Happy St. Paddy’s Day! For the day that’s in it we are going to go back to ancient Ireland and the group of people who populated the island milennia ago – the Celts.

Scholars like Ian Hornsby have argued that these people are actually responsible for bringing brewing to what is now modern Ireland, but this is not entirely uncontested.[1] According to Hornsby, ‘As was the case in many ancient societies, the females would have been responsible for domestic duties such as brewing’. [2]

Recently, loads of charred barley grains were unearthed at Eberdingen-Hochdorf, a 2,550 year-old Celtic settlement. Using these materials, archaeobotanist Hans-Peter Stika attempted to recreate a Celtic ale using Iron Age methods. For the full results of his brew and to read more about this find please see his paper: ‘Early Iron Age and Late Mediaeval Malt Finds From Germany: Attempts At Reconstruction of Early Celtic Brewing and The Taste of Celtic Beer’.[3]

 

Sources:

[1] Ian Hornsby, A History of Beer and Brewing, p. 139.

[2] Ibid., p. 140.

[3] Hans-Peter Stika, ‘Early Iron Age and late mediaeval malt finds from Germany: attempts at reconstruction of early Celtic brewing and the taste of Celtic beer’, in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences vol. 3 (2011).