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Alcoholic drinks from Denmark and Sweden

Nordic grog

"Nordic grog" is an archaeologists' name for a mixed drink of honey, cereals and wild berries fermented together, sometimes with imported grape wine, and flavoured with bog myrtle, yarrow, juniper and birch resin. It is known only from residues in tomb and hoard vessels dated from about 1500 BC to the first century AD. The process here is a reconstruction; no recipe survives.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo amounts survive. The ingredients come from chemical and plant-remains analysis of residues, and they differ from site to site.
Honey[mcgovern2013]
Cereals (wheat, rye and/or barley)[mcgovern2013]
Bog cranberry and lingonberry[mcgovern2013]
Bog myrtle, yarrow and juniper[mcgovern2013]
Birch tree resin[mcgovern2013]
Imported grape wine, likely resinated with pine resin (at some sites only)[mcgovern2013]
Starterspontaneous; the paper says honey's own osmophilic yeast converts watered-down honey to mead
Start
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What changes: Honey, grain and red bog berries are gathered

Step 1 of 5
Gather honey, grain and wild berries
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Yeasts

Output: honey, cereal grains, bog cranberries and lingonberries.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

"Nordic grog" is an archaeologists' name for a mixed drink of honey, cereals and wild berries fermented together, sometimes with imported grape wine, and flavoured with bog myrtle, yarrow, juniper and birch resin. It is known only from residues in tomb and hoard vessels dated from about 1500 BC to the first century AD. The process here is a reconstruction; no recipe survives. Yeast cells, seen in the Juellinge residue by Gram in 1911 and Honey's own osmophilic yeast, which the paper says converts honey watered down to about 30 % into mead do most of the fermenting.

What makes this one different

Nordic grog ferments honey, grain and fruit together, where mead uses honey alone and beer grain alone. Its herbs, bog myrtle and yarrow, later became two of the main herbs in medieval gruit ale.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Egtved drinkWheat, bog cranberries and cowberries, bog myrtle and honey, in a birch-bark container.
  • Kostræde drinkGrape wine, honey (likely mead), birch and pine resins, probably juniper and bog myrtle.
  • Juellinge drinkBarley beer and fruit wines with resinated grape wine, juniper, yarrow and bog myrtle; little or no honey.

Safety

This is an archaeologists' reconstruction of a drink known only from residues, not a tested recipe.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

McGovern and colleagues (2013) analysed residues from four sites, from ca. 1500 BC to the first century AD. The Egtved woman, buried in an oak coffin about 3,400 years ago, had a birch-bark container of this kind of drink at her feet; its contents were described in 1929.

Process times
The sources we found give no figure for how long any of its steps take.
Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [mcgovern2013] McGovern P.E., Hall G.R., Mirzoian A. 2013, A biomolecular archaeological approach to 'Nordic grog', Danish Journal of Archaeology 2(2):112–131paper
  2. [frei2015] Frei K.M., Mannering U., Kristiansen K. et al. 2015, Tracing the dynamic life story of a Bronze Age female, Scientific Reports 5:10431paper
  3. [archaeology2014] Archaeology Magazine, May/June 2014, Recreating Nordic Grog (Digs and Discoveries; four artefacts dated 1500 BC to AD 200, modern rendition with Dogfish Head)web