Small beer in a stoneware jug, with pewter tankards, a loaf and fresh hops.

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Historic Beer and Ale Recipes

Small Beer, Spruce Beer, Lambswool and Caudle

Old beer and ale recipes from period books: Markham’s 1623 household beer, Washington’s small beer, spruce beer, buttered beer, lambswool and the shandy gaff.

Updated November 2, 2026

On this page

1542Boorde: ale for the Englishman, beer for the Dutchman
1574Scot’s hop-garden manual
1594Plat: “the Hoppe onelie” makes beer
1623Markham’s household beer
1757Washington’s small beer
1819Parliament hears how beer was doctored
1869Terrington’s shandy gaff

The years on this page

1542 Boorde: ale for the Englishman, beer for the Dutchman
1574 Scot’s hop-garden manual
1594 Plat: “the Hoppe onelie” makes beer
1623 Markham’s household beer
1757 Washington’s small beer
1819 Parliament hears how beer was doctored
1869 Terrington’s shandy gaff

What was beer like in the past?

Weaker, more often, and drunk all day. For most of English history ale or beer was the everyday drink of any household that could brew or buy it, valued as food as well as pleasure, and much of it was small beer, brewed light for drinking with meals. Water was drunk too, above all by the poor, the young and servants; the old idea that nobody touched it does not survive the sources.

Ale and beer were once two different drinks. Ale was malt, water and yeast; beer added hops, and came over to England from the Low Countries. In 1542 the physician Andrew Boorde still called ale “a naturall drynke” for an Englishman and beer “a naturall drynke for a Dutche man.” By 1574 Kent had a printed manual for growing hops at home, and in 1594 Sir Hugh Plat could write that the hop alone made “the essentiall difference betweene Beere and Ale.” Gervase Markham’s household beer of 1623 is already a hopped one.

Beer also went into the kitchen. Hot ale was thickened with egg yolks into caudle, beaten with roasted apples into lambswool, poured onto hot milk to make a posset, and, in a 1594 cookbook, spiced and finished with butter. In America and Canada brewers without much malt made beer from molasses and spruce, or, in George Washington’s 1757 notebook, from bran, hops and molasses. Most of those spruce beers came out at roughly 2 percent alcohol.

The recipes run from 1594 to a Paris bar of 1927, each from a named book or record. Home-brewed beers here are low in alcohol but never alcohol-free, and two drinks are made alcohol-free with a 0.0% ale.

Each recipe names the period book it comes from and says what we changed. How we research

For it is the Hoppe onelie which maketh the essentiall difference betweene Beere and Ale.

Sir Hugh Plat, The Jewell House of Art and Nature (1594)

Did people drink beer instead of water?

They drank both. Ale was the everyday drink of English households that could brew or buy it, and water was drunk too, above all by the poor, the young and servants. Boorde, the physician usually quoted as proof that water was feared, mainly thought it cold and hard to digest, and told his readers which water to choose.

The storyDid Medieval People Really Drink Beer Instead of Water?

A two-handled green-glazed earthenware cup of glossy golden-brown ale caudle beside a clay jug of dark ale and a wooden bowl with two egg yolks on dark oak before limewashed stone.

Medieval · Hot Drinks · 20 min total

Ale Caudle, Warm Ale Thickened with Egg Yolks

Malty ale stirred over low heat with beaten egg yolks until it thickens like a thin custard: the medieval caudle, made safe with a thermometer.

A small two-handled earthenware cup of warm milky posset with soft curds on the surface and a dusting of cinnamon, beside a jug of milk and a bottle of ale.

Medieval · Hot Drinks · 15 min total

Posset Ale, Hot Milk Curdled with Ale

Very hot milk poured onto cold ale and left to set into soft curds in a warm whey, sweetened with honey and strewn with cinnamon and ginger.

When did English beer get its hops?

In the 1500s. Hopped beer came from the Low Countries as a foreign drink, Kent had a hop-growing manual by 1574, and by 1594 Plat called the hopped drink “our ordinarie Beere.” A cookbook of the same year heated beer with egg yolks, spice and sweet butter into buttered beer.

The storyWhen Did English Beer Get Its Hops?

A tilted pewter tankard pours opaque golden-brown buttered beer into a second tankard with froth, butter beads and faint steam, beside a small earthenware butter dish on dark oak near a glowing stone hearth.

Tudor & Elizabethan · Hot Drinks · 15 min total

Buttered Beer, the Tudor Recipe of 1594

Hot beer thickened with egg yolks, sweetened, spiced with nutmeg, cloves and ginger and finished with sweet butter: buttered beer from a 1594 English cookbook.

What was spruce beer?

A light home-brewed beer of molasses or sugar and water, flavored with spruce and bottled after a few days’ work with yeast. It was a cheap table beer in North America and Britain, and it went to sea, where sailors believed it kept off scurvy. Most recipes made a small beer of roughly 2 percent alcohol.

The storySpruce Beer, from Captain Cook to Jane Austen

A glass of hazy amber spruce beer with thin white foam beside a wooden cask, fresh green spruce sprig, toasted rolled oats and a capped brown plastic bottle on a rough bench in a whitewashed cellar.

Wine, Beer & Mead · 5 days total

Canadian Spruce Beer from a French Book of 1755

Spruce branches boiled until the bark slips, roasted oats and toast, molasses and beer yeast: spruce beer as Canada made it, printed in Paris in 1755, at one gallon.

A glass of golden amber spruce beer with a thin white head on a rough cellar shelf against whitewashed brick, beside an empty glass jug with an airlock and pale sediment, and a capped brown plastic soda bottle.

Wine, Beer & Mead · 21 days total

Spruce Beer from an 1804 New York Handbill

Molasses, water and essence of spruce, worked with yeast for three or four days, rested, then bottled for ten: a New York druggist’s spruce beer of about 1804, at one gallon.

A plain pewter mug of amber-brown beer with a thin loose froth stands beside a squat corked green bottle, with an iron-hooped wooden bucket behind on a rough plank table by a window and whitewashed log wall.

Wine, Beer & Mead · 9 days total

George Washington’s Small Beer from His 1757 Notebook

Bran and hops boiled three hours, strained onto molasses and worked a week: the small beer in the notebook George Washington kept as a Virginia colonel in 1757.

What was wassail made of?

By the 1800s, hot ale with sherry, spice and lemon, with roasted apples and toast floating in the bowl. The word began as a greeting and a toast, and the bowl came to carry its name; lambswool, hot ale beaten with roasted apples, was its close relation.

The storyWassail, from a Greeting to a Christmas Bowl

A footed pewter bowl of cloudy brown wassail holds two split roasted apples, soaked toast, lemon peel and cinnamon under a dusting of nutmeg, with a pewter ladle and two pewter beakers on a pine table.

Hot Drinks · 55 min total

Wassail Bowl, Hot Ale and Sherry with Roasted Apples

Hot ale with sherry, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and lemon, served with roasted apples and toast floating in the bowl: the Christmas wassail as printed in 1869.

How was beer doctored?

To save money and fake quality. In Regency London brewers swapped hops for quassia wood and wormwood and darkened weak porter with burnt sugar, and publicans watered the beer and faked a head with green vitriol, alum and salt. A House of Commons committee heard the evidence in 1819.

The storyHow Was Beer Doctored?

Can you make an old ale drink without alcohol?

Yes, with a 0.0% ale. Terrington’s 1869 shandy gaff of ale and ginger beer and Spencer’s 1903 ale cup poured over hot toast both work with an alcohol-free ale in place of the real one. Check the label: “alcohol-free” can still mean up to 0.5%.

The story28,000 Gallons of Ale, 72,000 of Lemonade: The King’s Dinner of 1902

A foaming pewter tankard and a small faceted tumbler of bubbly golden shandy beside a corked cream-and-brown stoneware bottle, on a weathered pale green garden table in dappled sunlight.

Alcohol-free version

Sodas & Soft Drinks · 2 min total

Alcohol-Free Shandy Gaff, Ginger Beer and Alcohol-Free Ale

Terrington’s 1869 shandy gaff made without alcohol: a 0.0% ale topped up with ginger beer in equal parts, poured cold.

A golden-amber alcohol-free ale cup with floating toast and lemon peel in a plain glass jug, beside two small stemmed glasses, pale green grapes and lemon balm on pale wood against a cream wall.

Alcohol-free version

Punches & Cups · 15 min total

Alcohol-Free Ale Cup, with White Grape Juice over Toast

Spencer’s 1903 Ale Cup made without alcohol: a 0.0% ale and white grape juice poured cold over hot toast with lemon, sugar, nutmeg and a sprig of balm.

The full list