CHAPTER VI
SMALL DRINK
“Under this tearme of small-drink,” wrote an old chronicler, “do I endow such drinks as are of comfort, to quench an honest thirst, not to heat the brain, as one man hath ale, another cider, another metheglin, and one sack.” Under this title I also place such tavern and home drinks of colonial times as were not deemed vastly intoxicating; though New England cider might well be ranged very close to New England rum in intoxicating powers.
The American colonists were not enthusiastic water drinkers, and they soon imported malt and established breweries to make the familiar ale and beer of old England. The Dutch patroons found brewing a profitable business in New York, and private families in all the colonies built home brew-houses and planted barley and hops.
In Virginia a makeshift ale was made from maize as early as 1620. George Thorpe wrote that it was a good drink, much preferable to English beer. Governor Berkeley wrote of Virginians a century later:—
“Their small-drink is either wine or water, beer, milk and water, or water alone. Their richer sort generally brew their small-beer with malt, which they have from England, though barley grows there very well; but for the want of convenience of malt-houses, the inhabitants take no care to sow it. The poorer sort brew their beer with molasses and bran; with Indian corn malted with drying in a stove: with persimmons dried in a cake and baked; with potatoes with the green stalks of Indian corn cut small and bruised, with pompions, with the Jerusalem artichoke which some people plant purposely for that use, but this is the least esteemed.”
Similar beers were made in New England. The court records are full of enactments to encourage beer-brewing. They had not learned that liberty to brew, when and as each citizen pleased, would prove the best stimulus. Much personal encouragement was also given. The President of Harvard College did not disdain to write to the court on behalf of “Sister Bradish,” that she might be “encouraged and countenanced” in her baking of bread and brewing and selling of penny beer. And he adds in testimony that “such is her art, way, and skill that shee doth vend such comfortable penniworths for the relief of all that send unto her as elsewhere they can seldom meet with.” College students were permitted to buy of her to a certain amount; and with the light of some contemporary evidence as to the quality of the college commons we can believe they needed very “comfortable penniworths.”
Some New England taverns were famous for their spruce, birch, and sassafras beer, boiled with scores of roots and herbs, with birch, spruce, or sassafras bark, with pumpkin and apple parings, with sweetening of molasses or maple syrup, or beet tops and other makeshifts. A colonial song writer boasted—