Roger Moroney: A toast to brewers and progress

Zeelandt Brewery. Photo / John Ireland

DURING the terrible times of the great plagues which swept the world from time to time there was great danger in carrying out one of the most important dietary requirements of them all.

The taking of liquid. You can go for a time without food but not without water. Which is understandable, given the average human body is composed of about 65 per cent of the stuff.

In the bad days when the disposal of effluent was effectively a case of filling the nearest bucket and firing it out on to the street, the availability of seriously good water, the untainted stuff, was best achieved in the more pure rural climes. The streams and rivers.

In the crowded, dankish big towns and cities the folks would have either drawn it from passing rivers, which were susceptible to refuse being dumped in them, or from the rain ... which they likely collected in lead pots anyway so that was that. Illnesses abounded, yet there was a pure form of the stuff which had, through the brewing process, effectively been boiled and cleansed.

And it had health-giving things like pure malt and barley in it. Don't touch the water ... drink the beer "and raise thee a glass to your good well-being", I daresay the proponents of a bubbly drop declared while the carts arrived to take the water-imbibing neighbours away.

It has been said, and subsequently put down in documentary form, that beer saved the world. It saved the world. Now that is a grand and some would argue outrageous statement but I think there is something in it.

A growing number of archeologist and general ancient history boffins believe it was the need to brew beer, not to make bread, which drove the widespread planting of barley about 11,000 years ago. That sparked the agricultural revolution and sparked the invention of things such as ploughs and grinders and mills and wheels and even writing - they had to have labels.

In Egypt, around the time they built the great pyramids, beer, in moderation of course, was a traditional part of the diet as well as a noted medicine. It was even used as a trading currency.

No wonder they got the thousands of blokes charged with arranging great rocks into great structures to work day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. Probably two pints of Pharoah's Pilsner a day did the trick.

Or Tutankhamun Draught. While doctors would ask "what ails you?" the Pharaoh's foremen would ask their charges "what ales you?"

When Captain Cook was sailing the oceans down this way, he was conscious of the need for good health among his hearty lads. He pretty well overcame the dreaded scurvy with his insistence of carrying things like vinegar, wheat, mustard and soup ... and beer.

When he stepped ashore in Queen Charlotte Sound back in early 1770, he made some experimental brews using rimu branches. Three years later, when he arrived back in Fiordland aboard Resolution, he stepped things up ... brewing a beer made from wort, molasses, rimu leaves and bark. Hardly an award winner I daresay, but hats off to ol' Cookie for having a go. As I did back in the 80s when I actually got my home brews to the stage where they were clear and, after 30 days, not a bad drop.

I eventually gave it away, as given a 745ml bottle of lager could be created for 35 cents one tended not to worry about the cost of imbibing so it sort of morphed into quantity, not quality. Today I enjoy the pursuit of the boutique stuff and the imported varieties which tend to make one curious.

The brewing game is indeed an old and diverse one, and it is just dandy to see that more folk around these fine parts are stirring the hops.

We have a strong brewing history around here, and not until recently did I realise the old White Swan Brewery, which stood in Hastings St until it came down in the 1931 earthquake, had been around since the 1870s. The eighth mayor of Napier, John Vigor Brown, was once the managing director.

There was the Burton Brewery in Hastings and the Union Brewery Company in CHB and the Napier Brewing Company in Wellesley Rd.

They would have produced standard draughts and ales, unlike the brewing landscape of today where flavours abound.

So I take my hat off and suitably chill a glass in toast of the crews at Zeelandt Brewery, the Fat Monk Brewing Company, Hawke's Bay Independent Brewery and the cider chaps Paul Paynter and Doug Bailey at Edgebrook who put their wares up against the very best at last week's Brewer's Guild Awards. They are doing their bit ... to save the world.

Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre