# Omniana/Volume 2/Beer and Ale

184. Beer and Ale.
Hops and turkies, carp and beer,
Came into England all in a year.
A different reading of this old distich adds reformation to the list of imports, and thereby fixes the date to Henry 8th's time.
What was the difference between the beer then introduced into this country, and the ale of our ancestors? There is a passage quoted by Walter Harris, in the Antiquities of Ireland, from the Norman poet, Henry of Araunches, in which the said Henry speaks with ​notable indecorum of this nectar of Valhalla.
Nescio quod Stygiæ monstrum conforme paludi Cervisiam plerique vocant; nil spissius illa
Dum bibitur, nil clarius est dum mingitur, unde
Constat quod multas fæces in ventre relinquit.
The first requisite of savage luxury is fermented liquor; refining it is the process of a more advanced stage. The Polynesians, like the Tupi tribes, drink their kava as thick as porridge. But Henry must have kept low company, if he never saw better ale than what he abuses, for the art of refining it was known at a much earlier age among the Northern nations. Mr. Turner, in his invaluable history of the Anglo-Saxons, quotes a grant of Offa, in which clear ale is mentioned, and distinguished from mild ale and Welch ale. In the laws of Hywel Dda, two liquors are mentioned;.. Bragawd, of which, tribute was to be paid by a free township, (Villa libera) and Cwrwf, which ​was to be paid by the servile townships (Villis servilibus); if the former had no Bragawd, they were to supply a double quantity of Cwrwf; the relative value is thus distinctly marked. Wotton renders the former word cerevisia aromatitis; the latter cerevisia vulgaris; but vulgaris he marks as an epithet added to explain the original text. According to Mr. Owen, Bragawd or Bragget, is a very different liquor from ale, being made of the wort of ale, and mead fermented together; Cwrw is certainly at present good, clear, substantial ale, worthy of honorable and grateful mention from all who have drank it; a far better liquor than bragget can be; though this indeed is a matter of taste, and bragget would be the costlier beverage. I am inclined to think that Cwrw would not have been thus disrespectfully regarded in the Welch laws, had it been the same liquor then which it is now. Perhaps it was not fined. ​That art may have been brought by the Saxons, and this would explain the difference indicated in Offa's grant.
If the hop was introduced into the island only in Henry 8th's time, it cannot have been used before in the common drink of the country. Ale, therefore, seems then to have been made with malt alone, and consequently beer was at that time a different liquor.
This I see is confirmed by Fuller the Worthy, in his History of Cambridge. "Erasmus, so he says, when he resided at Queen's College in that university, often complained of the College ale as raw, small, and windy:—Cervisia hujus loci mihi nullo modo placet: whereby, continues Fuller, it appears, 1st. Ale in that age was the constant beverage of all colleges, before the innovation of beer (the child of hops) was brought into England. 2d. Queen's College cervisia was not vis cereris, but ceres vitiata. In my time, when I was a member of that ​House, scholars continued Erasmus his complaint; whilst the Brewers, having it seemed prescription on their side for long time, little amended it." (p. 87)