On the Art of Fermentation

Various writings of ZOSIMUS, he says, exist, but they have been badly corrupted by the fault of copyists. Although various foreign, figurative, and allegorical elements intrude upon them, there are still many outstanding precepts present, brought forth from the innermost recesses of the art onto the stage, which a candidate for chemical study will by no means regret having read, or rather, having carefully weighed, provided that he joins to them the experiments and the reading of other famous writers.

In these writings of ZOSIMUS one also reads a fragment περὶ ζύθων ποιήσεως (on the production of zythum), which contains the first and most ancient formula for preparing and brewing beer,²⁾ but it is somewhat obscure and very difficult to explain, since the description itself is a little briefer than the importance of the subject requires, and the method of making it seems to differ somewhat from that which we use today. Therefore, I shall provide this fragment as best I can, using the conjectures of REINESIUS inscribed in the margin of the codex, aided and relieved by the economic expertise of the late SUCCOVIUS and the learning of the excellent EICHSTAEDT (for the manuscript of the GOTHAN codex is entirely faulty, and here and there greatly entangled by the carelessness and negligence of the scribe); then I shall subjoin those passages from ancient authors in which the various types of beers are treated as if in passing. Finally, from these, as from sources, I shall explain—as briefly as possible—what those types were, in both form and substance; that is, I shall compose a history of zythum.

Geschichte d. Wachsth. u. d. Erfindung. in d. Chem. [History of the Growth and Discovery in Chemistry], Berlin, 1792, and the renowned GMELIN, Geschichte der Chemie, Vol. 1, Göttingen, 1797.

2. IO. CAIUS has various names for beer encountered among ancient authors in de Ephemera Britannica, London, 1721, p. 41 seq., while refuting ERASMUS of Rotterdam, who had said—though less accurately—that the English sweat had originated from the drinking of beer. While the Englishman does this diligently and learnedly, he writes an accurate and clear account of the manner of preparing ale and beer as it existed in England in the year 1553.