February 7, 2012

Lambic & Google Books (pre-1900)

A buddy just showed me Google Ngram which will keyword search all of the books Google has scanned in.  Its pretty amazing.  I searched "Lambic":
Google Ngram results for lambic

As you can see, the word is barely used pre-1900, but some of those old texts are very interesting!  The ones I've look at so far are mostly British brewers who traveled in and around Belgium for a period of time.  Much of their descriptions of lambic are completely wrong, at least according to how we understand lambic today.  It's interesting to read some of the pre-1900's scientific studies that were done on lambic.  It's also interesting to see accounts of other styles and their production methods.  I wonder if any of these other styles have since been forgotten?

Here is one pre-1900's text that you can't argue over.  A poem about lambic written in 1892:
I've only made it through the texts prior to 1900.  I'm curious what is in that boom in the mid 1910's, and then also in 1960.  We know the production an popularity of lambic was hit hard during WWII.  I wonder what was written about lambic during that time?  Let me know if you find any buried treasures!

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