{"id":1208,"date":"2009-03-22T06:48:23","date_gmt":"2009-03-22T13:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/?p=1208"},"modified":"2009-03-22T06:48:23","modified_gmt":"2009-03-22T13:48:23","slug":"what-if-rye-bread-eaters-had-prevailed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/what-if-rye-bread-eaters-had-prevailed\/","title":{"rendered":"What if rye-bread eaters had prevailed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

While others were watching their brackets get busted in overtime Friday evening I was reading “Six Thousand Year of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History.” Why? Because a book about brewing with wheat<\/a> should include the role wheat has played in various cultures where people drink beer.<\/p>\n

It’s not exactly light reading, so maybe I was looking for a reason to laugh when I came across the explanation of how wheat became the grain of choice in Europe in the nineteenth century. That’s a longer story involving French tastes, but here’s the excerpt that might make you smile:<\/p>\n

“In the Middle Ages Europeans were very fond of the taste of rye. Some of the East Germans had called themselves Rugii<\/em> (rye-eaters) — undoubtedly to distinguish themselves from the ignoble eaters of oats. In Anglo-Saxon England August was called Rugern,<\/em> the month of the rye harvest. As late as 1700 rye formed 40 percent of all English breads; around 1800 the percentage had dropped to 5.<\/p>\n

“Where rye bread was firmly established — in large parts of Germany and Russia — it remained. Physicians and farmers insisted that people who for centuries had eaten the dark bread of their fathers, which gave forth a spicy fragrance like the soil itself, could not find the soft white wheat bread filling. They pointed to the physique of the Germans and rye-eating Russians. The wheat-eaters countered with the claim that rye made those who ate it stupid and dull. Wheat-eaters and rye-eaters eaters spoke of one another as do wine drinkers and beer drinkers.”<\/p>\n

Beyond the old beer vs. wine thing I thought first about lager drinkers vs. ale drinkers. Then I recalled a conversation during Zoigl Day in Neuhaus<\/a>. The local I was talking to asked me about what sort of beers I like to drink. When I mentioned I’d been seeking out weiss beers he quickly explained he didn’t drink those. He had to make too many trips to the bathroom if he did.<\/p>\n

Thought never occurred to me to ask if he preferred rye bread to wheat bread.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/code> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While others were watching their brackets get busted in overtime Friday evening I was reading “Six Thousand Year of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History.” Why? Because a book about brewing with wheat should include the role wheat has played in various cultures where people drink beer. It’s not exactly light reading, so maybe I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beer-wine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-ju","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1208"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1211,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}