Episode 65
Women's Hidden Role in Brewing History
For a majority of history, women were the main brewers. Only within the last hundred years has the industry been dominated by men. What changed? Join historian Joel and the team as they dive into the millennia-old story of women in brewing, from ancient Sumer to the Enlightenment.
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 Welcome to Respecting the Beer!
02:23 Women in Brewing History
04:37 Ancient Brewing Dominated By Women
08:13 Science, Religion, and Beer
11:00 Cultural Significance of Beer
16:16 Women's Role in Medieval Brewing
23:01 Monastic Brewing Practices
26:54 Physical Demands of Brewing
28:59 Hildegard of Bingen's Contributions
30:11 Why Women Were Phased Out
34:42 Hildegard's Legacy and Modern Brewing
38:03 Visit the Brewery and see the Prohibition Room!
--
CREDITS
Hosts:
Joel Hermansan
Music by Sarah Lynn Huss
Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow
Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co
Transcript
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer.
Gary Arndt:My name is Gary Arndt.
Gary Arndt:We got the usual suspects with us.
Gary Arndt:We have the man who, if he could travel back in time, would go back to the year 5 47.
Gary Arndt:The historian of Hop, Joel Hermanson
Joel Hermansan:during the Reign of Justinian.
Allison Fleshman:Sounds like a great time.
Gary Arndt:I think that was a little after Justinian.
Joel Hermansan:Oh, uh, what year was the Justinian play?
Joel Hermansan:Bobby,
Bobby Fleshman:phone a friend, Gary.
Gary Arndt:True story.
Gary Arndt:I was a phone a friend for someone on who wants to be a millionaire.
Allison Fleshman:I do not.
Allison Fleshman:I'm not surprised at all.
Gary Arndt:Lost on the second question.
Gary Arndt:Never got to use it.
Gary Arndt:Aw.
Joel Hermansan:And the voice,
Gary Arndt:you just heard what he was ever,
Joel Hermansan:in 5 47.
Joel Hermansan:Oh,
Gary Arndt:there you go.
Gary Arndt:5 47 is associated with, uh, plague and disease.
Gary Arndt:There you all right.
Gary Arndt:We've associated that now.
Gary Arndt:Thanks to Joel.
Gary Arndt:The man who's working on a way to drink nitro beer and zero gravity.
Gary Arndt:Mr. Bobby Fleshman.
Bobby Fleshman:Thanks Gary.
Gary Arndt:And.
Gary Arndt:Alison McCoy Fleshman, whose recent paper on Schrodinger's cask,
Gary Arndt:you don't know if it's full or empty until you actually open it.
Gary Arndt:Really looking forward for that paper to come out.
Gary Arndt:That's my Gods gonna be a good one.
Allison Fleshman:So good.
Allison Fleshman:I'm teaching how to mechanics right now, or not at this moment, but at Lawrence right now.
Allison Fleshman:And that's, yeah, I'm gonna be using that in class.
Gary Arndt:Feel free.
Gary Arndt:I will, my gift to you.
Allison Fleshman:Go team.
Gary Arndt:Uh, so today we, we got Joel here.
Gary Arndt:We want to go back into history and we want to talk about women in brewing because brewing, and this used to be.
Gary Arndt:A very much a women's thing.
Gary Arndt:Yes.
Gary Arndt:Like you associated brewing with women.
Gary Arndt:And there's a whole bunch of things that kind of have trickled down that many people don't realize today are associated with that.
Gary Arndt:We'll get into that later.
Gary Arndt:But where,
Joel Hermansan:so can I explain first of all where the genesis for this episode came from?
Joel Hermansan:From Genesis, we're not gonna go quite back to Genesis, which drummer?
Bobby Fleshman:Wait,
Joel Hermansan:I think we only had one.
Joel Hermansan:Phil Collins, right?
Bobby Fleshman:I guess Peter Gabriel was not a drummer.
Joel Hermansan:No.
Joel Hermansan:Okay.
Joel Hermansan:Yeah, no, I think he played a number of things.
Joel Hermansan:He may have played drums occasionally, but, alright.
Joel Hermansan:Anyway, we were doing the, McFleshman's Men's Beer Academy, the history section, which this year was.
Joel Hermansan:Delightfully on the history of beer in the world's focus, and during one of the episodes we were talking about Martin Luther and his beer life.
Joel Hermansan:His beer culture, which was heavily dependent on his wife, Caterina, to which you said from the back of the room.
Joel Hermansan:Allison, I'm pointing at, he pointing to me, pointing at Allison said that we need to do an episode.
Joel Hermansan:On the role that women have played in beer production.
Allison Fleshman:So really we should flip that script and rather than the role that women have played, if you're talking about historical beer production, you really are talking about women dominantly doing the work.
Joel Hermansan:Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:For most of the history of it.
Joel Hermansan:So
Allison Fleshman:it's kind of, it's nice to think that, you know, it's like, oh, it's a man's thing.
Allison Fleshman:It's, no, y'all are new to this game.
Allison Fleshman:You're youngins.
Joel Hermansan:For those of you who are listening in and not here with us during that segment, Allison looked directly at Bobby.
Allison Fleshman:That's because I can look at him with the mean eye and he, he's married to me, so it's fine.
Allison Fleshman:Right.
Allison Fleshman:But if I give you the mean eye, that's just, that's,
Joel Hermansan:I would cower.
Joel Hermansan:You would, it would be frightening.
Allison Fleshman:You would not know what to do.
Allison Fleshman:Right.
Allison Fleshman:Meanwhile, I'm daydreaming
Bobby Fleshman:about projects that'll cost a bunch of money.
Bobby Fleshman:So continue.
Bobby Fleshman:I'm looking at you thinking about the projects
Allison Fleshman:now.
Allison Fleshman:The eyes are gleaming.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah, yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Anyway, history of women go.
Allison Fleshman:Right.
Allison Fleshman:So educate us, Joel.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:Thank you.
Joel Hermansan:I, in brewing.
Joel Hermansan:Yes.
Joel Hermansan:I did a deep dive into this recently and, I have consulted a wide array of materials.
Bobby Fleshman:Chat GPT?
Joel Hermansan:No, there was no ai, consulted in the production of my materials.
Joel Hermansan:I even used one of my old, I teach high school history.
Joel Hermansan:One of the old textbooks has the most magnificent stat in it that I'll be sharing, in just a little bit.
Joel Hermansan:So, to build off of what you were saying, Beer has largely for 85 to 90% of the human experience beer has been dominated by women.
Allison Fleshman:Yep.
Joel Hermansan:You know, from where we sit in 2025, I don't think we really give that a great deal of consideration.
Joel Hermansan:But it's, it's really quite true when you go all the way back, when you go way, way back.
Joel Hermansan:and I, wish he was here with us.
Joel Hermansan:But when Charlie Bamforth was here and he talked about that famous quote, linking beer to civilization I mean there's a number of, of different people such as Patrick McGovern, who is the professor of beer archeology at the University of Pennsylvania, which is one of the greatest jobs in history.
Joel Hermansan:And by the way, we need to get him on this.
Joel Hermansan:Podcast.
Joel Hermansan:And women were always doing the gathering, the cultivation of grains, of honey of nuts, anything that they were using in that early beer making process.
Joel Hermansan:Women were gathering and men were often out.
Joel Hermansan:You know, hunting and, and doing other things.
Joel Hermansan:So there, there was a clear separation even at that time, and the cultivation of beer fell squarely upon the women.
Joel Hermansan:And this really shouldn't be surprising.
Joel Hermansan:It, it
Allison Fleshman:shouldn't, it makes perfect sense
Gary Arndt:that this wasn't commercial brewing.
Gary Arndt:This is brewing for the home, the family or extended family.
Gary Arndt:The potable water source.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:And it
Allison Fleshman:was the way that you had clean, well drinkable water,
Joel Hermansan:right.
Joel Hermansan:And I think it, the one part of it though that we should never minimize is all of the trial and error that went into that.
Joel Hermansan:Early period of brewing.
Joel Hermansan:I mean, how much trial and error do you have in a given week?
Joel Hermansan:You have a ton of trial and error.
Joel Hermansan:Oh my gosh.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:And I was actually thinking about the motivation for brewing in general has evolved from those times.
Bobby Fleshman:We do it as well a business, but art.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:And back then, Allison points, I was potable water source.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:And you ate trial, you ate your bread, you drink a beer has its own that brings hops into the equation and alcohol and so on and so on.
Joel Hermansan:Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:So I, mean, the amount of experimentation that women were doing also is not something that they're assigned the appropriate credit for.
Joel Hermansan:Right.
Joel Hermansan:And this, you know, is an unfortunate part of the human story.
Joel Hermansan:I think sometimes that we don't assign credit where credit is due In this case.
Joel Hermansan:But women were particularly when you consider the fact that.
Joel Hermansan:Beer and science have always had a very strong connection.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Well, and I think, and if we go pre-industrial revolution when science and like I'm kind of thinking of alchemy almost, that it was almost like a medicinal type thing.
Allison Fleshman:And so the science was really more of a medicinal.
Allison Fleshman:Approach to kind a natural philosopher of, okay, just I can make something from the earth do something for me in a particular way.
Allison Fleshman:Mm-hmm.
Allison Fleshman:Um, and making water that won't make or coming up with something of a water that won't make you sick.
Allison Fleshman:It had more medicinal properties and the fact that, okay, this is what we're going to ingest and like, so the science to make that happen.
Allison Fleshman:I don't think that they ever thought of it as a science,
Joel Hermansan:but so many of the early scientific breakthroughs weren't thought of true.
Joel Hermansan:True as science.
Joel Hermansan:Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:Um, they were
Bobby Fleshman:based in method though.
Joel Hermansan:Yeah, sure.
Joel Hermansan:It was like, oh, this just works better.
Joel Hermansan:Right?
Joel Hermansan:Mm-hmm.
Joel Hermansan:And I have no doubt that even prehistoric you know, the, the first beer cultivation is usually regarded at about 8,000 years.
Joel Hermansan:Before common era.
Joel Hermansan:Even then there was a certain amount of trial and error.
Joel Hermansan:This worked, this didn't, I'm gonna try this while maintaining.
Joel Hermansan:This.
Joel Hermansan:Mm-hmm.
Joel Hermansan:Which is why, again, there's, there's a, huge connection to science.
Joel Hermansan:Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:In this, there's also a huge connection to religion.
Allison Fleshman:Yes.
Joel Hermansan:And it's not, I would
Allison Fleshman:say more so than science, right.
Allison Fleshman:Initially.
Joel Hermansan:Right.
Joel Hermansan:And it's not a mistake that in early cultures like.
Joel Hermansan:The one we were talking about pre-show in Sumer and in Egypt, the deities assigned to beer were women.
Allison Fleshman:Mm-hmm.
Joel Hermansan:I don't think we can ignore that fact.
Allison Fleshman:Are we gonna talk about NSI now?
Allison Fleshman:You
Bobby Fleshman:absolutely.
Bobby Fleshman:We're talking about time before hops too.
Bobby Fleshman:We should say that.
Bobby Fleshman:This is what we would call ale if you're in England, this is what we call these ales.
Bobby Fleshman:Yes.
Bobby Fleshman:So, yeah,
Allison Fleshman:There's a wonderful book that I've only gotten halfway through.
Allison Fleshman:But it's a woman's place in the Brew House.
Allison Fleshman:Um, it's by Tara Rin and it's a forgotten history of Ale wives, Brewsters Witches, and CEOs.
Allison Fleshman:But chapter four is the hymn to nsi.
Allison Fleshman:So nsi am I saying that right?
Allison Fleshman:How do y'all say it?
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Cool.
Allison Fleshman:So she was this Arian goddess of beer and she, um, there's this wonderful thing.
Allison Fleshman:So supposedly she had a good publicist.
Allison Fleshman:So there is a ton Ncae, and it was the first known written beer recipe in Unifor tablets in 800, 1800 BCE, near modern Turkey.
Allison Fleshman:They found this ton.
Allison Fleshman:Ncae was a repetitive poem sung in a way that describes the Sumerian process of beer making.
Allison Fleshman:So Jill's talking about just the experimentation and how do you mix the same thing twice.
Allison Fleshman:And I know many times we've asked, you know, would beer be good back then?
Allison Fleshman:And to have a way to repeat.
Allison Fleshman:The written language was being developed at this time.
Allison Fleshman:And so the Clay Tablos of Samaria, they are actually some of the original written form.
Allison Fleshman:And this Hampton and Cai, this kind of ode to the Goddess of Beer is really just a beer recipe.
Allison Fleshman:And so it's like some of the first writings and some of this first poetry was about beer and luckily to Nikasi.
Joel Hermansan:Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:And they also think that the first writing was done to keep track of grain transactions.
Joel Hermansan:Mm-hmm.
Joel Hermansan:And, and beer transactions.
Allison Fleshman:And there's a wonderful quote in this book as well, just where did it go?
Allison Fleshman:Grain was edible money.
Allison Fleshman:And so the beer and the bread were the currency of the day.
Allison Fleshman:And so the tax documents and such were really just marking the tick marks on the clay tablets of like, well, how much beer bushels did you get?
Allison Fleshman:Or How much bread bushels did you get?
Gary Arndt:Right?
Allison Fleshman:All links back to
Joel Hermansan:beer.
Joel Hermansan:And in Egyptian civilization we have.
Joel Hermansan:Not to diminish what was happening in Mesopotamia, but we have a treasure trove of material related to women in brewing.
Joel Hermansan:The Egyptian goddess TenneT was the goddess of beer.
Joel Hermansan:Is a prime example of that.
Joel Hermansan:But we have so many pictures.
Joel Hermansan:Uh, hieroglyphs.
Joel Hermansan:This is one of those seconds.
Joel Hermansan:I, I wish this was a, a visual podcast.
Joel Hermansan:We could show you some of these, but of women making beer with the paddles, you know, similar to the ones that we use today holding, Egyptian beer mugs, if you will.
Joel Hermansan:I mean, it's, it's absolutely unmistakable.
Joel Hermansan:And again, this is where we really start to, to see the migration from domestic production, which you had alluded to a few minutes ago, Gary, from domestic production to more of a commercialized approach.
Joel Hermansan:'cause Egypt starts to transition into formal brew houses.
Joel Hermansan:You know, there was a mc Fleshman somewhere near the, the Giza Plateau.
Joel Hermansan:I'm, I'm guessing.
Joel Hermansan:And to quote Patrick McGovern as he was commenting on, on early civilization.
Joel Hermansan:He said this women were the ones who made the fermented beverages.
Joel Hermansan:I mean, it's it's And stop end of podcast.
Joel Hermansan:Yeah, right.
Allison Fleshman:We did it.
Gary Arndt:Bestselling beer at the Macle Women's a Giza was an Onk 47.
Gary Arndt:Continue.
Joel Hermansan:You're just gonna drop that in and expect Yes.
Joel Hermansan:Okay.
Joel Hermansan:Oh my God.
Joel Hermansan:That's so great.
Joel Hermansan:Um, that, that is hard to do.
Joel Hermansan:And I would also point out one of our other favorite beer drinking cultures would be the Vikings.
Joel Hermansan:And the Vikings actually had formal writings that mandated that women produced the beer, which was called a ULE, by the way.
Joel Hermansan:Oh.
Joel Hermansan:All I'm guessing is the.
Joel Hermansan:I don't speak Viking, but I'm guessing it's something similar to that.
Joel Hermansan:And obviously the spelling is unmistakable.
Joel Hermansan:You know, we're getting ale in there because we're not adding hops, we're using, particularly in, in pre Viking age culture, we're using the, yeast from the air.
Joel Hermansan:Yep.
Joel Hermansan:And I, like it when you talk about air yeast.
Joel Hermansan:So can you, can you take that one?
Joel Hermansan:Air yeast speak, Bobby.
Joel Hermansan:I like that.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, I, I always say microflora or that, see, that sounds better.
Bobby Fleshman:I heard that at some point, and I think it sounds really intelligent.
Bobby Fleshman:It does.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:But air yeast is, is actually better for tours, I think.
Bobby Fleshman:So.
Bobby Fleshman:Next I say it'll be about air T No,
Allison Fleshman:it's not.
Allison Fleshman:It does not sound pretty microflora.
Bobby Fleshman:So yeah, I mean that you have a mixture of, you have yeast and you have bacteria, and you can, you can inoculate sugar water with that.
Bobby Fleshman:And, and these bacteria and yeast go through metabolic pathways that make alcohol and a acids.
Bobby Fleshman:And the combination of those two things are what give us these spontaneous, fermented.
Bobby Fleshman:Beers and and so on.
Bobby Fleshman:Wines are that done that way?
Bobby Fleshman:For sure.
Allison Fleshman:I'm just gonna interject and go back to the, the origin of words and stuff.
Allison Fleshman:Not that I don't think that air yeast is fascinating yeast.
Allison Fleshman:But that's all I had.
Allison Fleshman:There's not much after I didn't, it was microflora, so, um.
Allison Fleshman:I wanna go back to Sumer, uh, the Sumerians with Thefor tablets.
Allison Fleshman:And uh, reading about the different words.
Allison Fleshman:So they had specific words such as Ida and E to refer to classifications such as light, dark, amber, and sweet of these specifically filtered beer.
Allison Fleshman:So they actually had various types of types of beer, which is awesome.
Allison Fleshman:And then thefor tablets also show us the birth of the concept of a dowry with a bride price as a forerunner to the early European bride Ale.
Allison Fleshman:Which is the origin of the word bridal, which was payment of beer from the brides family to the grooms.
Allison Fleshman:So I love this idea that the bridal word, we need to bring
Gary Arndt:this back,
Allison Fleshman:the bride ale.
Gary Arndt:I think you could have like a layaway plan where people could just pay you for a bridal ale.
Gary Arndt:Dowry.
Allison Fleshman:Oh my God.
Gary Arndt:And then when it's full, you get a CAG or something.
Gary Arndt:So I every episode that
Joel Hermansan:mean we were like a bank, almost like a currency exchange.
Bobby Fleshman:Every episode I'm writing down my brain is edible money.
Bobby Fleshman:Ideas by Gary.
Bobby Fleshman:So we got schroer's cask.
Bobby Fleshman:And I love it.
Bobby Fleshman:Now we have this layaway plan for the place
Allison Fleshman:layaway plan of Dowries.
Allison Fleshman:But that's cool.
Allison Fleshman:The word bridal bride ale.
Allison Fleshman:There you go.
Allison Fleshman:Pay for your women and beer.
Allison Fleshman:That sounds awful.
Allison Fleshman:Does that have anything
Joel Hermansan:to do with the great fall at Yosemite Bridal Veil?
Allison Fleshman:I'm not sure.
Allison Fleshman:You know, a frowned about way maybe.
Allison Fleshman:I mean if it's bridal, the bride Ale connection, wouldn't that be cool
Joel Hermansan:connection if bridal ale was actually all ale coming down and.
Gary Arndt:Have you ever been there at like full blast?
Gary Arndt:Yes.
Gary Arndt:That's awesome.
Gary Arndt:That's, that would be a lot of beer.
Joel Hermansan:That would be a ton of beer.
Gary Arndt:That would be the entire Mc Fleshman production in a year, in probably 10 seconds.
Gary Arndt:Yes.
Gary Arndt:So anyways, distracted.
Gary Arndt:Go team.
Gary Arndt:The ancient world, is there anything more, I mean, it's kind of.
Gary Arndt:They did this for thousands of years.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:And I think it goes back to the earliest,
Joel Hermansan:Right.
Joel Hermansan:What ultimately changed, started to change things.
Joel Hermansan:And I say started because we're still gonna see women in the primary beer production role through really the European Renaissance.
Joel Hermansan:But once civilizations form large urban centers and specialization of labor takes place and the amount of people needed to farm and gather food and, While that number goes down and you start to put other people into specialty areas, okay.
Joel Hermansan:Brewing becomes more specialized.
Joel Hermansan:And because, the job carries with it a degree of importance within the community, uh, then you start to see men wanting to get into that, oh,
Allison Fleshman:power hungry ass.
Allison Fleshman:Hm.
Joel Hermansan:And I'd like to point out that she was looking not you at Gary and Bobby when, she said that.
Joel Hermansan:Oh, I was
Allison Fleshman:staring directly at you.
Allison Fleshman:No, I'm kidding.
Allison Fleshman:I just, I, sorry.
Allison Fleshman:I'm kidding.
Allison Fleshman:That was a joke.
Allison Fleshman:I'm.
Allison Fleshman:But no, I, I think it's, it's, um, it's interesting to see how in reading the history of beer I have this book on Women's Place.
Allison Fleshman:In the Brew House is in the brew house, and I, I am sad because I've actually read a lot of beer books.
Allison Fleshman:Um, and this one's been on my nightstand for months.
Allison Fleshman:Um, and I've only read a couple chapters, but there's only a few sources.
Allison Fleshman:There's actually so much more written about.
Allison Fleshman:Men in the brewing world and there is about women, and I just want to point that out, right.
Allison Fleshman:The frustration they're in,
Gary Arndt:I think that might be a factor of there's not as much historical data from thousands of years ago.
Gary Arndt:Right.
Gary Arndt:If you look at the period where women were brewing.
Gary Arndt:Yep.
Gary Arndt:It's not, it's only in, you know, in the last 500 years that we have
Allison Fleshman:actually started to write stuff down.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Books.
Gary Arndt:Mm-hmm.
Gary Arndt:Or that stuff that survived.
Allison Fleshman:Right.
Allison Fleshman:And you know, to the victor goes the spoils and those that were writing.
Allison Fleshman:It had a different slant to the story.
Bobby Fleshman:How much of this this time that women were brewing, were they experimenting with what preceded hops and how many people became sick?
Bobby Fleshman:Well, we're
Joel Hermansan:gonna get to Hilde in a minute.
Joel Hermansan:Okay.
Joel Hermansan:I didn't want to get too
Bobby Fleshman:far into it, but yeah, there must have been some experimental.
Bobby Fleshman:Herbs and spices that gave the effects they were looking for, that might not have been the healthiest every time.
Joel Hermansan:Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:So that, this is where we kind of merge into a conversation that we had here on the show not so long ago.
Joel Hermansan:Mm-hmm.
Joel Hermansan:Uh, about the, the spice mix, that grath that was used.
Joel Hermansan:Mm-hmm.
Joel Hermansan:Which again, factors into the reformation because the, the Catholics controlled the trade in these, these spice mixes that contained everything from.
Joel Hermansan:Bog myrtle to nuts and raisins and, and, you know, other micro flna, flora, flora to all of these other things.
Joel Hermansan:And then you would basically almost, I'm kind of envisioning it how you would add hops in secondary fermentation in like a, a mesh bag where you would almost just drop this in.
Gary Arndt:MC Fleshman, special Bog Myrtle.
Allison Fleshman:Oh my God.
Bobby Fleshman:Just saying we're going to have a Renaissance Fair at some point that we sponsor and that has to show up.
Joel Hermansan:Wow.
Joel Hermansan:That that would be, yeah.
Allison Fleshman:What is Bog Myrtle anyway?
Allison Fleshman:Do we, can you buy Bog Myrtle these days?
Bobby Fleshman:I do not know.
Bobby Fleshman:Does
Allison Fleshman:Amazon?
Allison Fleshman:Okay, we got a quick Amazon check.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:If Amazon
Bobby Fleshman:has, or if it doesn't then, then they'll can buy
Allison Fleshman:Bog Myrtle.
Joel Hermansan:Gary's going to be contributing.
Joel Hermansan:300,000 year old amber, as well as bog myrtle.
Allison Fleshman:Oh, it's organic.
Allison Fleshman:That's cool.
Joel Hermansan:Here we go.
Joel Hermansan:Um, so sometime in the next six to nine months, there will be a, an ale generated from the mc flesh man's pilot system
Bobby Fleshman:with the amber with Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:Not only Gary's prehistoric amber, but also the organic bog myrtle.
Joel Hermansan:From today.
Joel Hermansan:There
Bobby Fleshman:you have it.
Allison Fleshman:Sign me up.
Joel Hermansan:But coming back to just, uh, the, topic at hand what does it look like
Gary Arndt:to
Joel Hermansan:you?
Allison Fleshman:Those look like little hops.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Oh my gosh.
Allison Fleshman:Bog myrtle.
Allison Fleshman:They look like little bog murtle.
Allison Fleshman:Looks like little
Gary Arndt:hops.
Gary Arndt:What?
Gary Arndt:Oh, it is a proto hop.
Allison Fleshman:Talk about bad marketing.
Allison Fleshman:Bog Myrtle is not the name of something That sounds fancy.
Allison Fleshman:No,
Gary Arndt:it's, it's
Joel Hermansan:not.
Joel Hermansan:You could have
Gary Arndt:named Jade that.
Allison Fleshman:Oh God, no,
Bobby Fleshman:no,
Bobby Fleshman:no, Give her a running start.
Bobby Fleshman:Myrtle.
Allison Fleshman:Myrtle.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Hildegard Myrtle.
Joel Hermansan:The, as we kind of think about at Post Vikings, you know, the fall of the Roman Empire, et cetera, women are still doing the lion's share of the brewing when it is being done in this domestic capacity.
Allison Fleshman:So, I have a question.
Allison Fleshman:I don't mean to cut you off, but women brew for the house.
Allison Fleshman:So them and a few others that they serve.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Or not necessarily serve, but you know, people come to their house.
Allison Fleshman:Okay, here's your water.
Allison Fleshman:How much of a commercialized process was it?
Joel Hermansan:Well, I have a quote for you.
Allison Fleshman:Oh, I love this,
Joel Hermansan:right?
Joel Hermansan:David knows how excited I've been about this quote.
Joel Hermansan:Oh my
Allison Fleshman:God.
Joel Hermansan:So this is the quote from Michael.
Joel Hermansan:Is this your high school?
Joel Hermansan:Well, I, I taught from this book, oh, this is the old, old book for Wow.
Joel Hermansan:My AP world history class.
Joel Hermansan:Just to
Allison Fleshman:give everyone listening, just a sense of this, it's like thin pages and it looks like the size of a dictionary with lots of texts.
Allison Fleshman:Very few pictures.
Allison Fleshman:Very few pictures.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:I wanna read that.
Joel Hermansan:I have many copies of this.
Joel Hermansan:I like this.
Joel Hermansan:You'll get one go team.
Joel Hermansan:So this is from a book, uh, written by a historian of of the Medieval European period, Barbara Alt, who writes that women dominated in the production of ALE for the community market.
Joel Hermansan:Oh, so we're talking, this is about 11, maybe the 12th century.
Joel Hermansan:They had to know how to mix the correct proportions of barley water.
Joel Hermansan:Yeast and hops in 12 or this, so then this would be after the, this would be after Hilde then if they're using hops in 12 gallon vats of hot liquid.
Joel Hermansan:And we're gonna come back to you for a discussion of how much 12 gallons is, is
Allison Fleshman:that a barrel
Joel Hermansan:brewing was hard and dangerous work Records of the English coroner's courts reveal that 5% of women who had died.
Joel Hermansan:Lost their lives in brewing accidents, falling into the vats of boiling liquid.
Joel Hermansan:No, 5%.
Joel Hermansan:that's a lot of women.
Joel Hermansan:That's a stunning amount of brewing deaths.
Allison Fleshman:Oh my God.
Allison Fleshman:There are fewer shark attacks these days.
Allison Fleshman:Right.
Joel Hermansan:Ale was the universal drink of the common people in Northern Europe by American sta modern American standards.
Joel Hermansan:The rate of consumption was heroic as a typical.
Joel Hermansan:Monk in 12th century, England was allotted, and this is not a typo, three gallons of ale per day, which is a stunning amount.
Joel Hermansan:So if they're brewing in 12 gallon batches and the volume that's being consumed, is that heroic?
Joel Hermansan:And I can see the math, the numbers.
Joel Hermansan:Oh my gosh.
Joel Hermansan:There's like an yeah algorithm going off in Bobby's head right now.
Joel Hermansan:Talk to us a little bit about that ratio of 12 gallons, three, you know,
Bobby Fleshman:well, I assume this, this all comes about because the, they didn't have the ability to make big tanks like we had.
Bobby Fleshman:Well now, hang on.
Bobby Fleshman:Was this
Allison Fleshman:during lint?
Allison Fleshman:Because during lent the monks and such wouldn't eat anything.
Allison Fleshman:So the caloric intake, the only thing was beer.
Allison Fleshman:So if it was a monk drinking three gallons a day,
Bobby Fleshman:and they made what were called table beers patter beers that were for all day consumption, year round.
Joel Hermansan:So here's the next line.
Joel Hermansan:A working man in the fields working for a 10 hour day, probably drank significantly more than a monk.
Joel Hermansan:Mm. Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:So this is, we're kind of, I guess my point in bringing this quote up,
Allison Fleshman:they're brewing on the daily,
Joel Hermansan:right?
Joel Hermansan:They're brewing a lot, a fer.
Joel Hermansan:Lot of fermentation happen then.
Allison Fleshman:That's a lot of, oh my gosh.
Allison Fleshman:I'm just now thinking back to our home bird days.
Allison Fleshman:Well, that's what they're doing.
Allison Fleshman:This is not a big batch.
Joel Hermansan:Oh, of course.
Joel Hermansan:This is a hundred pints buns.
Joel Hermansan:These are.
Joel Hermansan:So the a hundred pints is what you're gonna get for 12 gallons, but it has to be big
Gary Arndt:enough to fall in and die.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:That's the other, well, is it, it's on the stove.
Allison Fleshman:Like they might
Gary Arndt:be creating 12 gallon casts of it.
Gary Arndt:That could be out of a larger fat would be, yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:12 gallons.
Allison Fleshman:how much?
Allison Fleshman:Fill a bathtub.
Allison Fleshman:That's like 30 gallons, isn't it?
Gary Arndt:Well, a little more than two five gallon
Bobby Fleshman:barrels.
Bobby Fleshman:At some point we're going to have that photograph.
Bobby Fleshman:Surely it will be CGI or ai.
Bobby Fleshman:But I. We're gonna fill the open fermenter with 5 47.
Bobby Fleshman:And get a picture of a couple of our fans in it.
Bobby Fleshman:Not for real.
Bobby Fleshman:It's just, just for why
Allison Fleshman:are, why is that what you're bringing up right now?
Allison Fleshman:Oh, we're talking
Bobby Fleshman:about volume.
Bobby Fleshman:I can, I can picture what 300 gallons looks like.
Bobby Fleshman:That's the biggest bath though.
Bobby Fleshman:That's gallons So that the, the open fermenters 300 gallon 300 gallons.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Just for,
Allison Fleshman:okay, so that's like a dunk tank.
Allison Fleshman:So
Bobby Fleshman:that, so that feels like the size tank maybe we're talking here.
Bobby Fleshman:Okay.
Bobby Fleshman:That they would've brewed in.
Bobby Fleshman:Well, and I think this is also it, the, the,
Joel Hermansan:the
Bobby Fleshman:brew cattle or like a
Allison Fleshman:Turkey fryer.
Allison Fleshman:The pot that you put the Turkey in.
Allison Fleshman:If you're gonna do a Turkey fryer type pot, the big pot, it's like bigger.
Allison Fleshman:It's like kind of game day chili.
Allison Fleshman:A big, big
Bobby Fleshman:pot.
Bobby Fleshman:It's essentially the size of what people would think of as a, as a beer keg.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah, it's
Bobby Fleshman:a half barrel.
Bobby Fleshman:It's not as big as that.
Bobby Fleshman:That's closes about five gallons, right?
Bobby Fleshman:It's 15, 15 for half.
Allison Fleshman:Well, it's a half barrel.
Joel Hermansan:So, but this is producing 12 gallons of, of, you know, cement.
Joel Hermansan:What kind of vessels?
Joel Hermansan:Fermentable beers.
Joel Hermansan:So the volume would be significantly larger.
Joel Hermansan:For the vessel that they're falling in.
Joel Hermansan:If we're coming back today, that's what we're falling and dying.
Joel Hermansan:I feel
Allison Fleshman:like they're boiling.
Allison Fleshman:Granted, you could fall in a small vial or small vat.
Allison Fleshman:If you could fit into it's of boiling water, that would still hurt.
Bobby Fleshman:Let's back up a second.
Bobby Fleshman:They're not of a time where they could boil, they couldn't just have a flame under these wooden contain.
Bobby Fleshman:Correct.
Bobby Fleshman:So they're throwing rocks in.
Bobby Fleshman:So this is Stein Brewing, so they're, they're throwing hot rocks in to boil this.
Bobby Fleshman:And that's where a lot of this danger comes from, these exploding rocks.
Bobby Fleshman:These are really not, okay.
Bobby Fleshman:There we go.
Allison Fleshman:Okay, there we go.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah,
Bobby Fleshman:they're very dangerous.
Bobby Fleshman:Do
Allison Fleshman:tell Bobby.
Allison Fleshman:Okay, so the rocks go for it.
Bobby Fleshman:It's, it's, it's called Stein Brew, and it's how you would heat a liquid in a wooden vessel.
Allison Fleshman:Okay.
Allison Fleshman:So there's, they would
Bobby Fleshman:put these in and they would dip 'em out and they would add more, and so on and so on, until they got the length of boil they needed to pull off the production.
Allison Fleshman:You're a rock person, Gary.
Allison Fleshman:What's inside of a rock that would make it explode upon heating.
Gary Arndt:Water.
Allison Fleshman:There you go.
Gary Arndt:Boom.
Gary Arndt:Bends on the rock.
Gary Arndt:Literally.
Gary Arndt:Boom.
Gary Arndt:But ba, but basically the pressure would build up in it looks
Allison Fleshman:like popcorn.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:So that's
Bobby Fleshman:probably as much to do with it as anything.
Bobby Fleshman:They had different techniques to make that happen, but this is before we had metal vessels.
Joel Hermansan:Right.
Joel Hermansan:So, okay, well let's go back to this 'cause we're obviously on the subject of women in brewing.
Joel Hermansan:And one of the reasons today that there's sort of a chauvinistic approach to women in brewing, and I know it's talked about in that book.
Joel Hermansan:Oh, it is.
Joel Hermansan:And it's talked about on almost every page that I've read.
Joel Hermansan:Just tell me what you're getting to.
Joel Hermansan:Yes.
Joel Hermansan:Um, that it involves, a certain amount of physical labor that is difficult to achieve.
Joel Hermansan:Ignoring the fact that.
Joel Hermansan:Women are capable of, of doing a lot of physical things.
Joel Hermansan:The but to say
Allison Fleshman:my 6-year-old weighs like 55 pounds.
Joel Hermansan:Right.
Joel Hermansan:And you're carrying her all over town.
Joel Hermansan:Oh.
Joel Hermansan:Mm-hmm.
Joel Hermansan:But if, you're having to take these, you know, I'm assuming we're not using like gravel, you know, we're using larger stones.
Joel Hermansan:Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:I imagine are that are being put, you know, in this Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:High
Bobby Fleshman:capacity.
Bobby Fleshman:Yep.
Bobby Fleshman:Mm-hmm.
Bobby Fleshman:In this vessel.
Bobby Fleshman:Yep.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah,
Joel Hermansan:no, this, clearly changes the, yeah.
Joel Hermansan:The dynamic of the entire situation.
Joel Hermansan:And before you
Bobby Fleshman:even get to that, you have the mashing process.
Bobby Fleshman:You gotta get the grain and the water mixed in together, and then you gotta stir that and eventually empty that and do this again and again and again.
Bobby Fleshman:Right?
Bobby Fleshman:It's extreme labor in, in those conditions.
Bobby Fleshman:And the grain at that point, was not bred to brew with as well as it has been after this long.
Bobby Fleshman:So it, it would've been a sticky mess, I think, for sure.
Joel Hermansan:They're doing I think far more physical work than we would maybe assign them credit for, which is Oh yeah.
Joel Hermansan:I'm glad, I'm glad you brought up the rock piece.
Joel Hermansan:You know, because
Bobby Fleshman:I, it's always fascinat fascinating me how they were able to boil back then, and that's, that's the technique I'm familiar with.
Joel Hermansan:Have you ever brewed with rocks?
Bobby Fleshman:No.
Bobby Fleshman:We've, we kicked around doing a Stein beer.
Bobby Fleshman:I think that lakefront has one called River West Stein.
Bobby Fleshman:It may be born of a pilot batch.
Bobby Fleshman:They might have done at some point.
Bobby Fleshman:I doubt they do a, a full scale batch that way, but it, I think it was born of a stunt that they did.
Bobby Fleshman:It would be really cool to try.
Bobby Fleshman:You can imagine some of the flavors you would get really intense caramelization.
Bobby Fleshman:Because these rocks are hundreds and hundreds of degrees, and on that you get some good milano and, and caramel production.
Allison Fleshman:This is like beer stockland, the poke your goat.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:That's what I was gonna
Joel Hermansan:bring that up
Bobby Fleshman:when we do that
Joel Hermansan:outside.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Where you
Gary Arndt:take about, we go back to Hildegard of binging.
Gary Arndt:Yes.
Gary Arndt:For a moment.
Gary Arndt:Okay.
Gary Arndt:Oh my God.
Gary Arndt:Because Hildy, we've mentioned her many times.
Gary Arndt:But I, I think it needs to be de-stressed.
Gary Arndt:She, I don't think she invented it, but hers is the oldest writing we have.
Gary Arndt:That talks about the use of hops and beer and she uses it as a preservative not something for taste.
Gary Arndt:So I don't know if she would've been a 5 47 fan or not, but she would've.
Gary Arndt:You think so?
Gary Arndt:Yes.
Allison Fleshman:I'd like to think she would appreciate our public house pint.
Allison Fleshman:That has quite a bit of hops, but you can't taste it 'cause the malt is so forward.
Gary Arndt:I just did an episode on Hildegard.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Which is why
Bobby Fleshman:I know I'm excited by this, of, of all the, all the things she was, she was definitely a, a believer of the scientific method, whether or not it went by the name.
Bobby Fleshman:And I think that is why we use hops.
Bobby Fleshman:Why didn't we
Allison Fleshman:name Jade Hilde?
Allison Fleshman:We just did.
Allison Fleshman:We talked about it, didn't we?
Allison Fleshman:But naming our daughter.
Allison Fleshman:Maybe we did
Bobby Fleshman:Hildy.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:It was in the running.
Bobby Fleshman:I guess we'd
Allison Fleshman:already named the beer.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:That was the problem.
Bobby Fleshman:Beer child.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:We named the beer First.
Allison Fleshman:Tomato.
Joel Hermansan:Tomato.
Joel Hermansan:Yep.
Joel Hermansan:I do have to, the beers are
Allison Fleshman:like our children too.
Allison Fleshman:We right.
Joel Hermansan:I do have to throw just a small amount of shade at Hildy right now, though.
Allison Fleshman:Oh, wow.
Allison Fleshman:Oh, dude.
Joel Hermansan:Yeah.
Joel Hermansan:No I'm unintentional shade death stare.
Joel Hermansan:I, am getting the stare, but unintentional shade, because with the transition towards hops as a primary ingredient of beer.
Joel Hermansan:And the Protestant Reformation certainly contributed to this as well.
Joel Hermansan:It added a a kind of a market for this that produced a capitalization of the brewing process that started to phase out women, because women were like largely the domestic producers of beer.
Joel Hermansan:And it became more of a commercial endeavor, and you had to generate capital.
Allison Fleshman:Oh, because it was preserved.
Allison Fleshman:Interesting.
Bobby Fleshman:So it, it started to kill off the small regionalism,
Joel Hermansan:right?
Joel Hermansan:The need, you know, 'cause the beer, I see what you're saying.
Joel Hermansan:The beer that we were talking about with the falling, you know, the falling in, et cetera.
Joel Hermansan:And, and the dying and the 5%.
Joel Hermansan:These are beers that are very, small.
Joel Hermansan:And when I say small, I'm talking about in their alcohol content.
Joel Hermansan:They do not ferment very long.
Joel Hermansan:No.
Joel Hermansan:Their table beer.
Joel Hermansan:If you keep them for more than a, than a, a limited period of time, they're going to sour.
Allison Fleshman:So what you're telling me is by the, the preservation, so adding hops, so the preservative nature of it kind of killed the domestic, like local, yes.
Allison Fleshman:Truly local beer.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Which means that give right
Bobby Fleshman:to a regional producer, regional more,
Allison Fleshman:okay.
Allison Fleshman:More global, for lack of a better phrase.
Allison Fleshman:For that time.
Allison Fleshman:Time.
Joel Hermansan:And this is where that time where you start to see some of the rise of European breweries, right?
Joel Hermansan:Also, that was many centuries after this.
Allison Fleshman:But you could then extrapolate that argument to say that kind of the downfall of truly local beer was the addition of hops, which means that the IPA killed the truly amazing pale ale.
Allison Fleshman:Which would've been a local beer because preserving it to get around the African coast is, there's a whole,
Bobby Fleshman:there's a whole show we can do on Paleos saying, which are also extremely well hopped m saying.
Bobby Fleshman:So that would mean that
Allison Fleshman:you're saying that the 5, 4 7 killed the true beer, which was the MSB
Joel Hermansan:For those that are listening in, uh, we're having some technical difficulties here in the studio, and I couldn't hear a word that Allison said.
Joel Hermansan:So I'm gonna have to respond to her after I listen to the show after if it's, uh, after it's been broadcast.
Joel Hermansan:Just saying.
Joel Hermansan:And I'm
Bobby Fleshman:sitting next to Joel and he's got a lot of notes.
Bobby Fleshman:He hasn't turned the page yet.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh gosh.
Bobby Fleshman:Sorry.
Bobby Fleshman:So, I don't know if we're avoiding turning the page Nope.
Bobby Fleshman:Or we're
Joel Hermansan:not.
Joel Hermansan:But I, I will say this, Hildy is a pioneer.
Allison Fleshman:Yes.
Joel Hermansan:There is.
Joel Hermansan:And she wasn't
Allison Fleshman:just a brewer.
Joel Hermansan:No, there's, she was a nun, she was a scientist.
Joel Hermansan:She was an Abby.
Joel Hermansan:This
Allison Fleshman:is when we say listen to Gary's podcast, which is probably how you found our podcast.
Allison Fleshman:She was
Gary Arndt:so, she had a rather late start in life.
Allison Fleshman:Really?
Gary Arndt:She was the 10th child.
Allison Fleshman:Oh, bless her heart.
Gary Arndt:Uh, and they, it was common to have one of your children go into a religious life.
Gary Arndt:So her parents basically gave her to the convent at a really early age.
Gary Arndt:Her mentor was an ans and an ans, so there were.
Gary Arndt:Men and women who did this, and they basically lived their lives in a cell, attached to a church.
Gary Arndt:And once they were in, they never left for the rest of their life.
Gary Arndt:And there were windows where people would bring them food or they would give advice to people and stuff so they could talk through the window, but they were kind of considered like a living saint.
Gary Arndt:And Hildegard was not this, uh, so when, and then this woman, when she died Oh.
Gary Arndt:I'm trying to think of her name.
Gary Arndt:But when she died, Hilde became the abba, the head of her, convent, and at the age of like 42.
Gary Arndt:So she had these visions throughout her whole life that later people have said that she had migraines or something.
Gary Arndt:But when she was 42, she'd never really had written anything, and then she just went nuts.
Gary Arndt:And she started writing tons of stuff.
Gary Arndt:She began writing music.
Gary Arndt:She began writing medical works, religious texts you name it.
Gary Arndt:And part of her, her work on beer was actually part of a much greater work.
Gary Arndt:'cause she worked in the convent garden.
Gary Arndt:Mm-hmm.
Gary Arndt:And she became accustomed with all of the plants and the medical uses.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:The botany work that she did and things like that.
Gary Arndt:And so this or the
Allison Fleshman:writing it down.
Gary Arndt:Right.
Gary Arndt:So this, in her mind, this was just a part of that.
Allison Fleshman:Oh,
Gary Arndt:that, that the hops were just, here's another use for this plant.
Gary Arndt:It preserves beer.
Gary Arndt:And what she wrote is actually rather small.
Gary Arndt:It's not like she wrote a book on beer.
Gary Arndt:She, it's like a sentence or two and that's it.
Gary Arndt:But it was the first reference to the use of hops in beer.
Allison Fleshman:This inspires me more than anything else because I am also 42 right now.
Allison Fleshman:And I was like, oh my God, I still got time.
Allison Fleshman:This is amazing.
Gary Arndt:She, so she was a polymath.
Gary Arndt:She's an artist on Spotify.
Gary Arndt:You can go look for Hildegard of binging.
Gary Arndt:You can listen to her music.
Gary Arndt:It's a kinda like her gorian chant.
Gary Arndt:Mm-hmm.
Gary Arndt:She is the patron saint.
Gary Arndt:She was made a saint in the Catholic church in 2012.
Gary Arndt:She's the patron saint of beer and music.
Allison Fleshman:That's amazing.
Gary Arndt:Not intimidating at all.
Allison Fleshman:Nope.
Gary Arndt:Accomplishments.
Allison Fleshman:That's when you got her.
Allison Fleshman:And she's a,
Gary Arndt:she's a doctor of the Catholic church and only one of four women to have ever received that title.
Gary Arndt:So,
Joel Hermansan:so, but inadvertently
Allison Fleshman:hildy
Joel Hermansan:her scientific inquiries, which with the hops, et cetera, started and she also developed a lucr
Gary Arndt:faucet.
Joel Hermansan:Not confirmed, but so well, it in a sense, she did start the masculinization masculinization of beer.
Allison Fleshman:That is an interesting argument.
Bobby Fleshman:the, industrialization centuries later.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:She laid rock for that, which was masculinity.
Allison Fleshman:Okay.
Allison Fleshman:Well, I mean, and.
Allison Fleshman:Independent of that statement from Joel, just what Gary shared I mean, it's no wonder.
Allison Fleshman:Bobby and I when we went down and actually bought our antique back bar that adorns our tap room.
Allison Fleshman:We came up with the names of like 10 of the beers that we still have today.
Allison Fleshman:And for the Pilsner it was like, well, how can we name, name it after Hilde in some, or actually after Hildegard in some way.
Allison Fleshman:And then the Hilde pills, I don't remember who came up with it first.
Allison Fleshman:But that's our, so we still call it Hilde.
Allison Fleshman:I think it is the best
Gary Arndt:named beer you have.
Allison Fleshman:Thank you.
Allison Fleshman:I agree.
Allison Fleshman:Well maybe.
Allison Fleshman:Ms. B's pretty damn good.
Gary Arndt:Joel's very quiet right now.
Gary Arndt:No, I'm not saying that.
Gary Arndt:I'm not saying that in terms of the beer itself.
Gary Arndt:No, I'm saying in terms of the name.
Gary Arndt:No, the
Allison Fleshman:Hilde.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:And what's funny is that she was originally supposed to be named the Hildegard, the Hildegard Pilsner, with a nickname, the Hilde Pils.
Allison Fleshman:But she would be officially the Hildegard because you know, you have your, your official name, but then you go by like your, your, you know, nickname sort of thing.
Allison Fleshman:But then it turned into that she was only ever named the Hilde.
Allison Fleshman:so I don't think I, I think I'm the only one that calls it the Hildegard.
Bobby Fleshman:The artwork singing on the wall downstairs too.
Bobby Fleshman:And the artwork's amazing.
Bobby Fleshman:It Oh, the artist.
Bobby Fleshman:We should have had the artist's name at our Oh, at our too.
Bobby Fleshman:I've been down there
Gary Arndt:many times and people have ordered a hilde and I've like been that guy and I explained to 'em, oh, you know what it's named after.
Allison Fleshman:Oh, that's amazing.
Allison Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:I love this.
Gary Arndt:Yeah, it And they can see the artwork and it's like, it's a nun.
Bobby Fleshman:Speaking of named after, I don't wanna hijack this podcast, but we're thinking of renaming our RIPA Saint Anthony's fire.
Bobby Fleshman:And I think maybe Gary knows that reference.
Bobby Fleshman:It's, uh, what happens after prolonged exposure to poison.
Bobby Fleshman:And the, the poison in this case was, uh, from fungus that grew on rye, and people over time developed tism, which made them act like witches and eventually get burned to the stake.
Bobby Fleshman:So there's a whole long roundabout story here, connecting it back to rye.
Bobby Fleshman:And someone said, we should name this thing St.
Bobby Fleshman:Anthony's.
Bobby Fleshman:And I said, that'll be great.
Bobby Fleshman:Joel will love telling that story every time that we, that he's close it.
Joel Hermansan:Let's do it because it's hard.
Joel Hermansan:It's hard to explain.
Joel Hermansan:The snail.
Joel Hermansan:The snail.
Joel Hermansan:I know it's currently and
Bobby Fleshman:yeah, it's called a snail L right now.
Bobby Fleshman:And that's a, that's equally, which is great for other reasons.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Allison Fleshman:Um, so back to Women
Joel Hermansan:Plague.
Joel Hermansan:Let's go there.
Allison Fleshman:Plague.
Joel Hermansan:Yes.
Joel Hermansan:Um, back
Allison Fleshman:to Women Plague.
Allison Fleshman:That's the first thing we come up with.
Gary Arndt:Why don't we get to the plague, the start of our next episode?
Gary Arndt:Okay.
Gary Arndt:Because we know you like 5 47, which is, I just wanna talk about a plague of beer.
Gary Arndt:So obviously we need to talk more.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:'cause
Joel Hermansan:people flock like locusts to just have one.
Gary Arndt:Sure.
Allison Fleshman:Oh, that kind of plague.
Allison Fleshman:Wait, what plague, like bubonic plague, or?
Allison Fleshman:Yeah, like play Biblical Plague.
Gary Arndt:The Plague of Justinian.
Gary Arndt:That's we refer to kind of,
Bobby Fleshman:You guys know how to set up a cliffhanger?
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:This
Gary Arndt:is spot on.
Gary Arndt:Anyways, that concludes this episode of Respecting the Beer, the producer of respecting the Beer is David Kalsow.
Gary Arndt:Without David, this show would not exist.
Allison Fleshman:We love you, David.
Gary Arndt:Make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode.
Gary Arndt:And feel free to join the Facebook group to get updates between the episodes and support the show around Patreon where you can listen to the bits that don't make it into the real show.
Gary Arndt:Links to both of these are in the show notes, and until next time, please remember to respect the beer.
