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Alexander Nowell discovered that ale will keep longer if stored in glass bottles, sealed with corks.9
The Brewing of This Particular Beer
This beer was brewed using modern techniques for sanitation and a modern recipe. However, the basic brewing method and the ingredients used are similar to the method and ingredients that would have been used in the last half of the 16th century.
In brewing this particular beer, I used well water, which I boiled for sanitation purposes. The malted wheat, malted barley, and hops that were used were purchased from a local store. As noted above, this is consistent with period brewing. I used two more ingredients, which are not mentioned by Sir Digby: yeast, to aid fermentation, and Irish moss, a clarifier.
I placed the grain in a cheesecloth sack before putting it in the water to heat. After removing the grain I added the malt and boiled the mixture for about an hour. Though it would have been more in keeping with period to use a wooden keg for fermentation, I wanted to insure the purity of the beer, so after the boiling I siphoned the wort into a five-gallon glass carboy (water bottle). I added yeast, and then used a fermentation lock filled with vodka to seal the carboy. This prevents outside air from contaminating the beer, and the vodka does not add any flavor of its own to the beer.
"The final step in the brewing of beer is transferring the beer to bottles and priming these bottles with the proper amount of sugar to produce a reasonable head of carbonation without danger of exploding bottles."10 Before bottling the beer, I strained it into a separate container to remove most of the dead yeast. I then mixed a small amount of sugar in and bottled the beer in clean glass bottles. The use of glass bottles only slightly postdates the period of interest. I sealed my bottles with aluminum bottle caps instead of corks, mainly because the bottles I use are intended to be capped, not corked.
Conclusion
I pray you, enjoy the beer as appealing to modern tastes and the likelihood that it would also have appealed to the tastes of a 16th century noble.
Bibliography
"Alcoholic Drinks of the Middle Ages - Beer." www.inetone.net/mshapiro/cbeer.html.
Badger, Frederick. "On making a Honey-Chamomile Amber Ale." www.nwlink.com/~badger/beer/honeycham.html.
"Beer Importers, German Beers Beer Serving Tips and Beer History." pw2.netcom.com/~fswirbul/beer1.html.
Graves, Chuck. "Basic Brewing." www.pbm.com/~lindahl/recipes/basic_brewing.html.
Lady Arwen Evaine fert Rhys ap Gwynedd. "The Compleat Anachronist Handbook of Brewing." The Compleat Anachronist 5, January 1983.
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