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The beer

Main basis for beer is a cereal: barn, wheat or yeast. Malt, important ingredient of this famous drink, is the result of several transformations of the grains. Firstly, the grains are put in a big wooden spoil where they absorb water. After two days of welling they are spread on a flat surface to help along their germination.

As soon as a root starts growing, the grains are dried to prevent them of further germination. This is done in a heated building, in a dry room that consists of two stone walls that are covered with clay and under which a fire is lightened. Remains of such a kind of a dry room are found among the excavations on Malagne and on the base of which a copy was made. The grilled grains have now become malt. The colour of the beer varies with the time of the drying process. How longer the grains are grilled, how darker the beer becomes.

Nextly the malt is smashed up and mixed with water, whereafter it is exposed to several temperature phases to extract the sugar. Then rest pauses are exchanged with moments of adding warm water. The juice obtained is filtered and boiled and aromates are added.

The Gallic Roman beer was considered a remedy by our ancestors and was also used for therapeutic purposes. This explains the addition of medicinal plants that sometimes possessed magical virtues: rosemarin, deadly nightshade, juniper berry, hysop or oregano and marjoram. The use of flowers of the well known hop was proofed to be used only as of the Middle Ages, though the Gallic Romans did know the plant. We suspect that the ancient beer brewers added honey as well because of its sugar and aromate. With the coming of the Romans the use of herbs, until then relatively unknown by the Gaulish, was spread.

The aromated juice that was collected was put in a barrel. It changed into beer under influence of the added yeast.

At the basis of recipes that are put together at Malagne, two artisan beers are brewed for the Archéoparc at Rochefort: The Malagne and the Arduinna. These beers can be consumed in the cafetaria on the park.