III. I: A view of Middelburg in 1511. Importers would have shipped beer into the
town along the waterway in the foreground. ZA, KZGW, Zelandia lllustrata 11-187.
from the early success of the fifteenth century and was not able to meet
growing demand, forcing the government and consumers to accept relatively
large quantities of imports, imports which came overwhelmingly from Hol
land.
In their efforts to catch up with the superior brewing methods of north
German towns all Dutch brewers may have borrowed from the experience of
salt boilers along the Zeeland coast in improving their kettles early in the six
teenth century if not before. By then the brewing kettle or copper sat on top
of an iron grate with walls or platforms around it so that workers could stand
over it and stir the wort,J. The better metallurgy and methods of anchoring
kettles which developed among salt boilers could explain the ability of brew
ers in Zeeland and in Holland in the sixteenth century to save fuel and to pre
vent contamination of their product by smoke. Malteries and breweries had
to generate a great deal of heat and the fires they made could, if not properly
handled, cause extensive damage. In Middelburg the government pressured
14. G. Doorman, Octrooien voor uilvindingen in de Nederlanden uit de I6e-J8e Eeuw (The Hague
1940) 272; H. Langer, 'Das Braugewerbe in den deutschen Hansestadten der frühen Neuzeit', in
Hansische Studiën 4: Gewerbliche Produktion mul Stadt-Land-Beziehungen, K. Fritze, E. Müller-
Mertens and J. Schildhauer (eds.), (Wéimar 1979) 70.
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