Experimental Archaeology, Barley, Malt and Ale in Prehistoric Scotland
When farming arrived in Scotland between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the traditions of Mesolithic hunter gatherers gave way to grain cultivation, pottery making, rearing domesticated animals and the construction of stone circles, tombs and monuments: we call this the Neolithic revolution.
It’s generally accepted that these first farmers laboriously ground their grain into flour for bread, or maybe they boiled it for porridge or gruel (a staple food). But there’s another way to process grain, one that most people are unfamiliar with. Grain can be malted to make malt sugars, a nutritious food in itself, but which can also be fermented into ale or beer.
The Birth of Brewing in Ancient Scotland
Grain cultivation began in the Ancient Near East over 13,000 years ago, when most of northern Europe was under ice. This new lifestyle spread rapidly, eventually reaching the islands that we now know as Britain.
There’s some evidence that the first farmers in Scotland were malting and making malt sugars to ferment into ale to drink at their feasts and celebrations. For example, during excavations at the site of a Neolithic ceremonial centre at Balfarg (near Glenrothes in Fife), excavators spotted organic residues on sherds of 5,000-year-old Grooved Ware pottery. When analysed, these residues were described as ‘cereal based preparations with added meadowsweet’ and ‘burned cereal mash’. Meadowsweet is a herb used to flavour and preserve ale, long before hops were introduced in medieval times.
To a brewer these are descriptions of brewing residues, not the remains of bread or porridge.
Microscope photo of a 6,000-year-old grain from Balbridie with missing embryo (see the oval depression on the right of the grain) (© Merryn Dineley)
Thousands of carbonised grains were also found during excavations at Balbridie in Aberdeenshire, at the site of a large rectangular timber building in use around 6,000 years ago. The archaeological remains tell us that the building had burned down and the charred and carbonised grain inside was preserved in the ground until it was uncovered in the late 20th century.
Is it possible that they were making malt at Balbridie? Some of the charred grains had missing embryos, the part of the grain where germination begins and the roots and shoots appear. It is fragile and easily destroyed. The image above is a Balbridie grain which was examined under a microscope and I was amazed at the good preservation within the grain (you can read about more about the signs of prehistoric malting in ancient charred grains found in Denmark here).
Archaeobotanists agree that a missing embryo is an important indication that the grain is malted, or germinated. As it begins to grow, the starch of the grain is transformed into malt sugars, the food source for the growing plant. Once roots and shoots fully develop the grain can use nutrients in the soil and sunlight to grow. The craft of the maltster is to spot the completion of germination and carefully dry the malt so that the brewer can later extract the malt sugars for fermentation.
What is Malting and Mashing?
Malt is grain that has been allowed to grow in a controlled way until the roots and shoots (the acrospire) begin to show. The grains are not fully sprouted. There are no green shoots on malt. The germinated or malted grain is carefully dried, either in the sun or in a grain kiln.
When crushed malt is mixed with hot water it’s transformed into malt sugars in a container called a mash tun. Brewers call this ‘mashing in’.
Green malt (Image Credit: Peter Schill via WikiCommons at https://bit.ly/3a31eWW, CC BY-SA 2.0 DE) and Malted grain is friable and easily crushed (© Merryn Dineley)
We eat malt sugars without realising it. Malt is used in breakfast cereals, sweets and confectionery. We drink it at bedtime, with milk, as a nutritious malty drink. It’s also the main ingredient for beer; brewers add yeast to liquid malt sugars to make alcohol.
Making malt is an ancient technique. Experts at Stanford University identified starch granules showing signs of malting in the Raqefet Cave in Israel, dating to between 11,700 and 13,700 years ago. Nowadays we understand the science of malting and mashing, but maltsters and brewers have known what to do, just not why, for millennia. Today we can capture the techniques of ancient brewers using experimental archaeology.
Experimental archaeology: making malt sugars
One way of looking at the past is to understand and recreate ancient technologies and crafts. This is what experimental archaeologists do. It’s a useful way of interpreting the archaeological evidence and telling stories from the past.
Understanding how to make malt, malt sugars and beer from grain is a great help in interpreting the little archaeological evidence we have for ancient feasting in Scotland. In my experiments I wanted to discover whether I could make malt sugars using equipment available to the first farmers.
Crushed malted barley that the brewer uses to make beer (© Merryn Dineley)
My husband brews beer at home, transforming malted grain into beer, so we always have a sack of crushed malt in the house. It was easy to do some experimental archaeology in our back garden.
I bought an earthenware bowl from the garden centre and sealed it with beeswax to make it waterproof. Then I took some crushed malted barley from the sack and mixed it with cold water in the bowl. I built a hearth and, after lighting a fire, I heated the bowl in the warm ashes, keeping it warm.
Experiments: bowl mashing and sweet barley biscuits (© Merryn Dineley)
Gradually the mixture turned brown and I could smell the same deliciously sweet aroma of the brewer’s mash tun. I made some patties using crushed malt and cold water. I put them on the flat stone beside the fire. Gradually they began to change colour and became sweet malty biscuits.
These simple experiments show that you don’t need pottery to make malt sugars from barley. Neolithic people in Scotland could have made sweet malty biscuits, not just bread, and they could also have made beer.
Demonstration at Eindhoven Open Air Museum: mashing in a bowl and making sweet barley biscuits (© Merryn Dineley)
Next time you’re shopping for sweets or breakfast cereals, have a look at the ingredients for malt or, if you really want to taste malt sugars, think about picking up a jar of malt extract from a health food shop and you’ll be tasting something that was first made thousands of years ago.
By Merryn Dineley, who uses experimental archaeology to study ancient technologies. Her back-garden mashing experiments were part of her M. Phil research, Barley Malt and Ale in the Neolithic (1999). She has published several papers available on Researchgate and Academia, some co-authored with her partner, Graham Dineley. Together they blog here: Ancient Malt and Ale. You can follow Merryn on Twitter and Facebook and find more on her experiments and the archaeological evidence for brewing in Neolithic Britain here.
Header Image: Bere barley growing in Merryn Dineley’s garden (© Merryn Dineley)
