Behind the Scenes Minis: Lager, Ale, Emo Girl

Tracy talks about how the beer riots may sound silly, but were underpinned by serious issues. Holly talks about the Elizabeth Fry’s daughters polishing their mother’s image when publishing her diaries.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
And I'm Holly Frey. We talked about a couple of
beer riots this week on the show. Part of me

(00:23):
wants to file it under people rioting over silly things,
but it was not actually all that silly. There were
a lot of real issues going on underlying something that
can sound a little silly at the headline level, sort of.
There was a hilarious thing. I found it to be

(00:46):
hilarious anyway. in the thing that Ingalls wrote in that
Chartist newspaper about this uprising. And the quote wasn't really
strictly related, so I did not put it in the episode.
But it was just a little aside, a side comment
in his description of these riots. And he wrote, quote,

(01:06):
From all of this, however, it appears that the poet king, Ludwig,
king of Bavaria, is the author of three volumes of
unreadable poems, of a traveler's guide to one of his
public buildings, etc., etc., has been in a very awkward
position during these outbreaks. And I just loved the kind of,

(01:27):
let's take an opportunity to say that Ludwig is not
a very good poet. Shade him from the way. Yes,
have some shade in the middle of... This thing that
was about a popular uprising connected to the price of beer.
What else do I have to say about beer riots?
I have a question. You do have a question. What

(01:47):
is it? I do. This is a nerdy question. We're
going to get in the weeds a little. Yeah. In
your research, I know you had noted that the brewers
that were operating in Chicago tended to make more English
ale-style beers. Yes. versus the German lager-style beers. Yeah. Did

(02:08):
you come across anything... Because we had also mentioned earlier
on that, like, the figuring out of the different costs
and effects of fermentation was not fully done yet. Did
you find anything... that indicated that they understood that was
what was going on. Because that's what makes the difference
between an ale and a lager, right? Right. The yeast

(02:30):
that ferments in an ale ferments at the top of
the stuff at a slightly warmer temperature versus a lager
where it tends to ferment at the bottom and it's
usually kept a little colder in the fermentation process. Right, right. Look,
I remembered something from bartending school. Yeah. It did not
even occur to me that that was a thing that

(02:51):
you would remember from bartending school. I don't know why
it did this. So my understanding is that it was
really across the United States that the people who were
brewing beer prior to the influx of immigrants from Germany
were more likely to be brewing an ale. So not
just in Chicago, but everywhere. Right. Just because that's what

(03:13):
came with most colonists, I imagine. Yeah, that's what came
with most of the colonists. And then after a lot
more people started coming from Germany and bringing this lager
beer style, it shifted to be a lot more lager-focused.
I think a lot of the most mass-produced beer in
the U.S. are more likely to be closer to a

(03:36):
lager than an ale. And they did understand... These were
not brewed the same way. They definitely understood the differences
in temperature, which made it a little more difficult to
brew a lager because of the cooler temperature that was necessary.
Not all of the United States for all of the

(03:59):
year is conducive to that. As to whether they really
understood the specifics of the yeast part at that point,
like in 1855, I... Not sure. I did not look
into that. Because usually it's associated with the work of
Pasteur where that really all got figured out. Right. Which

(04:20):
is happening around that time. Yeah. So I just didn't
know if it was just a matter of they were
still propagating the same yeast and using it in their
thing versus the yeast that maybe traveled over with German
brewers and them just using the same thing. Yeah, I
didn't get into that rabbit hole. I would have gotten

(04:41):
down that and then been like, oh, Lord, it's two
in the morning and I'm not done yet. Right. Well,
and it was really specifically because I was finishing this
leading up to the Labor Day holiday weekend and I
had plans. So I needed to put limits on the
rabbit hole possibility in order to get the episode done

(05:05):
so that I could do my plans properly. because otherwise
I would have probably wound up spending a bunch of
time looking at the details of how the beers were brewed. Like,
I have an impression that the summer beer and the
winter beer that were being brewed in Bavaria were both being...

(05:28):
brewed with barley because that was what was required. But
the end result in the summertime was one that was
lighter and more thirst quenching. And the one that was
in the winter was a little darker and a little
more warming. But I resisted the urge to go find

(05:51):
out if that was 100% correct and also how to
explain why the beer yielding a slightly different product in
the summer or the winter. I do know brewers who
I could have asked, but I also was like, yeah.
But I was also just like, I gotta get this

(06:12):
finished and be ready to have my three-day weekend of plans.
So yeah, yeah. Now I'm kind of curious. We talked
to a brewer on the show about beer history many
years ago, and I thought about going and re-listening to
that episode, and then I did not do it. Because again,
finite amounts of time. Yeah, I literally just meant specifically,

(06:36):
I don't, maybe that beer history expert would know, but
just specifically, like, were people being cognizant of it and
being like, oh, they're using something different or just they
have a different method than us versus recognizing that there
was yeast difference. Right. There were some evolutions in beer
making in Germany in the mid-19th century that were a

(07:00):
big deal. Oh, yeah. I literally am talking about what
we were talking about in the U.S., though. Like, whether
they were cognizant of the fact that their style of
making it was using a different yeast or not, or
if they were just like, this is how we've always
made it. We make it this way. Germans do some
other thing. Like, I just didn't know. Mystery to me
at this point. Yeah. Yeah. And that might be hard

(07:21):
to answer, actually. I don't know if people would have
been recording that. Thus, my random question. We may get
an email from a listener who knows and can fill
us in on all the detail. Maybe. Or an email saying, Tracy,
you could have asked me. But yeah, as we are
recording this, we are just a few weeks away from

(07:45):
making our trip to Munich. And... I'm sort of 50-50
leading up to trips, whether I go and try to
find something to talk about on the show ahead of
the trip to kind of whet my appetite for the
trip and also, you know, just find something interesting to
talk about about this place that we're going to visit.

(08:05):
And I was looking for something that seemed kind of fun,
which in a way this episode is because it is
about And as we've already discussed recently, I do like
the episodes about smashing things. But, of course, as we
already said, real circumstances that we're feeding into all of

(08:26):
this that were serious issues to people, not just, oh,
the beer's more expensive and I'm mad. It's really rarely
ever that simple. I know. I know. We talked about

(08:48):
Elizabeth Fry this week. We did. My little 18th century
emo girl. Yeah. 18th and 19th. There's an interesting aspect
of her life. We do have a lot of her diaries.
Which is interesting because I don't know how much she
would like that we're reading them, but we'll get to

(09:10):
that in a minute. But She actually burned a lot
of her diaries from when she was a younger teen.
So she went through the phase many of us go
through where we go, oh, dear me, this should not
be allowed to survive on Earth. So there is some gap,
particularly like from the time she's like 12 to 16
or 17. But I also thought it was interesting because

(09:31):
her daughters put together a biography of her based on
her diaries that came out a couple of decades, I think,
after she passed, maybe not that long. But a while
after she passed. But then that biography that we referenced
from 1981 by June Rose notes, like she basically says
in the preface, like, I went and read through all

(09:56):
of these diaries and I realized pretty quickly her daughters
had really... kind of shined things up and omitted anything
that might make her look less than ideal like a
lot of the confusion and uncertainty particularly about marrying their
father and like her wishy-washiness and her constant anxiety about
herself It's kind of like either omitted or it's really

(10:19):
like reworked to sound much more gentle and less like
their mom might be dealing with, you know, more serious
issues of anxiety. Another thing that's interesting is there. I
love that June Rose biography because there's a lot of.
hinting around. June Rose was an English historian, and she

(10:40):
writes the way a well-educated English woman would in the 1980s,
which is that there's a lot of walking around some ideas,
kind of, like, hinting at them. And then kind of
even addressing them, but in a very delicate way. One
of them being Thomas Savory. Because, of course, everybody was like,
she got a crush on that man. And, like, she's

(11:02):
not having religion. She's having a crush. And... Her, Betsy,
being very adamant that was not the case. But of course,
if you are 17 and you have a crush on
an adult man, and everybody in your very teasing family
teases you about it, you're going to say, no, I
do not, so I don't know. But June Rose very

(11:23):
carefully talks through all of this. The other thing that
is hilarious is the newlywed phase. Oh, yeah. Because she
found living with a man irritating. He hums too much.
He just makes too much noise. It's essentially I don't
like how he loads the dishwasher. But like in the

(11:45):
early 1820s. She's very critical of her husband. But also
she did not have a great relationship with her in-laws.
We talked about how they kind of thought she was
a little too highfalutin. Yeah. But like apparently, I mean,
I found myself chuckling so frequently because it's all the

(12:08):
same stuff that people deal with in modern times if
they have any friction with their beloved's family once they
get married. Like apparently their first Christmas altogether, again, they're
living at like the family house, like the house that
everyone would go to for Christmas anyway. So... Elizabeth had
set up, you know, a whole family feast. She had

(12:29):
had a turkey brought in from Norwich that she had
had prepared, and it was apparently, you know, the same
thing she would have grown up with all the time.
And then her mother-in-law showed up with a turkey. Oh, no. Oh, no. And...
apparently got very angry that Elizabeth was not willing to

(12:50):
serve that instead of the turkey that she had had prepared.
I don't know how hands-on she was with it because
they did have help at the house, but there were
a lot of instances like that. That even like when
her mother-in-law was quite ill at the end, which also
was a matter of disagreement because the Frys believed in

(13:12):
animal magnetism and not medicine. And so it was one
of those interesting things where it's almost like the trope
is reversed because even though Elizabeth grew up in what
would have been considered more like the country and country life,
she had much more modern views of a lot of
things than her husband's family. And so while she's like,

(13:37):
let's get a doctor, they're like, no, we're We're going
to hypnotize her instead. Oh, dear. And she'd be like,
let's get a doctor. And she got really frustrated. And
even though she and her mother-in-law didn't really like each other,
she also got her feelings hurt that her mother-in-law didn't
want her to be the one that took care of
her in her final days. There's just, there's so much

(14:00):
good family drama playing out. I kind of crack up.
There is also a thing that comes up in those
early days of her Really kind of like spreading the
word and making it known. Like, we are here to
help you. My life's purpose is to help people. Someone
wants to come to my house and ask for something,
I will do everything I can to make sure they
get what they need. But she definitely had ideas about

(14:23):
who was poor enough for her to help. Oh, sure. Like,
I guess somebody had written to her and said, like,
I don't remember what the circumstances were, but like, our
family has fallen into need and we really could use
some help. But like, would you come out to our
home and and meet with us about it? And I
guess she went out to their home and it was

(14:43):
nicer than she expected. And they wanted a little more
money than she was anticipating. And she just kind of
was like, they don't really need me the way. And
also they live so far away. We don't want to
start this relationship. It's like, oh, they weren't poor enough
for you. I see. And who knows? Maybe they were weasels.
I don't know. Here's the thing that appealed to me deeply.

(15:10):
There was a moment where she was talking about Joseph
Fry's family criticizing something that she did. And she wrote
in her journal, quote, I cannot bear to be reproved
partly owing to not being used to it. And I
feel you, and also this is a thing that I
have been ruminating a lot over lately, not necessarily in

(15:31):
terms of being criticized, but, you know, I've had a
little bit of a weird stretch as of late and
I've been very pity party about it. And I had
this moment when I was driving to the airport recently
where I was like, you know why I am so,
you know, kneecapped by a handful of things that are
going on that are not as bad as what other
people often have to go through. I was like, I

(15:52):
am so ridiculously lucky in so many ways that I
have no practice at like being this put out all
at once. And so I don't have the skills and
that's why I'm a whiny baby and I need to
be better about it and like think about it that
way and reframe it. And so reading her journals where
it's always like, she's very stressed out, but a lot

(16:13):
of it is stress that she's bringing on herself. I'm like, girl,
I would love to chat with you. I think we
could figure some of this out together. Yeah. Like, there
is even an entry where she gets really nervous about
feeling any joy that is not spiritual. Oh, okay. Like,
she talks about how much she loves to sing, but

(16:33):
that singing makes her feel too much ecstasy, and it's
not okay, and it creates wild passions. And I'm like, that's... Yes,
because that's what art does. Yeah. But she's not cool
with it. Yeah, I... I have a little bit of
affinity for her because I was an anxious child who cried.

(16:54):
Like when I was in kindergarten, I cried enough that
the kindergarten teacher started sending me to the guidance counselor.
And my dad's mom was the same way. Like when
somebody came to look after, when she was a little girl,
somebody came to look after her and her siblings. her
parents would say, like, give her anything she wants. Just
do not let her get started crying. And so, like,

(17:18):
when I was reading this about her being a very
anxious child and crying, and then people would tease her,
and that made it worse, I was like, I feel this.
I think most of us can relate to that, at
least in moments. Yeah, and then, as her life progressed, like,
I continued to be an anxious person as a teen
and into my 20s and 30s. And it was really

(17:39):
doing some very specific coaching on some coping skills and
some mental health skills and some strategies in my 40s
that a lot of the things that were causing me
so much anxiety, I was able to get some more

(18:00):
control over. Yeah. And so when I got into the
parts of her later life where I was like, oh, man,
I just, I feel, now I sort of feel like
I wish she would have had different resources available to
you to maybe move away from some of these things
where it does seem like you are bringing it onto yourself.
Because I was definitely bringing a lot of things onto myself. Oh, yeah, same.

(18:24):
I mean, I still am always like, why are you so...
anxiety ridden about, you know, this thing that you cannot
control it. You just got to do it. The only
way out is through. It's like I live that weird
parallel of being anxious and afraid of everything and also
just being brazen as heck about it. And I don't
know how that worked out, but that's. Yeah. I mean,

(18:45):
if we if we want to be astrological, I am
a Gemini, so it does make some sense. But yeah,
I just I want to be like, oh, oh, Betsy. Yeah. Yeah.
there are there are ways which i think is really
why helping people made her feel better because it it
just took her out of that cycle that you get
in when you're in an anxious or depressive period where
it's like everything is just feeding into itself and you're

(19:07):
spiraling and then she'd be like oh i have to
make sure this person gets food today and it just
broke that cycle a little bit i think well and
she also obviously didn't have access to the kinds of
medical treatments and medications that exist today which are life-changing
for a lot of people yeah for sure Her marriage
is fascinating to me, as marriages often are when they

(19:27):
come up on the show, especially because she was so
wishy-washy about it. It was very like, I don't love him.
I don't know. He seems like a good guy, but
I don't know. But they were together and they seemed
to have a very dear marriage. She writes about him
very lovingly. He wrote about her very lovingly. But one
thing that I think is interesting is that, you know,

(19:48):
she journaled a lot as a teenager and a young woman.
And like would talk about how like, oh, finally everyone
left the house. So it's just me and my journal
and I'm going to write it all out. I'm like, again,
I see you emo kid. But then when she got older,
she kind of went through it again. Okay. Where I

(20:09):
think it was probably a way that she was coping
with having a lot of attention on her and eyes
on her in the public sphere. But she was adamant
that her husband and her kids could not read her writing. Mm-hmm.
And so, and I have not done a, you know,
I obviously have not gone to England to find her

(20:31):
original journals and read them all. So I don't know
if part of that is like, because I'm going to
trash talk him a little bit as part of my
personal therapy, or if she just felt that self-conscious about it.
But that's what made me wonder, like, would she have
been very happy about her kids, like, turning this into
a whole thing, into a biography? I don't know. Okay,

(20:55):
there's one last thing I really have to talk about. Okay.
And this goes again to that June Rose biography because
there are some subtle hints that she self-medicated with alcohol. Okay.
Because there is a passage that she writes at one
point when she's younger that you know, she's debating over

(21:19):
giving up alcohol completely as part of living a simpler life,
but that she can't and she doesn't feel good when
she's not having a regular draft now and again. And
I'm like, hmm. And then when she got a little
bit older, it seemed like she was drinking more beer,
which is, we're in a theming thing lately with beer

(21:41):
on the show. But when she got older, she switched
to brandy. And she used to say that, like, She
would use that as a sort of medicine, which a
lot of people have over the years, to be fair.
But I could not figure out if June Rose was
hinting at like, and she might have had a slight
drinking problem. You know, alcohol has been a very common

(22:01):
part of a lot of cultures and a lot of,
you know, social rituals for a long time. But it
is interesting that she did talk about, I probably should
give this up, but I can't. I don't feel good
when I'm not drinking, which is a very surprising thing.
So just worthy of consideration. It would certainly shift, you know,

(22:22):
the way you perceive somebody like this who is very active,
associated with sort of living a very strict life that,
you know, it wouldn't be surprising either because she was,
as we just said, living at a time when she
really could have benefited from modern medicine and particularly in

(22:43):
dealing with issues like anxiety and depression that were clearly
going on and she was kind of doing a version
of it that not not great but just a point
of interest yeah that i thought i would feel weird
if i left it out i don't want to trash
talk her or you know denigrate her in any way
but i feel like that's one of those things that
is not going to come up very often but that

(23:06):
there is evidence that there was some of that happening
um Worthy of examination. Anyway, that's Elizabeth Frye, who on
the one hand, I'm like, I get you. And on
the other, I'm like, whew, I bet you were a lot.
She did help a lot of people and there's no
way around that. And that is a worthy legacy. If
you are headed into some time off this weekend, don't

(23:30):
even worry about your legacy. Just worry about you and
making you happy right now and taking care of yourself
and those around you in whatever way also makes you
feel good. Maybe do something nice. I was having a
cruddy day the other day and I did a random
act of kindness and it made me feel a million
times better. And I always try to tell people in

(23:50):
those instances, no, I swear this was about me and
not you. You can thank me all you want, but
really it was selfish. I'm trying to fix my brain chemistry.
I promise you that. But if you can do something
nice for someone else, that is terrific. If you can,
you can only be nice to yourself. That is also
terrific because a better you makes a better world. And
I just hope that, you know, everybody's being kind to

(24:11):
each other. If you have to work, if you have
other obligations, if you're running around, if you are doing
so much for other people that it's wearing you out,
I hope that you still get some time to just rest.
Write in your journal. Write secret things about how your
husband hums too much. Whatever it is that feels good
to you. Clearly, Elizabeth Fry was very good at writing

(24:32):
such things out. Whatever it is that helps you feel better,
I hope you get at least a couple minutes to
do it. We will be right back here on Monday
with a brand new episode. And of course, we will
be back tomorrow with a classic. Stuff You Missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts

(24:56):
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