The year is 1516. The day is 23rd April in the year of our lord. The town is Ingolstadt/Bayern.
Our rulers, Dukes Wilhelm and Ludwig have just told our brewers that they can no longer add gruit/wild herbs lavender, coriander and juniper to the beer. How on earth can I now mask those horrible tastes when I serve you your jug of beer?
They can’t even use wheat, rye, oats, peas and beans anymore. How can I serve your beer for 3 Pfennings?
Only barley, water and hops can be used. Mad. Stupid Dukes.
We call it bier from our forefather s’ Saxon word baere, the word for barley. Those pagans bastards in the north still call their crap beer Øl, they cannot even read and write, the heathens!
You, peasants are in my tavern in the city walls.
You have walked here from your dirty stinking villages in your crappy rags, why you can’t even afford the decent silk and fine cloth our ‘nobles’ wear! And what are those things on your feet. Ha ha! And I see you have your heathen children, how many Maßs will those little gits have tonight? At least they will have something decent to drink!
Well at least tonight you will probably find our food too spicy and salty anyway, it would go foul anway.
And as for you women. You are lucky our gentlemen allowed you to sit at our table, until 1100 you were banished to the kitchen where you belong. All you have brought is your stupid rules, we have to wash our hands now and we can’t even fart or burp, whatever next, using a fork like those nobles!?
You may even have some white bread instead of that hard black crap you normally have. What you don’t eat just feed to those scruffy in-bred dogs of yours.
Drunkenness is forbidden in the here as well as in the monasteries, and any of you who spills your beer must stand upright all night.
After our feudal landlords took over brewing from the monks (1250), we can even brew beer ourselves! Great. Mind you soon I think we can no longer brew in the summer as it really is getting hot (bluddy global warming!).
Mind you, after the Black Death in the 1400s there are fewer than half of us left in Europe anyway. Ha. More beer!
Since 1351 you have had your jugs filled to the mark, I cannot even put water in the beer!
So, finally, you are lucky to drink wine tonight, I managed to ‘acquire’ a wagon load from the Scloß.
Drink then, drink and take someone down a peg or two!
Prost! Cheers!
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