Millions of tankards filled to the brim waltzing to the beat of popular songs in a marathon of drinking… Oktoberfest kicks off this weekend in Munich, Germany. Oktoberfest marks the start of a series of festivals in Europe and around the world, dedicated to this alcoholic drink made from water, malted barley, yeast and hops. But among these fans of small mousse, how many know that we owe this recipe to a German nun from the Middle Ages?
Doctor of the Church, preacher, musician, poetess, healer… Hildegarde de Bingen’s CV is impressive. Born in 1098 in the Rhineland, she entered the convent at the age of 8. This mystic, inhabited by divine visions since she was 3 years old, receives a solid medical and botanical education. Became abbess at only 38 years old, she enriched this knowledge with her meticulous observation of nature, dispensed various remedies and wrote two naturalist books (Physica and Causae and Curae).Do you wonder what this has to do with beer?
Well, among the plants that will hold Hildegarde’s attention, there is hops. In his Encyclopedia of the Living, Physica, the abbess writes that “the bitterness of hops combats certain harmful fermentations in drinks and allows them to be kept longer”, quotes Aubrée Gaudefroid, curator and director of the Maison des Mégalithes de Wéris, a Belgian museum which is devoting an exhibition this fall to Hildegarde de Bingen. “His writings have been consulted, she continues. This is what prompted the monks to plant hops and use the hops” in their cervoise to prolong its conservation.
Hildegard of Bingen was not the first to discover the benefits of green hop cones. According to several historians, Pliny the Elder had already described the gustatory virtues of the plant in the 1st century. But it was indeed the German abbess who revealed – in writing – its preservative and sanitizing powers. At that time, in the 12th century, beer was also used to conserve water.
“It’s a very light basic drink, around 1%, 1.1%. So it wasn’t really drunkenness that was wanted. It was really an alternative to water”.
Aubree Godefroidat franceinfo
Visitors to the House of Megaliths will be able to experience this, since the museum has brewed its own cervoise as part of the exhibition.
In terms of taste, we are far from the bitter Indian pale ale (IPA), the star beer of bars in recent years. The monks did not skimp on spices – star anise and mugwort in particular – to reduce the flavor of the hops. “There is no blond beer like you can find today, they are cloudy, amber beers”, explains Aubrée Godefroid. The search for bitterness “will come later, she specifies, just like the word beer. It was Philippe II of Burgundy who, in 1434, designated a fermented drink made from cereals flavored with hops. Before, hops were not used as aroma.”
The beer has been loaded with alcohol and bitterness over the centuries, while the writings of Hildegard of Bingen have almost fallen into oblivion. “She came back into favor in the 80s”, welcomes Aubrée Godefroid. Not for his praise of hops but for that of another cereal: spelled. The German nun described the nutritional virtues of “wheat of the Gauls” but also recommended many plants and aromatic herbs to treat certain pains or facilitate digestion. A dietician before her time, she has thus become a reference for the followers of a healthy and rustic diet.
Hildegard of Bingen, an environmental icon in a way, but also a feminist. “She is someone who is very inspiring, a woman who had power in her time, says Aubrée Godefroid. She is one of the first to talk about women’s bodies. We came to consult her for problems that we would associate today with gynecology, which is quite fundamental and quite innovative at the time. We owe him a lot.”