Beer : Health and Nutrition

36 Chapter Two
able to materials such as wormwood, gentian, chicory or strychnia that were sometimes
employed.
Savage (1866) has the date as 1524 when hops rst came into the British Isles, from
Flanders where they had been used for centuries. Prior to the arrival of hops, ale had
sometimes been preserved with ground ivy.
Incidentally, Henry VIII was far from being the only monarch with a passion for
ale. Seemingly, Queen Elizabeth I had the local ale sampled for suitability in advance
of her travels around the nation. If it failed to pass muster, then her favourite London
product was shipped ahead of her in time for her arrival (Katz 1979).
Concerning hops, by 1576 Henri Denham wrote:
Whereas you cannot make above 8 or 9 gallons of indifferent ale out of one
bushell of mault, you may draw 18 or 20 gallons of very good Beere, neither is
the Hoppe more pro table to enlarge the quantity of your drinke than necessary
to prolong the continuance thereof. For if your ale may endure a fortnight, your
Beere through the bene t of the Hoppe shall continue a moneth, and what grace
it yieldeth to the teaste, all men may judge that have sense in their mouths – here
in our country ale giveth place unto Beere, and most part of our countrymen do
abhore and abandon ale as a lothsome drink.
Gerard wrote in 1596 that:
The manifold virtues in hops do manifestly argue the wholesomeness of beere
above ale, for the hops rather make it a physical drink, to keep the body in health,
than an ordinary drink for the quenching of our thirste.
This was one of the earliest attempts to position beer on a health-positive platform. In
the sixteenth century, too, John Taylor penned:
It is an Emblem of Justice, for it allowes and yeelds measure; It will put Courage
into a Coward and make him swagger and ight; It is a seale to many a good
Bargaine. The Physittian will commend it; the lawyer will defend it. It neither
hurts, nor kils, any but those that abuse it unmeasurably and beyond bearing. It doth
good to as many as take it rightly; It is as good as a paire of Spectacles to cleare
the Eyesight of an old parish Clarke; And in Conclusion, it is much a nourisher
of Mankinde, that if my mouth were as bigge as Bishopsgate, my Pen as long as
a Maypole, and my Inke a owing spring, or a standing shpond, yet I could not
with Mouth, Pen, or Inke, spak or write the true worth and worthiness of Ale.