'The Brewery of Egg-Shells'

Brewing with Eggs and Eggshells in Folklore and History

In 1727, Eliza Smith published a book called, The Complete Housewife: Or, Accomplished Gentlewoman's Companion. Being a Collection of Upwards of Seven Hundred of the Most Approved Receipts. Amongst its many pages was a recipe for a strong beer.

And in early 2024, we recreated it. Or at least, a modern version inspired by it.

Aptly called Eliza Smith, the beer was a collaboration between myself, the amazing Hop Hideout in Sheffield, and the fabulous Torrside Brewery. Smith’s recipe in full is as follows:

To make strong Beer. To a barrel of beer take two bushels of malt , and half a bushel of wheat just cracked in the mill , and some of the four fisted out of it ; when your water is , scalding hot , put it into your mashing vat ; there let it stand till you can see your face in it ; then put your malt upon it , then put your wheat upon that , and do not stir it ; let it stand two hours and a half ; then let it run into a tub that has two pounds of hops in it , and a handful of rosemary - flowers ; when it is all run , put it in your copper , and boil it two hours ; then strain it off , setting it a cooling very thin , and set it a working very cool ; clear it very well before you put it a working ; put a little yeast to it , when the yeast begins to fall , put it into your vessel , and when it has done working in the vessel , put in a pint of whole wheat , and six eggs ; then stop it up ; let it stand a year , and then bottle it ; then mash again ; stir the malt very well in , and let it stand two hours , and let that run and mash again , and stir it as before ; before you cover your mashing vat well up ; mix the first and second running together , it will make good household beer .

We kept many things the same in the collab, notably the rosemary which worked really well in the final product. If you are in the UK, you are in luck as you can pick up some here.

But one of the things that didn’t remain the same was the eggs. That’s right, eggs in beer. In fact, as part of the fermentation process.

Smith’s recipe called for adding a pint of whole wheat and six eggs during fermentation, which was to last a year.  Obviously, we couldn’t do that for many reasons, including that we had to speed up the timeline

But Smith wasn’t alone in her direction to add eggs to brews.

In The Compleat Brewer, George Watkins helped brewers troubleshoot their low fermenting beers, noting that some practiced beating up egg whites with brandy and putting this mixture. into the vessels to encourage fermentation. He seemingly did not recommend this stating, ‘it is not so proper for these fine beers’.  And instead suggested other options.

However, adding eggs to beers didn’t stop there. Eggs were central ingredients to many a beer cocktail. I’ve recreated a few over the years and will do so in the next couple of weeks as these beery cocktails are usually served hot and are excellent on a cold day. I am freezing at the minute and a hot boozy beverage sounds ideal.

A particularly famous Irish one is scolteen, a mix of whiskey, beer, eggs, caraway- seeds, sugar, and butter. And is absolutely delicious. More on that later. But, it’s not only in Irish cookbooks that we find the combination of eggs and beer, this juxtaposition also appears in folklore.

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Before we get into the story I have for you today, I want to provide a bit of background. Content Warning: Ableism, Violence.

The history of changelings in Ireland is tragic. It is one steeped in pain, abuse, and even death - in the late 19^th century, Brigid Cleary was brutally tortured and murdered by her husband after he accused her of being a changeling. Modern scholars and activists have clearly demonstrated the links between the stories of changeling children and neurodivergence. Famously, the paper by J. Leask, A. Leask, and N. Silove, ‘Evidence for Autism in Folklore?’ argued that changelings were societies attempt to explain autism.  I am not an expert on this subject matter, but I wanted to introduce it to you before we talk a bit about some changeling folklore and how it relates to brewing history. To give you some brief context about how these myths manifested and the heart-breaking real-world impact they had. The beliefs told in the story that follows weren’t contained to the pages in a book.

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In the first half of the 19^th century, Thomas Crofton Croker travelled around Ireland gathering stories for his collection of folklore, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. Croker wanted to preserve Irish myths in one single volume.  Here amongst stories of pipers, priests, and one haunted alcohol cellar, is ‘The Brewery of Egg-Shells’.

Our story opens by introducing us to our main character, Mrs. Sullivan, who earnestly believed that her youngest child had been spirited away by the Fair Folk and exchanged for an imposter. A baby we are told that ‘had become shrivelled up into almost nothing, and never ceased squalling and crying’.

She didn’t want to hurt the child because it bore a resemblance to her own son, though, ‘its face was so withered, and its body wasted away to a mere skeleton’. Even though she was told to, amongst other things, throw it out into the snow or burn its nose off.

Instead, she consulted a cunning woman called Ellen Leah, a woman who ‘had the gift’. Leah inquired if Mrs. Sullivan was sure that her child had been replaced by a fairy, to which Mrs. Sullivan emphatically declared that mothers know their own children. And so Leah recommended a brew:

Put down the big pot, full of water, on the fire, and make it boil like mad; then get a dozen new-laid eggs, break them, and keep the shells, but throw away the rest; when that is done, put the hsells in the pot of boiling water and you will soon know whether it is your own boy or a fairy.

A brewing of eggshells.

Then Leah said, if it was a fairy, to shove a red hot poker down its throat.

So Mrs. Sullivan left and began her brew. Soon after her son began to inquire what she was doing as she got to work breaking the eggs and bringing them to boil. His voice that of an old man as he pestered her whilst she did her work.

She told him she was brewing. Deliberately attempting to be vague on precisely what was in the pot. And he then inquired twice about what she was brewing before she finally answered, ‘egg-shells’. To which he replied, ‘I’m fifteen hundred years in the world, and I never saw a brewery of egg-shells before!’

And with that, the fairy revealed himself, and quickly escaped before Mrs. Sullivan could get her red-hot poker. Instead when she returned to the cradle she found her son, lying peacefully asleep. And that, as they say, was the end of that.