the 1990's/early 2000's. And nobody over 13 went to school on the 1st day of Hunting Season (deer or turkey).
Read that some workers would buy beer by the bucket from Budweiser in its early years. Some would put petroleum jelly or other coatings to dissipate the foam so they’d get more beer in. Think it messed up the taste though.
Everyone had guns and yet there were school shootings were almost the rarest thing imaginable.
I recently passed through a small village in the Netherlands called Witte Paarden (white horses), named so because there used to be an inn there called white horses and it was the only thing around there so the name stuck around for the town that grew around it. Your story made me look it up on the map and it is indeed about a day's travel from two bigger cities.
Witte Paarden is indeed a good example of an inn located between two cities (Leeuwarden and Zwolle, 92 kilometers apart) where travelers and their horses could rest. But the name didn’t quite ‘stick around’ and neither the inn nor its history was medieval; the inn was built in 1910, although I read somewhere there was an earlier building from about 1870. The hamlet used to be called Achterbuurt, which as you know is not a great name. The municipality of Steenwijkerwold therefore decided in 1953 to name it Witte Paarden, after the inn. For the non-Dutch: achter = back, behind (here in the sense of separate, away from the village). buurt = neighbourhood The word achterbuurt probably wasn’t so bad originally as it was used often, but with the changing language ‘achterbuurt’ is now used with the meaning of bad outer neighbourhoods of big cities.
Achterbuurt in English is Slum.
@@obiwankenobi9439 That is the translation, but most people will then immediately think of the really really poor suburban slums (think Slumdog Millionaire), and the Dutch word for that is “sloppenwijk”. “Achterbuurt” in the modern sense is an urban slum, with real roads and normal stone buildings connected to water, electricity, and sewer, but with more poverty and crime.
Funfact, in Germany, Cider is called literally "apple-wine" still
Past time you got knighted for your efforts to educate us all, around the world, about England's medieval history. Sir Jason Kingsley has a nice sound to it.
lol, I guess it's potentially possible one day if I come to the attention of the right people.
@@ModernKnight "Sir Lord Jason Kingsley the Brave and Learned"
@@jonathangibson9098 Lord Jason Kingsley the Chivalrous and most just storyteller.
@@dandixon7400 The correct style would be "Jason, Lord Kingsley" assuming that there isn't already a Lord Kingsley "Lord Jason Kingsley" means that he is the commoner son of a peer. The bigger problem is that knights are not peers.
Alright...time to teach the King how to use a cell phone.
When I was a kid, maybe 30 years ago, we were on holiday in Wales and stopped off at what looked like a pub. It was a room in a house with a serving hatch and an old lady stood at the hatch/bar serving only beer that she had in an enormous barrel behind her that she served the customers from a jug she had. We might have had a bottle of Vimto each but for Mum and Dad it was beer from the barrel or beer from the barrel. I don’t know what it tasted like but we didn’t stay for more than a drink! I’ve always thought it was a pocket of the Middle Ages caught in the valleys and I imagine what an old ale house would have looked like.
wonderful!
My forefather that came over in 1741 owned a tavern with sleeping rooms on the farthest land that was on the edge of the explored wilderness back then. Stroudsburg PA. Sometimes soldiers would stay there during the revolutionary war if they had to be in the area.
I remember a similar establishment in Sussex, near The Long Man of Wilmington. It was someone's sitting room, with a hatch for serving from the scullery.
Interesting that this “window service” for alcohol reappeared during the pandemic. What’s old is new again.
I found the same thing in Ireland some "pubs" were no more than a room in someone's house with a couple of beer and of course a Guinness pump and a chiller cabinet for bottles and a few spirits on the top shelf 😅
In some towns in Franconia/Germany it is still a tradition to put up a sign or a broom on the house when the beer is ready to be poured. And in my region of southwest Germany, a small pub that is licenced by the town council for a limited number of weeks is called a "Besen", which literally means "broom" or "Besenwirtschaft" - "broom pub". A “broom pup” is usually used to sell home-made wine or cider along with hearty food.
So in the Christmas story it was actually "no broom at the inn"?
@@wiseoldfool really ?
I really enjoy how you explain medieval history. Closest thing to having a time machine.
Sir Kingsley really knows how to tell a tale. And we need good talespinners more than ever, with everything that is going on. It's nice to be distracted for a few minutes!
Sir Jason.
@@johntillman6068 Both wrong. He is an OBE, which is not one of the orders of chivalry.
@@roberthudson1959 You're right that he is OBE, not GBE or KBE, but you're wrong that it's not an order of chivalry. It is, just not bearing the right to the title of Sir, accorded to the two highest grades of the order. However, the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is indeed a chivalric order.
Agreed
Whatever his title, I think he darn well should be a "Sir"! 😁 He gives the most fun and interesting history lessons and makes people want to learn more.
My late grandfather told me as a young boy, that in the early 20th century in Chicago, it was common to bring home a small bucket of draft beer from the tavern. Almost all homes had these beer buckets. So perhaps bringing home a pot of ale was common also back then.
It definitely was. It’s fascinating hearing stories from older relatives and seeing things which have stayed the same or not changed that much over the ages!
Most neighborhoods in Chicago have bars. Right in the middle of a street with houses and apartments.
@@marieford-mccartney8219 As it should be. Our modern habit of zoning things so that the places where people live is at least a 20 minute drive from literally anything else a human being might need or want to do is pretty absurd.
Common in other cities too. There's a Three Stooges short, set somewhere in California, in which the Stooges knock over some guy carrying several little buckets of beer away from a bar and spill all the beer.
My mom , as a girl about 8 or 9 in Youngstown Ohio in the early 20's, was often sent by her father to get a bucket of beer when he got off work. I can't remember where she said she got it from though.
History is the best adventure ever written. Better than any fantasy tale in literature. If there were more teachers who tell it instead of imposing it, there would be more people who know where they come from. Thank you
Why blame the teachers when it is the school board thst sets the curriculum and the state thay sets the standards?
@@yvonnetomenga5726 A teacher can make the same part of the curriculum presented and made interesting as a Harry Potter book or make a history lesson as boring as counting beans. I often saw beans.
@@carlettoburacco9235 • I think I approached education differently than you did. All I wanted were teachers who were clear. I never compared my teachers to the entertainment I consumed from other media. I understood I wasn't going to be tested on entertainment but I would be on anything that went on in the classroom. We seem to have different methods for evaluating teachers. Bye!
I'm fairly certain there are fantasy tales that are better adventures than history. Where in history did someone journey 3000 miles, wear a ring to turn invisible, get stabbed by a wraith, see a wizard fight a big demon thing, meet a 6000 year old elf queen, almost get eaten by a massive spider, climb a volcano, set off said volcano, and get rescued by giant eagles?
@garrick3727 That's precisely the thing: tales of high fantasy and epic fantasy are very often heavily influenced by our real history, but are otherwise told and presented with the addition of magic, magical creatures, and other interesting surreal aspects, and without the expected mundane feel of our boring real world. Ironically, we tend to appraise and deeply appreciate these works of art because of the connection they establish to our real world, through many a realistic reference to history.
I was in Lesotho about 15 years ago, and in the little mountain villages, they would have something very similar to the alehouses you described. Someone would hang a flag outside of their hut. The colour of the flag would indicate what type of 'beer' had been brewed. It was mostly maize, but other grains as well. A red flag meant that they had killed a cow and were selling meat. Sometimes they did it to make money. Sometimes they did it to attract a crowd for a working bee around the yard. Inside the hut, a group of people would be hanging out and relaxing, drinking until the vat was empty. They called it beer, but it was a drink unlike any other I have seen. It was a thick, floury kind of alcoholic sludge, and I imagine it was very similar in many ways to medieval ale.
How interesting! Thank you for this comment!
Very interesting, thank you!
African beer has a number of names, depending on the language and the region, but the name most commonly used for it in South Africa is umqombothi.
@@GerhardtRoos is that a zulu or xhosa word? So the q is one of those fantastic click sounds?
@@Muzikman127 It is the same word in both Xhosa and Zulu, because they are so similar that you can actually consider them as two dialects of the same language. And yes, q is a clicking sound, one of three different types. The other two are represented by the letters c and x.
5:24 just a note on Mead. Mead is honey, water, and yeast. Metheglyn is a mead with herbs and/or spices added. Mellomel is mead with fruit added. Popular mellomels were: cyser (Apple) and pyment (grape).
I would like to try a mellomel. I live in USA. I wonder where to purchase a bottle.
Also worth noting is that the thing where the term 'honeymoon' comes from mead is just fictitious. A good story, sure. Totally fabricated though. If memory serves, that story is an example of those dubious victorian era explanations.
@@sherieffiong853look on the internet, you might get lucky, and find a recipe!
@sherieffiong853 just make it it's extremely easy and pretty fun, though you do have to wait a few months before it's ready to try it
@@ColonelSandersLite I first heard of it in 1984 from an elderly, educated Lithuanian couple, where the honeymoon-mead connection was well-accepted. It IS a good story, whether it is true or mere "folklore"... Seems perfectly acceptable to me that Attila the Hun's wedding and Honeymoon were celebrated by spending a month drinking mead.
We still had Alehouses in my parents village until the 1950's. It's remarkable that at one point this small village of roughly 200-300 people had a church, two chapels, three ales houses and two pubs during the late 1800's.
I fractured my neck after falling trying to climb a fence while going home drunk. Picked myself up, climbed the fence successfully and went home to bed. Glad I've done my bit to keep an old tradition alive.
At it again with incredible insights into our medieval heritage. It always blows my mind that my great-whatever direct ancestors lived in that world, survived and thrived in that culture and time, and carried on all the way to me. We're not so far from them. Please keep it up!
I've often thought that myself. Without all our ancestors surviving, and thriving enough to have children, generation after generation, we would not be here today to comment on this video! It's obvious, I know, but we are the next generation of all those other generations, who worked, and survived, to lead to...us!
That's why I no longer believe the Victorian myths that the medieval (&earlier) period was a terrible plece to live. It might have been harder labour wise. But at the same time there was a level of self sufficiency that we don't have in our modern societies. There's also something deeply satisfying about reaping the rewards of your own hard work. I think life was just as hard as now. Now, if we focus on the crap hard stuff, life is terrible. If we spend time to appreciate the good parts, life is fulfilling. I see the same happening in past cultures.
@@jaegrant6441 We can split 'terrible' (etc.) into objective and subjective forms so for example education, physical health and (generally) social attitudes were more terrible than now but also those people didn't know any different so perhaps a lot of them were (subjectively) happier than many of us are now with the avalanche of data we have to process daily in the modern world. And although life expectancy is longer now we (by which I meant broadly the 'western world') have different kinds of health issues: obesity vs undernourishment, emotional/mental stress vs physical ailments. One thing that never seems to change is inequality - a very small number of people have control over the vast majority of other people, lands and natural resources. That's not foil-hat conspiracy eother, it's just the way it is and has been for most of 'civilization'.
@@north.by.northeast How do we know they were less mentally or emotionally stressed than we are? If nothing else that was a time when almost half of all the people born never made it to adulthood - some estimates go 40% of children died before 6 years in medieval England. Almost 25% of the babies never made it to their first birthday. I'd say they were plenty stressed.
@@kaitnip We don't know and there are differing opinons in the academic community on 'who is/was stressed more.' I believe obesity and emotional/mental stress are big health issues facing us now and that undernourishment and physical ailments were big health issues then. If you are implying they were more stressed than we are now then fair enough, that's your viewpoint.
Important to note that fermentation doesn't make ale safe to drink but boiling the brew does and the alcohol helps a bit later but then becomes food for the souring acetobacter. Ale used to be flavored with spices or herbs but the herb combination would be called "gruit" which was controlled by the monks or monasteries. It tended to make people jolly and was a bit psychoactive. Hops, on the other hand help sanitize the beer and keep it from spoiling for longer. However, hops tend to have a sedative effect and some say a more controlling effect upon the population.
Interesting. Is there historical evidence about hops being used to pacify the masses?
This is very interesting, I immediately went to look up gruit and its control. Can you maybe point me to some sources about it being potentially psychoactive? I'd love to do more research about it.
@@alexfarkas3881 I'd look to homebrewing forums as there is a vast wealth of knowledge among the members who will fall over themselves to answer your questions. They'll have excellent advice. I'm not sure which plants/recipes were psychoactive as many are not commonly used today and might even be considered mildly toxic (like most medicine). I drank some commercial gruit once and it was unremarkable. Best of luck
@@alexfarkas3881lol "research" Save some "evidence" for me, friend.😅
Hops are supposed to reduce sexual desire.
Love you Jason - Your passion for History is so Infectious to me as a Young man . Keep doing what you do - I love it
Thank you! Will do!
Appreciate the descriptive explanations of terms we think we understand, but don't. Particularly in this timeframe. Love your channel AND your book. Mine is tabbed with markers in many places, but one of my favorites is "The more you travel away from your own time and space, the more you see not just the differences between those worlds and yours but also the similarities too: or, perhaps more precisely the way things transform, change, yet somehow also stay the same over time..."
Cider was considered a wine because it used to be fermented that strong, according to the Mill House Cider Museum down in Dorset. They also make and sell their own cider in traditional methods with antique equipment, and it is DELICIOUS. Doesn't keep once opened, though, because they don't kill the yeast.
America had a Cider Political Party for a short time
Reminds me of the cider presses in southern Chile I ran across in the early 1980s. The “chicha dulce” (slightly fermented apple juice) had to be consumed within a day or two.
Apple and pear juice generally have enough sugar to create a 5% ABV beverage, give or take a few percentage points. So unless they were adding sugar - which would have been prohibitively expensive- I don’t think it could match grape wine for strength. Still, though - a 7% cider from particularly sweet apples would have been much stronger than the “table beer” ale commonly drunk.
Live yeast doesn't make cider go bad. It's the oxygen exposure.
I've done a fair amount of mead research and mead making (and consumption!) And it's my understanding that metheglin was flavored with herbs and spices, though fruit can still be used. But melomel is mead made with various fruits. The word Metheglin derives in part from the old welsh word medd-something or other(sorry I forget the details). Meaning medicinal, as it was at the time used medicinally depending on the formula.
I've done a lot of research into beer, unfortunately I cannot remember any of it ... 😵💫
The term for the spice mix added to ales prior to hops being used more commonly is gruit. This term would not have been used in England as it was more typical of the low countries.
Jason, in the Southern US wines made from watermelon or strawberry is still (somewhat) common. I know someone (in Kentucky) who recently made some wine from mulberries.
Definitely not as common as it used to be unfortunately. When i was a kid I’d help my grandfather grow strawberries, watermelon, etc in his garden, most of it would be eaten or given to cousins/family. But we would always set some aside for him to make strawberry, watermelon or even muscadine wine. Now let me tell you, as someone born and raised in the south, there’s nothing quite as funny as seeing baptist preachers from all the local churches sneaking into your driveway in the late afternoons to buy watermelon wine from your grandpa out of his shed in the backyard lol
Got a local history book concerning my village. It states, before the advent of the railway in my area, around 1830, my village in Cambridgeshire had a population of @ 1100 and had 39 drinking establishments, mostly Ale Houses and a few Inns. I'm led to believe it was a popular first watering hole when Coaches turned off of the "Great North Road" to head towards the Port of King Lynn. I remember going to an "Ale House" in Old Stevenage back in the Seventies. Not quite a home brew house, looked like a normal pub but didn't have a licence to sell spirits even then.
I'm shocked at the brief shelf life of ale. Not doubting, just shocked. I always wondered why anyone would intentionally add "bitters" to anything, but shelf life answers at least part of it. As always, great content!
Very well researched. Good video. I had the pleasure of having a cousin show me around Hampstead Heath in the early 1990s. He took me to a (i think) an Medieval pub. I mostly recall how low the ceiling was (I’m 6’1”) so had to stoop over to enter and move around. It was cosy, nice rough hewn wooden beam ceiling. It had some charm. I’m in Alberta, Canada and in my youth as a oil worker I spent a lot of time (and money) in what we call bars. Taverns were just small bars… (or maybe we just used the terms interchangeably.). In those days we had some very large bars that could accommodate hundreds of drinkers at one time. A glass of draft beer was $.25 and they usually had a live band. The largest bar I have been in was in Edmonton. It was called the Kingsway. When you entered you literally could not see the other side of the bar. It was the size of an airplane hanger! Just a sea of round red terry cloth tables. It was known for a lot of fights happening. Anyway, just thought I’d some things from the other side of the Pond😊
Since hops didn’t get used in beer until late, I’ve experimented with using rosehips. It preserves the beer (not as well as hops) and gives it a nice, crisp taste. But you have to use the historical breeds of roses. Modern ones don’t work. 😉
That’s because modern ones have been cloned and their chemical properties change so that they last longer.
They have been hybridized too.
In Germany around the Region of Frankfurt am Main and especially Hesse State, we drink a lot of cider. The german word for it is "Apfelwein" (wine made of apples). But even more interestenig is that we call liquor distilled from any sort of fruit (be it pear or even peaches) "weinbrand" which means something like burned wine.
In Norway we refer to all hard liquor as 'brennevin' which literally translates to 'burning wine'.
I forgot to mention that many Neolithic longbarrow burial mounds had a large bowl placed inside them. When the residue in the bowl was tested they found it had been full of mead
There's a winery in Miami that makes wine from tropical fruits. They're most famous for avocado wine, but they also make wine from passion fruit, star fruit, mango, coconut, and lychee to name a few. They're absolutely delicious.
I'am living testament to that particular fact! After overdoing it somewhat whilst celebrating my daughters 18th birthday and upon making my way home, I fell into some roadworks, toppled over a barrier and fell into a small pit. Luckily I was so relaxed I never injured myself, my daughter thought this was hysterical but the event could have ended badly. At 50 years of age I'm thinking it's time to ease off a bit, however breaking bad habits are never easy.
Great story, glad you’re ok.
50 and still getting wasted like an inexperienced 14 year old? Idiocracy is such a terrifying documentary.
I was half expecting Jason to be going around various taverns, inns and alehouses, slowly getting drunk as the video goes on.
Around here it's bar, dive bar, club, or brew pub/tap room. Our family home was once a stagecoach stop and inn with a tap room where travelers could get a simple meal and drink while the horses were being changed out. When dark fell, there were common rooms up top on each side (two 2-story cabins with a dog trot between them), one for men and one for women, with cots for sleeping. The family lived in the lower floor of the smaller cabin, and the kitchen was out back and separate from the house (fires were a common thing back then). The food was all grown or raised on site, as was the wine, ale, and whiskey sold in the tap room. There is a trap door in the floor of the tap room, leading down to a small cellar where the kegs were stored. A blacksmith shop was across the road by the creek. That is long gone, but the barn still stands, and both house and barn were built of hewn American chestnut logs that average 18 inches thick, with the foundation joists being more than 2 ft thick. I remember that women were originally the main brewers in most of medieval England, but were then pegged as witches by men who wanted the money and rights to brewing ale. Rather sad, and those ladies certainly didn't deserve being persecuted and executed.
Women mainly brewed ales, not beer. Ale is sweet, and contains no bittering ingredients like hops. Hops as well as being bitter are also preservative. So beers kept well, but ales spoilt quickly, usually only lasting for a couple of weeks maximum. Men started brewing beers using hops and transporting them taking advantage of the keeping qualities of beer, and obviously wanted people drinking their product rather than the produce of an alewife, who basically served their excess ale to paying customers in their homes hence alehouse. Alewives were also often herbalists and midwives too, and that was what a lot of men who brewed beer used to spread ideas of witchery etc to help spread suspicions about their competitors.
@@catzkeet4860also, that in America the puritans were some of the most paranoid people about others and would jump at almost every shadow so to speak
@@catzkeet4860 All in all, we women were damned if we did and damned if we didn't.
It was common for Lords of the Manor to license a brewer, however, demand always outstripped supply. So, women would brew unlicensed ale, and when caught be hauled to the Manor Court. The Lord would give the women a stern warning, with a wink, fine them one penny, really a tax. And then sent them on their way. To see them again next year.
Medieval shorts by a real-life Knight! Amazing! I rarely get this channel in recommendations, even though a long time subscriber - i fear on clicking bcz i tend to get sucked in a lot and I don't have the so much time nowadays. But when i do click, it's like in a company of a good friend with sense of humour, soothing voice and kindness in the air telling me interesting stories and curiosities, surrounded by this soothing nature. When Jason is filming in the woods or on the nature, i feel as am back to my childhood in Ukraine - random trees, tall grass, cosy wilderness
Your channel teaches more than most Histoty channnels and University. You provide history without the modern political agenda
Love the background with the leafs whistling in the breeze 😌 Please make more videos like this about how people's lifes were back then. You are amazing Sir.
Have you considered a video on what it was like being a castle guard in medieval times? I've always wondered how it was they knew when to wake up and start their day when they didn't have clocks and whether or not they all lived within the castle walls or even what gate duty was like or how they went about enforcing the rules of the castle etc.
In New England (U.S.A.) We have routes to this day called the Kings Highway. Along the routes there were Toll Houses I.E. Inns where you could stay the night plus of course pay your Toll for using the Kings Highway! The most famous in my area was the Toll House in Whitman Massachusetts. Made famous for inventing the Toll House cookie!.....The chocolate chip cookie! I use the Kings Highway every week! My Family is from Norfolk. Calthorpe...There is a place called the Saracens Head Pub.
My parents made wine from just about anything. Sloes, blackberries, gorse flowers, carrots, etc. The only thing that was totally undrinkable was Sprout wine which reeked. 😂
I have been making wines from just about anything for fifty years. Parsnips, carrots, rosehips, but especially red berries. Never contemplated using sprouts, worst I’ve attempted was tomatoes, but that was a joke challenge within a home brew group.
@@Canalcoholic Tomatoes are a modern experimental fruit produce first in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, an eastern suburb of Columbus now. Tomatoes have chemically changed greatly over the last 50 years. Because they bruise easily, commercial growers developed a type of tomato that would look prettier in the grocery stores and sell for more money. Unfortunately, this “improvement” came at a cost. Unfortunately, the modern varietal has no taste. So if you tried to make any kind of a brew using a modern day tomato varietal after being challenged by your friends, it would also have no taste, I suspect. One of the reasons for the lack of taste is that the developers pretty much took the sugar out of modern tomatoes by cloning them and harvesting them too early in order to increase their commercial value for supermarkets-and fructose is the ingredient that you need to ferment any type of fruit. As a child, 50 years ago, I remember eating tomatoes, fresh out of my mother’s garden, and they were as juicy, sweet, and delicious as eating an apple back in those days. Alas, even apple varietals have been cloned now to the point where they look great but have no taste. Perhaps you can find a heritage varietal of tomato that would make you a good brew?
These brief glimpses into our shared past are wonderful. Very accessible and enjoyable. They are not lessons they are interesting tales about things, perhaps at first glance mundane, that suddenly become interesting as we connect the dots as the story unfolds. Jason Kingsley OBE, you are a modern-day raconteur in the best sense of the word.
One disagreement: the Tabard Inn was destroyed in 1676 by fire (or being pulled down to create a fire break). It was replaced by a new building, renamed the Talbot which was demolished in 1873.
True but the George Inn's still there, I was in Southwark for my birthday last week 😋
@@valandil7454 The George in Borough High St was built after the fire as a coaching Inn and not on the same site . Chaucers House area in which his local existed is marked by Tabard St and Tabard Gardens about a mile further South on the route of the old Watling Strait ( to give it its period name - streets were basically straight ! ) after a little archaeological digging . This kinda makes a lot of sense as projecting the route of Watling St further NW you find yourself on the bank of the river not at London Bridge but opposite Blackfriars where once dwelt a whole bunch of monks who after the ferry and a days walk and rituals along the Strait to Canterbury on pilgrimage, would have found themselves in Chaucers neck of the woods . It's not too difficult from there to image Chaucer after a few and witnessing the monks , monking around at his local ; dreaming up fanciful and hilarious stories from the banter shared with his pals .
@@georgerobartes2008 Good Knowledge George; Fascinating 👍
@@georgerobartes2008 its still nice to go somewhere where you can get a feel for the history even if the building isn't original, I still remember going to Jack Straws Castle when there was a pub there and it was nice just being on the grounds having a drink.
@@georgerobartes2008 No, it was next to the George on Talbot Yard.
A fantastic answer to a question I didn't realise I needed answering. Never knew alehouses where actual peoples houses just opened to the public, or that ale didn't keep very long. I'd always imagined ale casks lasting months. The best part is the inns and taverns that are still there, a link to drinkers past!
A fascinating presentation on a subject we take for granted today. I had no idea how interesting this topic would be.
BRAVO, information on differences between medieval ale and the beginning of "beer" with the addition of hops, and the fact it was considered "foreign" was quite accurate !!
I offer the sincerest of "thank you" for your time, effort, and money in making this video and all the others offered on your fantastic channel. Asolutely fantastic video! Please if you can, do more quality content like this. I know the research is difficult and it takes time, especially since this is your hobby and not your job. But man these videos you make, your passion project, are better than anything on the television. Better then whats on History and similar channels. Better then all of "entertainment" and what Hollywood has to offer. Keep up the amazing work, especially on retelling the everyday life of our ancestors in medieval England. Just chiefs kiss, i cannot compliment you ebough. And again thank you. Truly educational.
our pleasure, thanks for watching.
Interesting to hear that most of the people who died of drinking too much in the medieval period died because of falling into bad spots--as opposed to today, where you can quite literally drink yourself to death from alcohol poisoning.
That's the power of distillation
Before any explanation, my guess for the difference between the three was that: (1) Inns offered a place to sleep (2) Taverns offered food ; and (3) Alehouses offered only beverages Love the video. Thank you.
This was a very interesting telling. Love the details and anecdotes you went into. And good to see Gossamer, even only briefly. I like how you chose to film in different locations and wearing different medieval clothes. It sure adds to the production value. (Video suggestion: An episode about those outfits would be interesting!)
Funny that you said Cider isn't considered wine any more today. The German word for cider is "Apfelwein", which just means appel wine. It's interesting how the perception of what counts and what not can be determined by culture and language.
People would put cider in a cellar in winter, and if the temperature got near zero F. it would turn to pretty potent apple jack.
Yep here in Denmark cider is usually alcohol and otherwise we call it “æblemost” = apple “mash” (mashed apples sort of)
I never knew the difference. This so informative, and explains such a lot of terms we still use today.
Pretty fascinating stuff! I'm going to keep these distinctions in mind while running my new D&D campaign. Happy to report that the first (and thus far only) such establishment they've visited was accurately described as an inn, despite not knowing any of these distinctions until now. My players will never know I was clueless. 😂
This is the most underrated channel on KZhead.
You probably hear this all the time but I've subscribed to this channel for quite a while now and I've only just realized that you're the author of Steeleye and the Lost Magic which has lived rent free in my head ever since I was a kid. So much so that only only a few months ago I purchased an old copy of the book! When can I expect family holiday to the USA? 😂 Quite a remarkable, creative and wonderful career.
Thanks, I wrote that as a teenager!
@@ModernKnightA genuinely incredible achievement. Me and my older brother would go through it over and over again taking different decisions and would re-enact the various scenes. It's been such fun to re-read it again as an adult. When I got the book again recently I decided to Google the author and was genuinely gob smacked to see it was you!
holy crap, I had that book too! what haven't you written?
Good video. Considering cider as wine does not seem strange in Germany. It is literally called apple wine here. There is a special jug for bringing it to the table and pour into glasses. It´s called "Bembel".
One thing I find so fascinating is best summed up in the old saying "the more things change, the more they stay the same". In so many ways, people back then weren't as different as us as we sometimes think.
I love that you both are having the time of your life making these videos. But also continue to show the extremely relevant historical point, that anything said from the back of a horse just sounds more amazing.
I love how you've been adding an animal to your videos lately, and it's not necessarily a horse 😀 In the previous video there was a cute bumblebee, this time it's a hare. You have a lot of them ?
To this day, beer in the Czech Republic is known as 'liquid bread'. Also, you can still take your own jug to some pubs and get a few litres to take home. And, slivovice, the local plum brandy, often made in small batches in farms and vinyards, is still drunk as a 'medicine' or pick-me-up...I guess we are still stuck in the mediaeval period here...at least in the best ways ;-)
14:25 I think it's fascinating enough to do a whole video on signs and streets. I remember being in Chzesky Krumlov once and the guide pointed out the signs and paintings on the old buildings, and explained how they worked like house numbers.
Funny thing Taverns ( taverna ) still exist in Croatia on Adriatic coast. And are exactly as you describe. They serve only wine , not bottled, but from barrels and sourced from local vieyards. And they also sell and bottle wine on the premises.
These are the questions we want answers to! Great stuff Jason! Love the channel!
What a fascinating video, thank you so much for making it.
Our pleasure!
Walking across the countryside dressed as a traveller looks very relaxing and peaceful
Fun fact about exposing a branch. In Friuli (the region in the North-East of Italy, bordering with Austria and Slovenia) a place tavern-like (where you could get some wine and, I guess, some simple food) was called "frasca" which actually means "branch." I think it was a way to advertise the place. Nowadays "frasca" is mainly used for fancy "enoteche," wine shop where you can buy expensive wines, but also have a glass of something together with canape. More or less like old taverns, just way fancier... 😁
I always enjoy your videos. It's stuff like this that makes history fun. And helps with my dming.
Glad to hear it! I thought this one was particularly useful for Role Playing games as the differences in each place make for a very different type of atmosphere.
What kind of campaign you running? Historic?
@@Zygmunt-Zen Star Wars at the moment. But I switch it up a lot. 3.5 is what I play most. But I do plenty of historical too.
Hello from Crete! The place where the most exquisite amber malmsey came from into england. The English and the Dutch where very fond of it way into the 17th century, and there's a few stories of people drowning in butts of the stuff 😂! Malmsey never really made it to the table of the locals interestingly enough, they preferred the quite strong and rough "Roman" red wine, also considerably cheaper!
That was excellent, very informative and very well presented. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
From what little bit of research I've done my understanding is that the first "hard" spirits for regular (although I don't think you could've called it common) drinking purposes are types of early "grappa" in northern Italy in the late 14th century. There is also possibly "rakija" types of alcohol in the balkans from the beginning of the 14th century. But in both those cases you'd have to "stretch" the term of medieval Europe a bit to include them even as an honorable mention. And
Love the dedication you have to the time period... I assume everyone noticed and appreciated the wardrobe changes
I really enjoying listening to your history of medieval Ale houses inns and taverns
My old home town had a pub that served good food and only served beer. It was small and friendly. I spent many cold evenings next to the fire place with my friends. I imagine this is what an ale house would be like.
I only recently googled the channel but have been watching the videos on and off for some years now and only just found out that there's a TV show and our Mr Jason Kingsley is also the co-founder of a video games development company of whose games I've played many. I knew this was a good bloke, now I've extra reason to believe it. Love the vids and the games, keep em coming and a whole hearted salute to you, sir
According to Wikipedia the Tabard Inn was destroyed in 1676 to create a fire break when a fire broke out all over Southwark. They demolished it with a bunch of other buildings that hadn't burned yet to stop the spread of the fire. It was rebuilt and renamed the Talbot, but that went out of business in the 19th century and was converted into stores and the building itself was demolished in 1873. There is a neighboring inn, the George Inn that is still standing today, but it also was torn down because of the 1676 fire and was rebuilt so it's not an original medieval building.
There's also the Old King's Head, which isn't as impressive as the George but it has a nice painting or print on the wall of what the pub and street/alleyway would have looked like back in the day.
Seriously, you could easily be in movies. You are crazy likeable, you smile like a good person and you have awesome canines. You make me miss my canines. It's funny how you start to pay attention to things you took for granted when you had them. Since I lost my teeth a good set always gets my attention now. There's nothing like a good set of teeth. Be proud of them while you have them. Don't take them for granted like I did.
As someone looking to bring realism to a game I'm making.... ok, a couple games (both video game that evolves thru the ages, and tabletop role-playing campaign) and who writes stories..... having this breakdown of what each similar type of establishment is.... essential, highly appreciated and loved.
Interesting about ale (malt, barley) and beer (ale plus hops). Hopping ales happened late in Britain compared to continental Europe, but before hops, there was something called 'gruit' - the herb mixture used to flavour and extend the life of ale. Gruit was replaced by hops, but if you google it, you can find several craft breweries using gruit to make their ales.
I’m loving this! I never thought about that there were differences. I thought they were different names for the same thing. Cool!
Overlap but distinction. There are a lot of words that have gotten muddled over the years, but they all began in different places. 🙂
I've always wondered myself. And the question has even come up a few times before just in conversation. Now I get to feel smart for knowing the difference between them the next time that someone brings it up!
One of my favorite history channels! The info here is top notch and presented in such a practical way. You could teach a class on medieval England from this channel
For a short time in my youth I distilled a concentrated alcoholic beverage from cheap wine which was probably comparable in quality to the medicinal alcohol of the middle ages and renaissance. I poured some wine into a stew pot, set a high-sided bowl in the center, then placed a glass mixing bowl (the bottom of which was smaller than the bowl below), added cold water to the glass bowl, and put the whole thing on a range at very gentle heat. The alcohol evaporated from the wine, condensed on the upper bowl, and collected in the lower bowl. The resultant "brandy" had an odd taste that was improved by a bit of sugar. As an experiment I re-distilled (double rectified, if you will) the first distillate. I discovered that if I diluted the doubly distilled liquid with water some oily material separated from it that could be remove with a bit of paper towel, and the odd taste went away--- which I took to mean that the odd taste was from fusel oil. I expect that the early distillers of alcohol probably had the same result because of their similarly crude distillation apparatus (alembics). That would make it much more suitable for topical medicine than for drinking. Distilled liquor suitable for human consumption would require a good quality fractionating still.
Look at this man; Living his dream. Thanks for making us a part of your world and our history :D
I understood that when the local landowners went off to war, they let out their various properties as hostelries to make a bit of cash. The inn signs therefore included pictures from their own family heraldry: Boar's Head, Golden Lion, etc.
I learned quite a bit from this video. More so than I was expecting. Such a fun and engaging presentation. I could listen for hours
I wish my DnD friends and I could had watched this video decades ago - we had so many arguments as to what are inns, taverns, and alehouses.
For centuries in England each village had at least one pub and one small town had over 50. Sadly, the pubs are disappearing due to tax and costs. The rural pubs are often bought up by breweries and let at extortionate rents. The pub is so important as a community focal point and they are being killed off.
I can't tell you how excellent this is. You answered almost any question I could think of on this topic, and your production value is high. Thank you! I do have two question that perhaps someone knows the answer to. First, can we assume that the hygiene in these establishments was horrible? I'm guess that may be one reason people would bring their own cup? The second question is how did they obtain so much honey as to make mead cheap? Was their medieval beekeeping?
The abby and monks would have produved the honey using hives on church land.
Bee keeping was big in the medieval age, sugar was an extremely expensive luxury in Britain at the time so honey was the sweetener of choice for most of the population. Hygiene would have indeed been horrible by modern standards, but if you kept poisoning people who turned up at your alehouse word would soon get around.
@@gwtpictgwtpict4214 I am imagining that bringing one’s own cup was required by the innkeeper, because they didn’t have enough cups on hand to serve everyone and, of course, cups were not disposable back then.
@@gwtpictgwtpict4214 Thanks for the reply!
@@martinh1437Thanks!
This is why your channel is great! I never really considered the possible differences between these three things, and now I know! 😁
Thank you!
I have heard one Elizabethan rhyme: "He who would an alehouse keep must have three things in store: A chamber with a featherbed, a chimney and a ... hey nonny nonny" I was sung as a rhyme or catch, so that 'store' would speak along with the 'H' in 'hey nonny nonny'. Cider in the West of England was half the price of ale... and Somerset cider still tastes as if a rat drowned in the cask. (And has quite a kick to it.)
I absolutely LOVE your videos! You clearly have a great love of history!
Thank you very much!
We have local wineries that specialize in apple, blueberry, and strawberry wines in my area. Some are mixed with grape, but some aren't, and they taste absolutely fabulous.
I live in the rural Midwest and a guy who has a U Pick blackberry farm sells his blackberry wine. Holy crap. That stuff is so good 💜
Thank you, as a fiction writer these sources of factual information help bring a foundation of historical reality to the fantasy worlds I create.
Fascinating insights into medieval marketing with the pub signs. And marketing regulations for that matter! I guess that loud, intrusive signage was the equivalent of today's KZhead ads!
The "pot" of ale is interesting, here in Australia, specifically Queensland, Tasmania and Victoria a standard glass of beer is still referred to as a "pot"
Ah, I love these videos! So atmospheric, so informative, like listening to your favorite history teacher and going on a walk in the woods at the same time! :)
In the US (prior to Prohibition) most neighborhoods had a local bar/brewery. You could get literal "buckets of beer" to bring home or to the jobsite.
When my Dad (born 1903) was a kid he would go fetch buckets of beer for his father.
I am drawing my own medieval city, plus castles, inns, aqueducts and watchtowers around the city. This video really helps, when it comes to the differences between taverns and alehouses.
where can we see your drawing when it's completed?
@@jacquesdeburgo2878 at the moment I am only posting my art on reddit. Soon I will make a pinterest account and see how that works. I don't like facebook, instagram and twitter.
Everyone at Ms. Miggin's pub is partying like a Kennedy. 😂 At any rate, I love these videos. So informative.