Pippins Tolkien side

by Pippin alias Kim Hansen

Hobbits like good Beer, you see that many places in The Lord of the Rings. They also drink Red wine, this is the only other alcohol I’ve been able to find in those parts of The Red Book of Westmark, that deals with The Shire. The only brand of wine, that is mentioned, is Old Winyard. It is sold in bottles and the grapes was grown in South Farthing. The barley for the Beer was grown in North Farthing.



		Beerlabel made for the Prancing pony

In The Red Book, it usually just says Beer, but in the places, where the kind of Beer is mentioned, it is Ale, in all but one place, where a dwarf asks Bilbo for a Porter. Lager is never mentioned. Ale is also the Beer drunk in medieval Europe.

I can’t find any hobbits working as Brewers, but I didn’t expect to find any. Before the industrialisation, people outside the towns brewed their own Beer and the Inns also did so. There is no places in the text, that saes anything about this, but I think that at least the rich brewed there own Beer. Mrs. Maggot did so at least ”Mrs. Maggot brought out Beer in a huge jug, and filled four large mugs. It war a good brew, and Pippin found himself more than compensated for missing the Golden Perch”

It is clear that the Inns brewed there own Beer, you can see that, by the statements about different qualities in different Inns.

Pippin saes, that The Golden Perch in Stock has the best Beer in East Farthing and Robin Smallburrow became Shirriff, to be able to travel The Shire to find the best Beer.

There are a lot of bottles mentioned in the Red Book, but I think that most Beer came in barrels. Saruman had his Beer in barrels at least.

Inns in the Shire, mentioned in the Red Book:

The Green Dragon Inn in Bywater

The Ivy Bush in Hobbiton

The Golden Perch in Stock

The Bridge Inn at the bridge over Brandywine

The Floating Log Frogmorton


	Last in the Red Book, it is said about the Malt of 1420 (SR): ”The North Farthing barley was so fine that the Beer of 1420 malt was long remembered and became a byword. Indeed a generation later one might hear an old gaffer in an inn, after a good pint of wellearned Ale, put down his mug with a sigh: Ah! that was a proper fourteentwenty, that was!”.


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Updated 8/11 2001