Beer – particularly the fairly weak small beer – is important in the 16th and 17th century. Water is often dirty and bad-tasting, and it carries diseases. Instead, people drink this fermented brew, which has been boiled as well as filtered to remove the worst impurities.
In consequence, it’s a disaster if the beer turns bad. To ward off witches and keep their brew safe, many stamp their barrels with the sign of the cross.
Some also ask a local wise woman or man to help them make their beer irresistible by strengthening its pleasant taste. They recite charms and secretly submerge cut-off fingers or hands in the barrels – limbs they have hacked off the corpses of people who have been executed.
During the witch trial against Anne Simonsdatter in 1619 at Silkeborg Castle, she even confessed to having sawed off a foot and cut out the heart of a local thief who had been hanged. She had then added these body parts to her brew to boost her sales.