Creedon’s Epic East featuring Billy and Declan
And here’s Billy and Declan on an episode of Creedon’s Epic East.
INISHFOOD AND FEILE GRIANAN, BEER INFOGRAPHIC
Here’s a big beer infographic for you all… In the latest ancient beer news (I, know, would we just give it up now) – at the weekend we bottled our ale for Féile Grianán Áiligh and samples for Inishfood 2013. Féile Grianán is held at Grianan hillfort, Co. Donegal, one of Ireland’s most spectacular hillforts […]
GREEN DRINKS
Tomorrow night (or tonight, if you’re reading this tomorrow), Billy, Nigel and Declan will be presenting at ‘Green Drinks’ at 9pm in The Cottage Bar in Salthill. All welcome…. Facebook Events page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/242453705861386/ ABOUT GREEN DRINKS: ==================== Once a month in 448 cities around the world people with an interest in green issues get together […]
THE FULACHT BEER EXPERIMENT – ARCHAEOLOGY OF BEER
Declan, Billy and Nigel presented at a Seminar on ‘Experimental Archaeology in Northwest Europe: Principles and Potential’ in UCD last week. Our presentation was on the beer experiments and Fulacht Fiadh. Here’s some of Declan’s section of the presentation: Fulachta fiadh are one of the most widespread of Irish field monuments and may number up […]
EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY SEMINAR UCD
Experimental Archaeology in Northwest Europe: Principles and Potential Declan, Billy and Nigel will be presenting on Friday in UCD at 2ish as part of a Seminar on Experimental Archaeology. Here’s the outline from UCD: Experimental Archaeology has recently re-emerged as an approach enabling us to think about the past in practical ways, while it also […]
HOT ROCK BREW IN OKLAHOMA
Thanks to Merryn Dineley for pointing this one out to us.. Some Oklahoman (is that what you call people from Oklahoma?) home brewers have embraced Fulacht Fiadh brewing techniques – and added their own modern twists. But the basic technique remains the same.
Ancient Beer Latest…
From the January – February edition of Britarch (thanks to Merryn for pointing it out to us): Burnt mound theory tested to perfection David Chapman found an eroding “burnt mound” – a common but unexplained prehistoric mound of fired stones – on the Lleyn peninsula at Hell’s Mouth. Excavations in 2008 revealed an oak trough […]
Naked drunken fat ladies?
Here’s a slide from tonights presentation to the GMIT Heritage Society. We’ll be presenting a talk on the beer experiment and Fulachta Fiadh at 7pm tonight in Rm. 940. We’ve been busy reading Pat McGovern’s ‘Uncorking the past’ which is where we encountered the Laussel Venus pictured here. Pat posits a paleolithic origin to alcohol making and […]
Dining and Dwelling Part 4
Part four of Dining and Dwelling publication (Part one here, part two here and part three here) CONCLUSION So, what is the evidence for brewing? First, the experiment worked. Fermentation caused by wind-blown yeast even occurred in the leftover mash in the trough within a few hours. Secondly, a number of quern-stones have been found […]
Dining and Dwelling Part 3
Part three of Dining and Dwelling publication (Part one here, and part two here) Our first brewing experiment was carried out at Billy’s home in Headford, Co. Galway, in August 2007. In an effort to make the experiment authentic the equipment had to be basic. For the mash tun we used an old, leaky, wooden […]
Dining and Dwelling part 2
Part two of Dining and Dwelling publication (Part one here) THE GREAT MYSTERY OF PREHISTORIC BREWING. In prehistoric times until the late Iron Age, metallurgy was limited to small hand tools and high-status items. Throughout prehistoric Europe one of the main challenges for the brewer (in the absence of suitable metal containers) was heating large […]
Dining & Dwelling
Last year Billy and Declan gave a presentation at the National Roads Authority’s annual archaeology seminar about the fulacht beer theory. You can see a video of the presentation here. The resultant monograph Dining and Dwelling has just been published by the NRA and is available through bookshops or directly from Wordwell Book Sales, Wordwell Limited, […]
Moore on Beer
Okay: It’s not exactly TED. But anyway, here’s our (Billy & Dec’s) presentation at the 2008 NRA Seminar (Dining and Dwelling) which is due for publication next month. Entitled: ‘Fulachta fiadh and the beer experiment: suggested future research strategies.’ Any Chinese viewers, please forgive Declan. Also note Erratum: Dr. Patrick McGovern, sometimes referred to as […]
Ancient Egyptian Barley
Via our daily Google Alert email we learned of some interesting research into ancient barley at the University of Warwick, where ‘boffins’ have recovered significant DNA information ‘from a lost form of ancient barley that triumphed for over 3000 years seeing off: 5 changes in civilisation, water shortages and a much more popular form of […]
Beer
This arrived to us via Max Nelson in Canada – we made the January/February edition of ‘Beer’ Magazine – The USA’s ‘Newsstands #1 selling Beer Magazine‘. Thanks Max… Here’s a gratuitous scan of the Cover Girl: Here’s a snippet of the editorial from Beer ‘History 201’ – ‘The Luck of the Irish’: And a lovely […]
Pricewatch
We’ve added Pricewatch to our blogroll. Conor Pope broke the Fulacht beer story in the Irish Times and published it on his blog – congratulations to Conor on all his nominations for the Irish Blog Awards. And, while we’re at it, we really enjoyed Chris’ latest post.
A book review
On occasion we’ll post reviews of books we’ve really enjoyed (or books we want to warn people off) – if only to use the words ‘rambunctious˚’ or ‘roistering˚’ – as is the case today with A.D. 500 by Simon Young. Not normally fans of historical fiction, unless it’s Flashman or Erast Fandorin, we’ve been mightily […]
