Drinking games of the 16th and 17th centuries to be studied
A DUBLIN microbrewery is to reproduce an ancient oat beer that was so popular with our ancestors they drank 14 pints of it daily.
The drink production is part of a new research project, led by historian Dr Sue Flavin, which examines eating and drinking habits of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Tipperary native Dr Flavin is a historian at Cambridge’s Anglia Ruskin University.
Last year, she made headlines when her research into 16th-century Irish social history revealed stonemasons and other labourers drank more than a dozen pints of oat malt beer a day.
This was thanks to a generous allowance of 14 pints a day from the proctor of Christ Church Cathedral.
Dr Flavin has secured a €1.5m grant from the European Research Council and will now team up with the undisclosed brewery to recreate the heady brew.
She will also conduct research into popular 16thcentury ‘drinking games’.
In the 15th and 16th centuries it was fashionable for both men and women to ‘toast one’s health’ until they became sick from drink.
She will liaise with a team of high-tech archaeologists to determine the type of food consumed in bowls and other pottery.
The items they will study have been recovered from archaeological digs from Dublin Castle, Mogeely Castle in Co Cork, and Rothe House in Co Kilkenny.
The five-year project aims to solve the mystery of “what was eaten, where, why and by whom” in minute detail.
As it stands very little is known about Irish dietary habits during the period, which saw vast social and cultural changes.
“The idea is to challenge stereotypes that everyone ate the same things,” she told the Irish Independent .We do know that ‘exotic’ food like turkey and pineapples were eaten by the wealthy classes at the time, but little is known about what the common people ate, she said.