Inishfood
Here’s a few pic’s of last weekends brewday in preparation for the Inishfood festival in Donegal later this month. Saturday was the first use of our Keggery/Keggle brewery and the first time we’ve used hops, so we’ve moved forward in brewing history by about 3000 years.. Still using hot rocks in the kettle so we’ll […]
IGNITE DUBLIN 8
All the beer news: We’re delighted to note that Billy and Declan feature in the latest issue of Archaeology Magazine in a piece by Erin Mullally about Fulacht Fiadh and the mystery of their purpose – needless to say, we espouse our beer theory.. Follow the link below… Letter from Ireland: Mystery of the Fulacht […]
THE OXFORD COMPANION TO BEER
The beer swilling blogeratti are in the throes of some rather vigorous debates online about the recently published ‘Oxford Companion to Beer’ with two distinct points of view emerging about beer writing in general, and particularly the approach to the history of beer (see here for Nazi’s, here for Pete Brown’s view, here for a […]
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 […]
PAST ORDERS AT DIGGING THE DIRT
And in other news, Digging the Dirt is serialising a piece in this months Current Archaeology – see here for part 1 and here for part 2…and here for part 3 or for those of you in the UK Check out the latest Current Archaeology, or tune to Digging the Dirt next Friday for the […]
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 […]
Reinventing the wheel
Paul Rondelez in Cork drew our attention to a paper from the Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland from 1886 which spoke to us through the centuries. A kindred spirit and direct descendent of Daniel O’Connell, one Gabriel Redmond M.D., musing on the function of Fulachta Fiadh in the aforementioned paper, posited […]
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, […]
Comments on the beer at YouTube
To date there have been 10, 650 views of the fulacht video on YouTube (produced by BigYes). Later this week we’ll be attending the launch of ‘Dining and Dwelling’ – the 6th monograph in the NRA monograph series, which will see the formal publication of our beer theory. Here’s a flavour of the comments from […]
Drumaskibbole Fulacht Part 2
Author of original report and Site Director: Tom Rogers During Construction works for the realignment of the R284 from Drumaskibbole to Ballygawley in County Sligo, Tom Rogers of Moore Group excavated a fulacht fiadh and two stone trackways (along with a number of assorted other features). This is part 2 of a 2 part post […]
Drumaskibbole Fulacht Part 1
Author of original report and Site Director: Tom Rogers During Construction works for the realignment of the R284 from Drumaskibbole to Ballygawley in County Sligo, Tom Rogers of Moore Group excavated a fulacht fiadh and two stone trackways (along with a number of assorted other features). Slightly south of Drumaskibbole the road bends sharply, first […]
Recession-busting fulacht fiadh…
With the credit crunch and rising energy bills, perhaps it’s time to return to more traditional methods of cooking. Fulachtaí fia could be the answer.. So suggests Ross Golden Bannon in this weekends Sunday Business Post (piece not available online). Ross has a well researched single column piece which describes the nature and suggested functions […]
Brewing archaeology
The latest edition of the anthropology (in the American sense) blog carnival Four Stone Hearth came courtesy of Archaeoporn while we were away, and we’re delighted that our post on Corofin is linked to. Thanks once again to Archaeoporn for including us. The only problem with blog carnivals is that you just keep meandering the […]
Archaeology Ireland Palaeobotanists Letter
Here’s the letter published in the Winter edition of Archaeology Ireland from the members of the Irish Palaeobotany Discussion Group. You can read the original full article here and view pictures of the experiment here. Billy and Dec will post a response on Monday – Their brains don’t work so well on the weekends, and […]
The Great Beer Bibliography and Resource Post
For those of you who have a deep interest in the Archaeology of Beer, Spirits, Wine and Pleasure in general, here’s the beginning of a big beer bibliography and source list, with a very brief description of the contents. We’ll continue to add to it over time and hopefully someone will find it a useful […]
Ale, brewing and fulacht fiadh: Archaeology Ireland
Ale, brewing and fulacht fiadh Billy Quinn and Declan Moore of Moore Environmental and Archaeological Consultants in Galway present a bleary eyed experimental reassessment of the nature and function of fulacht fiadh The majority of Irish field monuments are defined by their names – a standing stone is a standing stone and a ringfort is […]
