On beer : a statistical sketch / by M. Vogel.

  • Vogel, Max.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On beer : a statistical sketch / by M. Vogel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/98 page 2
    The Arabs inhabiting Egypt during the Middle Ages seem to have kept to the two descriptions of Egyptian beer, and what was called Zythos they named Fokha, and Giirmi they called Mazar. The Tartars also made a kind of beer of millet {Fanicum miliaceum), which they called Booza. The Ethiopians learned the art of brewing from the Egyptians, and they made beer of millet and barley, and it is probable that the Jews also learned it from the same source. They made an intoxicating drink, Schechar; and the Talmud mentions dates, figs, mulberries, and barley as the sacchariferous matters employed.^ The Greeks seem likewise to have acquired their knowledge of brewing from the Egyptians, and they called their beverage Zythus^ just like the Egyptians, also Kurmi, Bryton or Binos, and Grasse even supposes that they had a double-beer called Dizythos. ^ Common Schechar was made of dates, and appears to have been in little estimation, for there was a proverb that “ he who employed Schechar in the service of God might be obliged to drink of it all his life long.” Another proverb says, Rather drink water in which flax was steeped, than Schechar.”—(Ketubot 10, Sabbath 1406). For making Schechar more drinkable it was repeatedly distilled, always with an addition of new dates; but it seems that it was never so much liked as Pirsuma made of barley, Teenay made of figs and Asney, which was made of mulberries, as explained by the commentator Rashbam. The difierence between wine and beer was deemed in proportion to that between wheaten bread and barley bread.—(Sabbath 1406).
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