From Wine to Beer:
Changing Patterns of Alcoholic
Consumption and Living Standards in
Late-Medieval Flanders, 1300 – 1550
by John Munro (Toronto)
From Wine to Beer in LateMedieval Flanders: Introduction
• 1) Northern Europe: land of beer & butter; vs. southern
Europe as land of wine and olive oil: not always so
• 2) Meagre evidence on this shift: declining per capita wine
consumption and rising per capita beer consumption:
from studies by: Margery James, Michael Postan, Hans Van
Werveke, Jan Craeybeckx, Herman Van der Wee, Richard
Unger
• 3) The Postan Thesis (CEH: 1952): technological:
• - the crucial factor was the introduction of hops: in North
German (Hamburg) and Dutch towns, from the 1320s
• ‘hop’ thesis basically endorsed by Craeybeckx, Van der
Wee, Unger (and many others): how valid is the thesis?
• 4) Evidence on continued importance of wine: Antwerp
Brewing with hops
• 1) The importance of hops: replacing gruit
• a) Long Distance Trade: hops improved both the stability and
durability of brewed beers (as well as taste): stored for longer
times, transported over longer distances
• b) Safety in ‘drinkability’: hops improved the sterilization process
(not all bacteria killed by boiling: note that beer is 90% water)
• 2) Wine and Beer: in pre-modern societies, were not ‘sinful
luxuries’ but vital necessities: because water and milk were
generally unsafe to drink, especially in urban areas (pollution)
• - Koch (1876), Pasteur (1878): discovery of bacterial transmission of
diseases  sewage & water purification systems in NW Europe,
North America  rapid fall in mortalities
• 3) Nutritional Values of Beer (over wine):
Nutritional Values of Beer
• 1) Robert Allen’s consumer price index:
• - Beer: 20.6% share: in his basket of consumer
expenditures (same for wine in southern Europe)
• cf: Phelps Brown & Hopkins (England): 22.5% share;
Rappaport (London): 20.0%; Munro (Flanders): 20.43%;
Van der Wee (Brabant): 17.08% (vs. 1% for wine)
• 2) Allen’s caloric quantification: for annual household
budgets: in late-medieval, early-modern Europe
• a) northern budget: 182 litres of beer = 77,532 C.
• b) Mediterranean budget: 68.5 litres wine = 58,035 C.
Problems with the Hop Thesis: the
Flemish Urban Evidence
• 1) Basic problem with the ‘hop thesis’: major shift
from wine to beer comes too late: not till 1430s
• 2) The Evidence the Treasurers’ accounts for Bruges
and Aalst: annual sales of excise-tax farms on wine,
beer, other foodstuffs (esp. grains, fish), textiles
• 3) excise tax-farms (on urban household
consumption): urban revenues chiefly used to finance
public debt payments: on rentes (annuities) sold
primarily to finance warfare (European-wide).
• 4) Wine and Beer: principal taxes: on necessities that
were also very addictive  highly inelastic demand
• - very highly regressive taxes on all urban households
The Bruges Financial Accounts
• 1) Especially valuable: in two respects:
• a) only urban accounts extant from early 14th century: from 1308,
with few annual lacunae (unlike Ghent accounts; or Ypres – none
extant until 1406): data in graphs and tables in this study  to 1500
• b) evidence on consumption of foreign as well as domestic beers.
• 2) Foreign beer imports:
• a) Hamburg beers: from 1333 (possibly hop beers)
• b) ‘Hop & Delft’ beers: from 1380: Dutch beers: initially much more
important than Hamburg beers, but sharply diminishing from 1411:
• - 1430: Delft beers amalgamated with German beers
• c) from 1430s: foreign beers decline in both absolute (‘real) &
relative importance  predominance of Bruges beer
• d) Why? Warfare with Hanseatic League and England – to 1470.
Aalst vs. Bruges Financial Accounts
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1) Importance of the Aalst annual financial accounts:
- a) begin in 1395: but then virtually continuous (to 1550)
- b) provide wage data to 1550; Bruges: none from 1480
2) Comparisons with the Bruges accounts on beer:
a) Aalst: primacy of beer established from the beginning: 63% of
total alcoholic excise farms in 1390s, but still only 67% ca. 1420
b) Bruges: beer: 34% of that total in 1308-10; only 33% in 1381-85;
37% in 1416-20
- note: Bruges wealthier, more mercantile, cosmopolitan town 
greater retained preference for imported wines.
c) In both sets: more decisive shift to beer from 1430
- i) Bruges: 52% in 1431-35: almost continuous rise to 70% in 1490s
- ii) Aalst: 73% in 1431-35 to 83% in 1466-70; 80% in 1496-1500
Estimating the Burdens of Urban
Excise Taxes (1)
• 1) Problem: the nominal money-of-account values of the
excise-tax farms sales are otherwise useless in estimating
tax burdens
• 2) Reason: the impact of coinage debasements (finance
warfare)  consequent inflations
• - grams silver in Flemish penny (groot): fell from 2.067 g in
1350 to 0.463 g in 1482 (0.479 in 1500)
• - Flemish CPI (1451-75=100): from 60.5 in 1351-56 to 184.5
in 1486-90: 3-fold inflationary rise
• 3) Note: periodic coinage debasements  sharply
reduced real incomes of wage-earners & those on fixed
incomes (salaries, rents, pensions, etc.): RWI = NWI/CPI
• - BUT so did the rises in highly regressive excise taxes
Estimating the Burdens of Urban
Excise Taxes (2)
• 4) Two statistical methods of estimating the
‘real’ burden of urban excise tax farms:
• a) Calculate the number of Flemish ‘commodity
baskets’ (in the CPI) whose value = total
revenues of the excise tax farms
• (Bruges: alcohol only; Aalst: all excise farms)
• b) Calculate the number of years’ of a master
mason’s money-wage income whose value =
total revenues of the excise tax farms (Aalst only:
and for all excise tax farms)
Real Tax Burdens during the
Golden Age of the Artisans
• 1) 15th-century ‘Golden Age of the Artisans’
(and labourers): concept based on evidence
for real-wages of craftsmen in Flanders (and
Brabant, and England):
• 2) Rise in real wage index (RWI = NWI/CPI)
from ca. 1440 to ca. 1470: basically
determined by deflation: when coinage
debasements had ceased and other forces for
monetary contraction  fall in price level
Importance of the Aalst wage and
excise-tax data
• 1) The real wage data for Aalst during the Golden Age: also show
marked rise c. 1440 – c. 1470 (RWI = NW/CPI)
• 2) BUT the real value or burden of the excise tax farms, as
measured in annual incomes of master mason: also rise in the very
same period, offsetting rise in crude real wages
• 3) Rising urban excise tax burden: rising taxes to finance steep rise
in public debts incurred to finance previous and current warfare
• - note England: no such excise taxes until 1640s (Civil War)
• 4) Importance of the era from 1430s for Flanders:
• a) rising excise-tax burdens: from warfare, which had also spawned
deleterious coinage debasements
• b) more rapid decline in traditional woollen draperies
• c) also period of more rapid shift from wine to beer
• - was that more pronounced shift due to real income changes?
Demographic Questions
• 1) Estimates of burdens of the urban excise taxes: based
on assumptions of stable populations
• 2) But, did Flemish populations (urban & rural) continued
to decline, as in England? Evidence for Flanders is mixed:
from 7% to 28% (Ypres); but some towns did not decline.
• 3) Significance of the question: if urban populations fell 
Δ per capita tax burden: i.e., increase in household taxes
• 4) For duchy of Brabant – just to east of Aalst, evidence of
severe population decline, 1437 to 1496 – along with
increased poverty, especially in small towns and villages
• 5) Golden Age in mid 15th century?: for the artisan or for
bacteria (Thrupp): but beer is always golden
• except for those who prefer donker bier