Malsters

[Janet B]

  Hi

I found the term 'MALSTER' given as an occupation in parish records, at first because the handwriting was bad I thought it was Mulester, but then found it again where the writing was very easy to read.

Can anyone please tell me what a Malster did for a quid?

Cheers
Janet 

[trish251]

Google is always a good try for such a word. There are lots of people and towns called Malster and also

Maltster / Malster - Brewer, made or sold malts.
MALSTER - brewer, maker or seller of malts.

Trish

[Nick Carver]

I believe agricultural labourers (and probably others) were routinely given a daily quota or beer to help them through their work which by today's standards would seem quite a challenge to get through (even for students). In my village, the larger farmers maintained their own breweries for the purpose. We even have a Malting Lane. The maltster was as the previous post says, the brewer.

[Janet B]

 

Thanks Trish & Nick - a connection with malt in some way had been my guess - I knew some one on the site would know!
Thanks again
Janet 

[trish251]

Hi Nick & Janet

Thanks for the extra info Nick - I did notice many references appeared for folk whose occupation was "farmer and malster" & I wondered what the connection was - and you answered without my asking.

Trish

[Kazza]

I read somewhere that until relatively recently people used to drink lots more beer than we would imagine.  It is a good source of a clean drink,  as in sterile,  or cleaner than the water.  A lot of people would have had little access to clean drinking water,  the alcohol kills most nasty things in the water,  and it was usual to give it to children to drink as well.

Of course today we have mains water,  but as the industrial revolution lead to larger populations being condensed into smaller areas it took a while for the services to catch up or even become established.  Disease outbreaks were often due to water contamination,  and ale was then safer than water.

Kazza.

[Kazza]

This routine consumption of alcohol lead to western cultures becoming more immune to it's effects,  unlike some populations we later exposed to alcohol as western civilisation overran the New World.  Some cultures had no alcohol until Europeans occupied their countries.

Native Americans for example had a very low tolerance for alcohol.

Kazza.

[Geoff of Devon]

My family the Woodleys were Maltsters/Corn factors etc from Saffron Walden/Stansted Mountfitchet. I noticed when trawling through their 1841 census that about 30% of the town population were maltsters. I then did a Google search on maltster and found that Saffron can be a main constituent to bring out the flavour of the beer, or at least was in the 16th/17th centuries before hops became more widely available. Of course the quality of the corn/oats/barley helped as well! Apparently they used to make beer out of anything to hand when crops failed!
Geoff.

[Geoff of Devon]

Kazza,

Not everywhere has mains water still!

Whilst working in Asia it was always recommended to drink beer rather than water. The only water you can trust was bottled and sealed in the five star hotels (oridinary hotels are five stars), which you carry about all day. When that runs out you drink beer. Same goes for going to the toilet as the lack of hygene is incredible!!!! 

Certainly my Indian friends always still recommend that you trust nothing and only drink beer. I also had to practice this in China when I worked in the sticks outside of Shanghai and Beijing as the water was either brown (from the rivers, unpurified) or of dubious origin. Even boiling the water is not enough to kill everything - apparently. Malaria is still prevalent there! The six month course of anti-malarial tablets I had to take were no fun at all - they make you feel really sick the whole time! The other advice was not to eat fish as it came from the Yangh-tse which is the most polluted river on the planet!

Geoff.