Episode 63
The Real Reason Coal Become Popular w/ Dr. Anton Howes
What actually made coal a popular source of fuel? It's long been thought that it was Londoners looking to warm their home but Dr. Anton Howes has counter for that misconception! Gary, Joel, and Allison learn from historian Dr. Anton Howes the significant role that breweries played in the early adoption of coal. Part 1!
PATREON
Support the show! Get episodes 1 week early and bonus merch: patreon.com/respectingthebeerpodcast
FACEBOOK GROUP
Got a question about beer or just want to get social? Join the RtB Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/respectingthebeer
Got a question? Email us at respectingthebeer@gmail.com
--
TIMELINE
00:00 Introduction and Guest Introductions
00:30 Special Guest: Dr. Anton Howes
00:49 The Role of Coal in the Industrial Revolution
02:04 Historical Adoption of Coal in Britain
03:58 Coal's Impact on Brewing
06:15 Technological Innovations in Brewing
10:52 Environmental and Economic Implications
12:15 The Significance of Brewing in the Elizabethan Age
24:53 Conclusion and Next Episode Teaser
--
CREDITS
Hosts:
Joel Hermansan
Music by Sarah Lynn Huss
Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow
Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co
Mentioned in this episode:
Gary's Everything Everywhere Daily - 5 Year Anniversary
Come and join the party to celebrate Gary's podcast turning 5. RSVP here -> https://www.facebook.com/share/1HvAwzVVZ4/
Transcript
Hello everybody and welcome to a very special episode of Respecting
Speaker:the Beer.
Speaker:My name is Gary Arndt and we got a couple of our
Speaker:usuals.
Speaker:Today we have Mr. Joel Hermanson who hit it big this week when the pick three numbers were 5 47.
Speaker:Won big.
Speaker:Also with us is Dr. Allison McCoy Fleshman, whose latest research paper is the Quantum Entanglement of Unwanted Bar conversations.
Speaker:Congratulations on that paper.
Speaker:Peer reviewed.
Speaker:And our real special guest this week.
Speaker:So this was an article that I came across and I was like, we have to have this guy in the show.
Speaker:We have Dr. Anton Howes with us.
Speaker:He is a historian of innovation.
Speaker:He is the guy behind the Age of Invention Newsletter.
Speaker:And you wrote an article, a rather lengthy one, I should add.
Speaker:Uh, and I don't, the, the focus was not on beer and brewing.
Speaker:It was really on the
Speaker:adoption of coal as a, uh,
Speaker:unit of energy or as, as a, a source of energy.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:I'm not gonna paraphrase it for you.
Speaker:I'll let you do
Speaker:that, but I thought it was very fascinating.
Speaker:We've talked many times about the history of beer on this podcast, about how beer was fundamental for the development of civilization.
Speaker:Back in the early days of agriculture, that beer was developed as a store of calories.
Speaker:That beer probably came before bread, uh, may have been
Speaker:one of The reasons that agriculture started, but your take on
Speaker:it is that beer and brewing may have had a, a role to play in the rise of the industrial Revolution.
Speaker:Uh, and so welcome to the show and I'll let you take it from there if you want to kind of give us summary of your thesis.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So, I'll, for, for, for listeners, I'll give just a brief overview of this.
Speaker:I think it's about 8,000, 9,000 word piece.
Speaker:So it's definitely on the longer side,
Speaker:I've been reading it for two weeks.
Speaker:I'm still not,
Speaker:uh, it it was really good
Speaker:though.
Speaker:the brewing bits at the end.
Speaker:So I hope you, hope you enjoy it when it gets to that bit.
Speaker:It basically, I wanted to find out why it is
Speaker:that.
Speaker:Britain in particular, adopts coal in a really, really big way.
Speaker:'cause this is fundamental to the Indu industrial revolution.
Speaker:When we think about the adoption of coal, we think about steam engines, but long before that, in the 1570s, eighties, up to about
Speaker:1600. So Shakespeare's London, to put it in those kind of terms, Shakespeare's London makes the switch from burning wood in people's everyday homes to burning coal.
Speaker:And the standard narrative, a narrative that I'd even written about myself and kind of put it in
Speaker:these terms many times is that.
Speaker:Essentially
Speaker:what happened is that there's a change in, in the half in people's homes.
Speaker:There's the adoption of chimneys with longer flus.
Speaker:There's the adoption of chimney backs, which is kind of iron, cast iron plates that you put at the back of the chimney to reflect some of the heat.
Speaker:Back in.
Speaker:You've got the narrowing of chimneys
Speaker:because wood fires versus coal fires, wood fires.
Speaker:You want a nice wide half coal fires.
Speaker:You want a a, a nice narrow one.
Speaker:And essentially the, the main
Speaker:argument is that, that you, you'll often hear from, from.
Speaker:Historians of technology, economic historians, or even just in the kind of popular treatments of, of this subject
Speaker:is that it's to do with a change in the home.
Speaker:A kind of domestic revolution, if
Speaker:you like.
Speaker:And when I started looking into it, the problem is it didn't actually sound like the evidence
Speaker:stacked up to that.
Speaker:And what you actually see is that the first thing to
Speaker:happen is rather than London being the driver of this coal revolution in people's
Speaker:homes you instead see.
Speaker:Coal being adopted in people's homes near the places where
Speaker:it's dug, which is kind of what you'd actually
Speaker:expect.
Speaker:So right back into the Middle Ages, the 12th, 13th, 14th centuries, places like Newcastle are burning coal near people's homes.
Speaker:Maybe even actually goes way further back than that's possible.
Speaker:I mean, there's, there's un inconclusive.
Speaker:Uh, inconclusive archeological finds from Roman sites, even suggesting that there seems to be
Speaker:some kind of coal burning going on.
Speaker:Unclear whether that's blacksmiths who are using
Speaker:coal for a very long time.
Speaker:Line burners, perhaps, possibly, possibly.
Speaker:However, they're also using it in, in, in the home.
Speaker:And what actually happens in London is that London makes the switch to coal first through brewing.
Speaker:And the reason for that, and this is the reason it's such a, such a long post, is that I go into the del dive, really into the, the
Speaker:detail here which is to try and work out why it is that a certain invention.
Speaker:First invented in Germany, um, in Strasburg which I guess is kind of now considered border border of France and France and Germany.
Speaker:They fought, you know, world wars over, over Strasburg, so I should be careful where I say it is.
Speaker:But at the time, it's very firmly in the Holy Roman empire.
Speaker:It's part of what would be considered Germany at the time.
Speaker:Um, and in Strasburg they come up with
Speaker:essentially a way of heating homes,
Speaker:heating kitchens, heating, whatever you like by separating the actual fire bit from where the heating's going on.
Speaker:So the heating is being transferred, the heat itself is being transferred via
Speaker:the flue as it's taking away all of the, so as it's taking away all of the smoke and that's applied just to wood, there is a bit of a wood
Speaker:shortage in Germany.
Speaker:It's quite difficult to expand wood
Speaker:supplies.
Speaker:Um, and so it's the kind of place that you'd expect one of these, um, innovations to take place.
Speaker:And essentially the switch gets made in.
Speaker:In, in Britain rather than just using this for burning wood, but, uh, brewers very, very quickly realize that they can start burning coal, which has extremely accurate.
Speaker:Sulfurous smoke,
Speaker:uh, is extremely, I mean, if you try to just burn coal in a normal half.
Speaker:In your home without any of the specialized equipment that's invented around this, this, this
Speaker:this
Speaker:stage as well.
Speaker:Uh, whereas a doctor around this stage as well, um, you would essentially have to leave the room
Speaker:within seconds probably because you just have this accurate sulfurous.
Speaker:I mean, it, the, the moment makes contact with the water in your eyes.
Speaker:It suddenly will
Speaker:create, you know, a, a light acid.
Speaker:Um, And so it calls stinging.
Speaker:I mean, coal is this really, really nasty thing.
Speaker:But by separating essentially the heating, um, from the, the grate where you're actually stoking the fire that allowed brewers to be able to, to adopt.
Speaker:Coal, which is significantly cheaper than wood in brewing.
Speaker:And there's such a massive energy saving that you see in brewing, um, spec, particularly for beer versus
Speaker:ale.
Speaker:And perhaps we'll get into those sorts of definitions.
Speaker:So, uh,
Speaker:this new technique was developed in Germany initially, if I recall correctly, as a wood saving measure
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:because, uh,
Speaker:and this was just a cost savings measure for the brewers to save money on
Speaker:wood and their energy costs.
Speaker:So it seems to be for all
Speaker:kinds of wood-burning industries.
Speaker:So it could be in the home.
Speaker:So you see in Germany these kind of lovely tiled stoves where you'll have the stove in one, in the, in the living room.
Speaker:And then I guess the servant in the room next door will have the, the bit where they're actually stoking the fire.
Speaker:Um, so the, the smoke will kind of enter.
Speaker:From the other room into the room where you are with your lovely tiled stove, it won't actually enter into the atmosphere of the room, if
Speaker:that makes sense.
Speaker:Um, and then get passed up through the chimney, um, separately.
Speaker:So that's one, one of the ways it can be used kind of stove oven
Speaker:as they're called uben open.
Speaker:Or you can use it in kitchens, you can use it in brewing.
Speaker:I mean, they mentioned in the patents in, in Germany in the
Speaker:1550s, which is when this is happening, that it could be used for all sorts of different things.
Speaker:They, they wanna cover all their bases.
Speaker:But it seems to be
Speaker:most.
Speaker:Popular amongst brewers in particular because it's energy is, is one of the big constraints in
Speaker:terms of how much they can, uh, they can produce.
Speaker:Dr. How can I come back to when you were talking about the unpleasant, accurate nature
Speaker:of cold smoke, there was a part of
Speaker:your your, your substack in which you were
Speaker:talking about the queen visiting.
Speaker:The riverfront where all of the breweries
Speaker:were.
Speaker:I I think our audience would love to hear your interpretation of that.
Speaker:'cause
Speaker:I, I found it to be
Speaker:fascinating.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:So one of the reasons we know
Speaker:that coal is adopted by brewers very early on, it's
Speaker:actually pretty much the first solid evidence we have of coal burning in London.
Speaker:Is that the brewers are called before the privy
Speaker:council of, of her Majesty, queen Elizabeth, the
Speaker:first.
Speaker:And they're told, look, the queen doesn't like this horrid smell that's coming from your chimneys.
Speaker:She's no longer visiting London.
Speaker:She's no longer coming to the Palace of Westminster, you know where Parliament is.
Speaker:She's no longer coming to the palace of Whitehall either.
Speaker:And so she's just avoiding London as a
Speaker:result of just the stink of the nearby breweries.
Speaker:Um, and there's a couple of times that this happens.
Speaker:But essentially it sounds as though the brewers offer
Speaker:her the possibility that they'll, they'll close, that, they'll switch back from Colter Wood for the two brew, uh, breweries closest to the palace, or two or three.
Speaker:They say, you know, they're, they're being generous.
Speaker:Um, but they point out just how massive the wood saving is.
Speaker:Saying, look, it's this, you know, tens of thousands of billets of wood,
Speaker:you know, vast tracks of forest potentially that we're saving here
Speaker:by, by using coal
Speaker:instead, uh, and wood that can be used by people in their homes instead as well.
Speaker:So yes, there's a kind of, the royal nose was very displeased.
Speaker:So if I'm interpreting this correctly brewers are environmentalists,
Speaker:I would say so
Speaker:by burning dirty coal.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:By burning dirty coal by, by
Speaker:saving wood,
Speaker:saving wood.
Speaker:The, um, I just did a quick look of the, uh, chemical byproducts of coal.
Speaker:And it's, uh, various ash of course but then flu, gas des sulfurization materials and gases like carbon dioxide,
Speaker:which fine.
Speaker:But sulfur dioxide and nitrogen
Speaker:oxide.
Speaker:So some of the, especially the, sulfur dioxide, I mean, acid rain is gonna happen from that.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And it's, uh.
Speaker:It's not fun at all to have that kind of byproduct.
Speaker:So I think as much as it's, uh, yes, we are, you know, saving wood, but I think the technologies that come from this to, to get that stuff out, it's kinda like the, um, catalytic converter in the uh, in the
Speaker:car engine.
Speaker:Like all these different ways to
Speaker:get the byproducts out.
Speaker:So the, uh, the, the birth of this technology is, is fascinating.
Speaker:Well, I dare say this was, this was not even bad compared to what happened in London later on.
Speaker:Oh, the big stink.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Throughout the 19th century and even, was it 1952 was the great fog that eventually caused the restrictions on coal to be put in burning
Speaker:to be put in place.
Speaker:When, when are we in this in this shift to coal burning?
Speaker:We're in the 14th.
Speaker:Dr.
Speaker:How is talking about the, the 16th and 17th century primarily?
Speaker:So that's in the heart of the little ice age, isn't
Speaker:it, in Europe?
Speaker:Um, I thought that was in the 14th century that, oh, you're, I think you're Right.
Speaker:So, I don't know, just colder winters.
Speaker:I think it's, yeah, 17th century.
Speaker:There's at least one of the mini ice ages that's been identified.
Speaker:Um, the one thing I will say about on the environmentalist element though, is ironically the adoption of coal, although it saves
Speaker:wood, means that actually there's quite a bit of deforestation.
Speaker:Um, so I originally actually got into this question at all because one of the really common narratives that you'll see on documentaries, museums, I mean Absently everywhere, is that Britain had a wood shortage and so they adopted coal in
Speaker:people's homes.
Speaker:And actually it's exactly
Speaker:back to front.
Speaker:What actually happens is that loads of
Speaker:landscapes were essentially.
Speaker:Maintained so that
Speaker:they could be for fuel.
Speaker:So you'd have
Speaker:marshlands so that you could use peat or turf.
Speaker:You had heaths that you could use goss and furs and various other stuff people
Speaker:could burn.
Speaker:And you had forests or woodlands so that people would have enough wood growing all the time,
Speaker:For, for their homes.
Speaker:And so when coal comes along in this big way and starts saving all of this wood, it suddenly means that the shift a shift occurs where suddenly people go, okay, well I guess we don't need this woodland anymore.
Speaker:We'll just chop it down and convert it into arable lands or pasture.
Speaker:So you've got this huge, uh, sway of deforestation, which later on people start to think, oh.
Speaker:You know, if, if you read a lot of people at the time, they kind of, they, they do put the blame on people's greediness or they say, you know, we are, we are being really shortsighted by cutting down the woodlands.
Speaker:But ironically, that actually only ever happens when there is a
Speaker:coal shortage or a disruption to the coal supply, which suddenly makes everyone
Speaker:pined for the way that things were.
Speaker:But it's a bit, it's already too late by then for them to go back.
Speaker:Uh, one of the things I wanted to ask about was the importance of brewing, uh, during this period, during the Elizabethan age.
Speaker:If without knowing anything, if you were to ask me what industry at that time would probably be the first coal adopter, I would've said probably blacksmithing,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:uh, because they require high heat.
Speaker:Uh, that would make sense.
Speaker:How big and how important was brewing at that time that this led the, the, the, the change to coal?
Speaker:I.
Speaker:So
Speaker:you are right actually that blacksmithing is
Speaker:the first to adopt it.
Speaker:So there are two industries.
Speaker:One larger blacksmithing and one smaller, which is line burning.
Speaker:So this is line for mortar, you
Speaker:know.
Speaker:To put between your bricks
Speaker:or stones.
Speaker:Um, that's
Speaker:pretty small.
Speaker:Blacksmithing is pretty large.
Speaker:Um, in fact, blacksmithing
Speaker:as a demand for coal is an international demand.
Speaker:I mean, if there's
Speaker:documents from the 1550s talking about how France is entirely reliant on British coal, so from both Scotland and England for it's blacksmith.
Speaker:So every time it France goes to war against the Holy Roman Empire, whoever.
Speaker:There's a huge demand
Speaker:for blacksmithing coal.
Speaker:Um, but that's really ancient, so that
Speaker:goes back, you know, really, really quite, quite a, a
Speaker:great distance.
Speaker:Um, and so what happens in the 15 by, in the
Speaker:1580s or nineties, is that the adoption Of
Speaker:Of coal by Brewers pretty much doubles London's demand for coal straight
Speaker:away.
Speaker:Just from that kind of one single, the single industry.
Speaker:Um, changing that.
Speaker:And the key element here in terms of why it then continues to progress is that basically for centuries, blacksmiths and lime burners had
Speaker:been using coal and near places where it was dug,
Speaker:people had been burning coal in their homes.
Speaker:Um, and certain grades of coal are much easier to burn in people's homes 'cause there's less sulfur content in them.
Speaker:They're
Speaker:more like kind of a rocklike, Anth, cytes and so on.
Speaker:That can be, that can be just easier to adapt to or easier to
Speaker:adopt.
Speaker:The reason that,
Speaker:well, I
Speaker:believe Elise, the reason that brewing kind of signals this big step change is that by massively demand, uh, increasing the demand for coal, specifically from places like Newcastle where it'll be shipped all the way down, um, to London, is that they start digging deeper and deeper and finding bigger and bigger and kind of higher quality coals that will be fit for the home.
Speaker:And so.
Speaker:Almost as a kind of accidental byproduct, they discover these much better coals in this area where traditionally it had just been this much caker, much more sulfurous coal that had only been fit for blackwoods and really only fit for things like salt burning and so on, where it's kind of, you know, salt burning.
Speaker:Salt boiling, they would use what are called pan coals, which is the lowest
Speaker:grade of coal.
Speaker:The worst crumbs,
Speaker:almost like the stuff that you've dug, you've dug up for other coals, and whatever's left over at the mine is the stuff that you can just chuck under, under, um, a salt boiling
Speaker:pan.
Speaker:Um, so by digging deeper and discovering these, these, these greater coals as they're called, great coals, large coals, um, that's why I think London suddenly adopts coal as well in the home.
Speaker:And once you've got this massive use of coal loads and loads of coal coming down to London all the time other industries start to get interested.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Interested as well.
Speaker:So glass making,
Speaker:You've got increasing adoption of it in whatever metallurgical
Speaker:industries you can think of Um, brick burning, all sorts of different other ones.
Speaker:I mean, also by
Speaker:the, in the 17th century, so back by about the 1640s and fifties.
Speaker:Um, you also
Speaker:then have the adoption of coal even in,
Speaker:Malt drying.
Speaker:So kind of another step back from, from the brewing, but which interestingly is the one that lots of people have heard
Speaker:of, um, because they know of pale ales and they, they kind of have this story about coal in the back of their heads.
Speaker:So I had a few questions after I wrote the piece being like, well, what about this whole thing to do with malt?
Speaker:It's like, well, no, actually, it's specifically what I'm talking about here in the 1580s to 1600 is the adoption of.
Speaker:Of coal in the, in the boil, all the boiling that you have to do just in the actual brewing process itself.
Speaker:'cause brewers wouldn't have been doing molting themselves.
Speaker:They'd have bought molt
Speaker:straight from the maltster.
Speaker:Um, and then it, from, from then it's, it's, it's a
Speaker:completely separate thing.
Speaker:Well, likewise, we still did that here.
Speaker:And reading about how from your piece, uh, the invention being so valuable
Speaker:to brewers and making beer shaving two hours off the entire process of bringing the liquids
Speaker:up to the boil.
Speaker:And for a modern professional brewery,
Speaker:Two hours, oh my gosh, that's worth, but the amount of off
Speaker:flavors that could develop, you know, the, the, yeah.
Speaker:The, obviously it's efficient, uh, it's more efficient, but what it does to the taste of the beer mm-hmm.
Speaker:If you can make it, uh, more efficient.
Speaker:Uh, you, you mentioned in that little bit down from where Dr. McCoy Fleshman is.
Speaker:You mentioned, uh, a little bit about, you know, the use of of these technologies in brewing.
Speaker:I'm wondering.
Speaker:If you have any perspective about, 'cause we, we've had, uh, we recently had one of your, uh, British neighbors on, uh, Mr. Charlie Bamforth, who's the professor of brewing at uc Davis.
Speaker:He's from England.
Speaker:And we asked him this question, and I have to ask it of you as well.
Speaker:What do you think a 16th century beer would've tasted like, and do you think you would've enjoyed it?
Speaker:That's a great question.
Speaker:So from what I recall from, 'cause I did have to read a few recipes just to kind of get under, make sure I, when I was, 'cause there's a bit in the piece where I described the process.
Speaker:One thing that's interesting is that they.
Speaker:They like to add a kind of range of grains to things just for extra flavor.
Speaker:So I guess there would've been a few oats, a few other, like little bits that are kind of added at different stages.
Speaker:I suspect that in general before this change in general, beers would've been significantly weaker just because the, you know, the less the, I guess the less energy intensive it can be the more you're gonna produce of that stuff.
Speaker:So if you suddenly save.
Speaker:Loads in terms of your fuel costs, then the strength of beer is likely to go up significantly.
Speaker:And I think, I mean, I suspect that part of the shift from Ale to Beer, which also takes place in this period in, in Britain is also partly that this just narrows the gap in terms of the cost difference between ale and beer.
Speaker:Because you've got to have that second boiling for beer, um, which you don't, which you don't require for ale.
Speaker:So in terms of narrowing that cost gap, I suspect that's a big part of it.
Speaker:So I suspect that before this you have a lot more ales.
Speaker:It's a lot weaker in general.
Speaker:And then in terms of the beers that you do get, they, they start to get significantly stronger.
Speaker:And they're gonna be smokier, is that based on, on the, the evolution of the use of coal, they're gonna get some of those accurate notes from
Speaker:So I don't know how much would get through given, given
Speaker:but isn't it in the malting too though?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Uh, so the molting that would happen later, so in the se mid 17th century, you're potentially gonna start to get some flavor changes from the adoption of colon molting.
Speaker:But in this period, they still would've been just been using, I mean, typically I think they'd have used straw rather than even wood.
Speaker:I think it's very light, kind of kindling stuff.
Speaker:I guess go and furs perhaps.
Speaker:Um, from what I recall, it would be mainly straw.
Speaker:So yeah, maybe you've got some kind of rich kind of grassy notes in there from, from what's happening in the multi, but I'm not, definitely not an expert on the, the chemical
Speaker:not taste like it does now.
Speaker:No, no.
Speaker:And, and whenever we have done, we did an episode on IPAs, you know, the, the, the origin story.
Speaker:Uh, we've done a number of like origin story episodes and we always kind of come back to, I. Would we like this beer?
Speaker:I mean, and Bobby always says yes because Bobby is such a nice guy, but Char Charlie was, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker:I don't think we, I don't think we would've enjoyed that beer.
Speaker:Well, I mean obviously London did because it, you know, invested in this entire industry to help fuel it intended so.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:I think, I don't know.
Speaker:I think it would've been better than the water.
Speaker:Very, very true.
Speaker:Uh, speaking of which, and this, this might be a little bit beyond your area of expertise, uh, what role do you think beer, perhaps more broadly alcohol had, uh, in the rise and, uh, of the, of the industrial revolution for your average, uh, working stiff in England?
Speaker:Oh, I
Speaker:there's a very, you know, established pub culture, uh, in Britain, uh, and how much of that was a result of, you know, working people during the Industrial Revolution?
Speaker:I mean, this is, I'm, we're gonna both answer that and also the earlier question, which I really, I failed to answer, which is about the significance of the industry.
Speaker:Beer.
Speaker:Beer is massive at the time, right?
Speaker:So if we think about people's daily expenditures, people are after food, which is taking up, you know, the majority of people's expenditure.
Speaker:Right, which is I think, very difficult for us to even kind of fathom today in that food.
Speaker:You know, even, even if we take out eating out at restaurants, whatever, and just talk about, you know, our, our, our home groceries.
Speaker:In most wealthy countries today, or most of the world today, even people at, at most spending about 10 to 15% on food.
Speaker:At the time, I think, I think even in the poorest country in the world, it's something like 55% at the time people are spending on food and drink.
Speaker:About 75 to 85% of their, of their, you know, annual expenditure.
Speaker:So in terms of your income, whenever your paycheck's coming in, almost all of that's just going on food.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:Food and drink.
Speaker:And, and so that's, that's including basically a lot, quite a lot of beer, quite a lot of ale that's going into that as well.
Speaker:So it's an absolutely massive thing.
Speaker:And I think one, one way to talk about the industrial revolution is that there's this dramatic increase in living standards taking place over the course of the 16th to the 19th centuries, which is continuing to this day.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And one of the biggest things you can do at the time to improve PE People's Living standards is essentially any, any technology that even marginally improves people's.
Speaker:The affordability of food or the affordability of drink.
Speaker:So these sorts of things that, that make it much, much cheaper to get better, better food or drink is I think, gonna have an absolute out, uh, an outsized impact in the way that it's very difficult to imagine any technology today having, having.
Speaker:So that's, I think one of the big things to kind of bear in mind there is that yes, it's very large and as a knock on effect of the adoption of coal.
Speaker:The other thing to bear in mind here is that.
Speaker:You know, I mentioned that by coal becoming cheaper and becoming this kind of mass adopted thing first in the breweries and then in people's homes by, by clearing away all this woodland and being able to use all of that land for agriculture, you at the same time not only get the kind of coal energy abundance, but you get a grain energy abundance as well.
Speaker:In England and, and Scotland and, and so within Britain, over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Speaker:Uh, people very quickly start to notice, you know, foreign visitors will come, come along and be like, everyone's like really fat.
Speaker:You know, they're eating absolutely loads.
Speaker:They're having these huge meals.
Speaker:They're drinking all the time.
Speaker:I mean, the Brits are almost famous for these kind of massive hours long lunches, which, you know, extend well into the day, uh, where they're just gorging themselves all the time.
Speaker:I mean, even visiting aristocrats from other countries are just amazed at the sheer, sheer volumes of.
Speaker:Of of, of what are essentially the results of a kind of grain energy abundance.
Speaker:And if we think of grain as being, you know, actual fuel for, for muscle, um, it's not just what's going into people's daily calories, but also into the kinds of animals that they're using.
Speaker:So a lot of the early mechanization that you see in the 17th, 18th centuries is horse powered.
Speaker:Um, and there's absolutely, you know, tens of thousands of horses in London that are doing all of the kind of any circular work, any grinding work or any kind of stuff that you can replace with horsepower is done very, very quickly.
Speaker:Even before, you know, long before steam engines start to change, change the game still further.
Speaker:So that grain abundance is a very, very, very big deal.
Speaker:There's actually a bit that I use pretty early on in the piece.
Speaker:Even just talking about, this is from two Duke's sons from France, French Dukes, the sons of French.
Speaker:In fact, one of them becomes the, the Duke himself after his father dies.
Speaker:Commenting in amazement at how everybody has horses in the same way that, I guess in 1960s America, if you were from, I dunno, the Soviet Union or something, and you'd be amazed at just the sheer level of car ownership to 1760s, 1770s French Duke sons.
Speaker:If you're visiting Britain, you are amazed that even, even the poor farmer.
Speaker:It has like a spare horse to go into market just, or, and his and his wife has another horse as well where they can just go and go off on trips and they're not just using a horse for, you know, plowing the fields.
Speaker:Um, so that kind of energy abundances, I think quite fundamental to, to a lot of the living standards increases that we see in the industrial revolution.
Speaker:And that's gonna conclude this episode of Respecting the Beer.
Speaker:This is only half of the conversation with Dr. Anton Howes.
Speaker:Be sure to tune in next week as we finish out the conversation and really find out why brewers were so vital to the industrialization of coal.
Speaker:The producer of Respecting the Beer is Me, David Kalsow.
Speaker:Make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss an episode.
Speaker:And feel free to join the Facebook group to get updates between episodes and you can listen to the full conversation with Dr. Howes Over on Patreon right now.
Speaker:You can get a seven day free trial.
Speaker:and if you like it there, you can continually support the show for as little as $4 a month.
Speaker:Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, please remember to respect the beer.
