Historic Porter's, Stouts and Milds - Brewing Methods

[PeeBee]

Another interesting recipe for trialling techniques to keep "black malt" under control is the Beamish 1851 "Running Porter". https://oldbeersandbrewing.blogspot.com ... orter.html. Very similar recipe to the Whitbread 1850 "London Porter" recipe (Durden Park Beer Circle) so already have the "control", but Chevallier is already specified and the hopping rate is almost 1/3rd. Hence "running"; i.e. it'll be ready quick! The recipe must be relying on black malt to provide enough bitterness?

[PeeBee]

My original reason for starting this thread was I wasn't happy that my Durden Park Beer Circle inspired "1850 Whitbread London Porter", which wasn't as lush as my earlier 1700s porter from 100% brown malt (contrived "recipe"). In particular I didn't care for the strong harsh charcoal elements introduced by the black malt. So I was developing schemes to temper the black malt in my next attempt.

One candidate to try was a recipe on Edd's Website: T & G Greenall's 1862 Porter. It packed in all the schemes I was thinking of; Chevallier barley malt, traditional (diastatic) brown malt, black malt used in other than the boil. It had got the lot. I searched Edd's site but couldn't find a similar recipe as back-up. Well, (patent) black malt wasn't around until 1817, brown malt wasn't being replaced by drum roasted brown malt until then either (so I'd "concluded") and Edd wasn't exploring records going that far back. So, with the bit t'ween teeth, I start looking back through Ron Pattinson's work, in particular his book "The Home Brewer's Guide to Vintage Beer".

Ron's recipes for Barclay Perkin's TT (Porter) 1804 and 1821 nicely bracketed the period of change from traditional brown malt to patent black malt. But the recipes came together with Ron's favourite ingredient to share:

Canned worms!

There's more to the transfer of "old" brown malt to "new" brown malt (the old methods were still in use early in 20th century ... how do you tell which is used?). Some early recipes for Porter using black malt were using <1% of the stuff. There's more to black malt than I was imagining (which might explain some of the large quantities used). The Greenall early recipe for Porter isn't necessarily so uncommon.

I'm not wanting to make exact copies of old beers, but I'd like to think I was in the same ball park. At the moment I'm not thinking anywhere near. Work-in-progress (oh no, not another!). Along the way I've ordered this guy's book to get in the right mindset (I'm not actually wanting to make historical brown malt ... yet!).

[PeeBee]

I'm still working at this!

I'm reaching the conclusion that the T & G Greenall's 1862 Porter recipe isn't an unusual "one-off" but more the "norm". That Black Malt burst on to the scene in 1817 heralding quite a change in Porter creations, but the new fangled rotating cylinder kilns that create Black Malt did not herald the sudden creation of "modern-style" (non-diastatic) Brown Malt. The old kilning methods carried on another 100 years but brown malt making might of been tweaked to create darker (and non-diastatic) brown malts to compensate for lower quantities used as pale and black malt (and amber malt in some cases) took it's place.

I'm sure "modern" style brown malt (from rotating cylinder kilns) was played with, but there doesn't seem to be dates or specifications coming from the acknowledged historians (Ron Pattinson is often describing brown malt as "difficult to tie down"). Durden Park Beer Circle were forced to create their own amber and brown malts for their recreations ('cos it would be difficult to find these malts 50 years ago) which ironically would bare more resemblance to historic brown malts than modern brown malts.

Black malts was originally created to replace the banned colourants used (prior to 1816). So would have started out as a colour addition, probably to the boil, in small quantities (1-2%) and experimenting with larger quantities in the mash would come later as people developed a taste for it. Pale malt was already replacing brown malt before 1817 (for economic reasons) but this reduced the colour that people expected.

So whatever I plan to do for my next Porter (Options 1-3 above) is going to include Option 1 (contrived "assembly" of historic brown malt) whatever else I do. Or make my own brown malt?

Modern brown malt is a red herring, and has no place in reconstructions of historic Porter.

I'll go to work on my contrived brown malt emulation (you might of not heard the last of this!).

[Be warned! I am not a historian and will make decisions based on conjecture (i.e. what suits me!), but with a good bit of what the historians tell us thrown in.]

[PeeBee]

An outline of how I go about "contriving" a historic malt. It's far from perfect, but a lot more practical than trying to create the stuff from scratch.

As a reminder of what is trying to be achieved, this is modern brown malt:

[EDIT: Sorry, those pictures were rubbish and didn't show what I was trying to achieve at all. So I've deleted them! Basically, modern brown malt is a uniform colour, in and out, and not diastatic. Historic brown malt had colours all over the place (some singeing) but was predominantly pale and could be diastatic. Check out brown malt making at this site https://brewingbeerthehardway.wordpress ... rown-malt/ - experimental archaeology? - and even buy his book if you want (I did)]

I use a statistical construct, a distribution curve, to constrain my selection of modern malts to "emulate" a target historic malt. This keeps selections within "sensible" boundaries, but only dictates the shape of the curve (representing the relative proportions of different malts), not the span or the "belly" of the curve (representing the span of colours and the magnitude of different proportions). The last two still requires a bit of personal judgement to keep it sensible (same as selected the temperature and timing of the kiln).

Note this is only covering colour, I'll deal with other kilning characteristics (initial moisture of grain and kilning time) in Part II.

Because the span represents the differing colours, and the malt will comprise of mainly lighter colours, the curve is "skewed" so most of the malt is selected from the lighter (and perhaps diastatic) colours. The curve will be a Distribution Curve with Positive (Right) Skew. The graph "x" (bottom) axis will be colour in EBC, the "y" (side) axis will be proportion (no specific units).

[piccie coming! No it's not! I give up trying to fix picture posts here, so the piccie that goes here is on page three. Fixed it! (Sort of).]


The bars (superimposed histogram graph) represent the different malts being used. The width of the bar (properly called a "bin") may vary as there will be far more malts selected in the lighter end than the darker. The size of the bins (height x width) represents the percentage of that malt used (100% being the sum of all the bins).

[EDIT: The appearance of "attachments" after this line is a very annoying bug. Ignore them, they might go away!]
[UPDATE: Still working on those piccies. The ones I don't want are gone, along with the one I do want! Geesh!]

[PeeBee]

If emulating historic brown/amber malt we need it to be diastatic, so the greater proportion of the malts will have to be pale malt and mild-ale malt (perhaps even low-colour or lager malt if covering the very light end of the spectrum).

Next up are the slightly darker malts and we have a choice of amber and Munich malts. Now Munich malt is made a little differently from Amber. Munich malts start off kilning at higher moisture levels and as a result encourage a bit of "stewing", caramelisation and Maillard reactions. Now brown malt production will have seen high levels of moisture so it is reasonable to opt for Munich malt (light and dark). Maybe some 100 EBC crystal? Maybe some 30 EBC caramalt could be included? We then get into modern brown malts which are reputed to have a strong distinct flavour, so some of this needs including.

If emulating historic amber malt, this is as far as you'd want to go.

For brown malt we enter the realms of crystal malts. With the historic stuff no doubt being started off in the kiln quite damp, there is certainly going to be some "stewing" and in-situ mashing resulting in some conversion (to sugars) and later caramelisation. So I'd want the inclusion of crystal malts, but probably limit the total amount to 5-10%. There will be a range to include too, from 135 EBC, to 200 EBC and even 400 EBC.

There will be low-colour chocolate and chocolate malts to finish off with. I probably wouldn't go darker than that (i.e. black malt).

There is no attempt here to emulate "blown malt" (the historic stuff was kilned so fast it would crack, pop or become "blown"). But I can't imagine this would have a profound impact on the flavour.

[PeeBee]

I forgot about this bit. But its presence is a bit controversial. Smoke!

I'm sure some of the reputable brewers did do their best to eliminate smoky flavours from their brown malt (using hornbeam, common back then, and Welsh anthracite, otherwise known as culm) because the drinking public didn't like it, but direct heat from the a kiln fuelled with wood or straw must introduce some smoke flavour even if using clean burning fuel like hornbeam (dried fern, probably means bracken, was the worst apparently; even worse than peat?).

When I did the 1750 porter recipe I did replace some of the pale malt in the contrived brown malt formula with smoked malt (Warminster Maltings, and relatively mild), 15% of total grain. The obvious smokiness matures out in a few months, but leaves an "old room" flavour that I thought was a fine addition (I could picture the result as a "historic" beer; not being a historian I think its very important to achieve what you feel is right rather than what might have actually been right).

As the 19th century progressed the kilns were fuelled with clean burning coke. But I read some suggestions that faggots of wood (like beech, birch or oak) were added on purpose to create a smoky flavour ("empyreumatic flavour")

[f00b4r]

Have you read the Fuggledog (and some other relevant discussion) threads on here about historic malt? Fuggledog has made diastic brown malt on more than one occasion and even a 100% brown beer with it.
There is some interesting info from Graham Wheeler in the thread too, as as well as discussion about the smokiness.
There is an absolute goldmine of information in the archives here scattered around - well worth resurrecting some old threads too as there are a lot of members here who may not post much nowadays but have often been part of this original experiments etc.

[PeeBee]

This was a surprise! Having previously posted a list of Edd's recipes (https://oldbeersandbrewing.blogspot.com/) for Porters, Stouts and Milds, I'd gone on to write:

... "Mild" in Victorian times was a description not a type of beer. "Mild" as in "not aged (stale)". But the recipes do share a feature with modern milds; as they weren't aged, they didn't require such high hop amounts (the Victorians did know hops had "preservative" power). ...

But included in that list was https://oldbeersandbrewing.blogspot.com ... d-ale.html Which is undoubtably a Victorian example of "mild" as a style, not just an unaged beer/pale-ale. A dark mild at that (loads of No.4 Invert Sugar).

Doesn't look a half bad recipe either. I'll have to add it to the "list".

[PeeBee]

Have you read the Fuggledog (and some other relevant discussion) threads on here about historic malt? ...

Got him! e.g. viewtopic.php?t=45740. That'll be a lot of reading, but it'll keep me out of mischief for a while. Thanks.

I'm trying to refine my "fabricated" brown malt approach, which would be within anyone's grasp, not just those willing to have a crack at really making brown malt. I know my approach isn't without precedence, Durden Park Beer Circle went about emulating an 18th century porter (https://durdenparkbeer.org.uk/index.php ... irca-1750/ plus loads of stuff in the CAMRA Stout & Porter book), including adding a good dose of crystal malt, some 50 years ago.

[Cobnut]

And strangely enough I've just found a paper which offers similar guidance. I believe it is based on the Durden Park beer circle's work, but available on the Anglian Craft Brewers website https://angliancraftbrewers.org.uk/. You will need to register as a member (FoC) in order to access the downloads.

[f00b4r]

PeeBee, have you also tried actually asking the Durden group how they formulated their recipes? I’m guessing they have not blindly come to their choices either and might have some very useful information/sources.

[Muttonchops]

A fascinating thread, as is the one that sparked it off (Mashing non-diastatic malt), so much so that I've come in off the sidelines to stick my oar in (if that isn't mixing metaphors).
Friends have sometimes asked me what the difference is between Porter and Stout, a question that I have even sometimes asked myself. Well, based on almost all the commercial brews I've tasted, the answer is 'not a lot'. But I've always reckoned there must be if you get it right and my image of a 'true' Porter has been somewhere between a lucious Old Ale and a Stout. So PeeBee's exploration of historic brown malts and how to emulate them with modern malts got me quite excited. One thing I absolutely agree with him on is that the roast malt should not be dominant - historically it just doesn't belong there. Rather like with a Mild Ale, you shouldn't realise its there, but would miss it if it wasn't.
Of course, unless someone chops down a bit of Epping Forest and makes some historic brown malt, we will never know what it really tasted like. The only historic description of Porter I've seen is 'dark, bitter and nutritious'. And without a 'standard', if such a thing ever existed, we won't know how close any modern day emulations are. But for the home brewer it's all in the fun of the chase and, hopefully, the glass of beer that we can sit back with and really enjoy. And I'm pretty sure that the quality standards of our homebrews are significantly higher than anything you would get in an 18th century or early 19th century alehouse!
Now, where's that oar? Ah, yes. I have a theory...
Everyone is familiar with India Pale Ale, brewed in Britain from about 1716 for export to our army and ex-pats in India. But this was only drunk by the officers and the administrators whose refined tastes were above those of the ordinary blokes who swigged back their Porter. Considerably more Porter was exported to India than Pale Ale, and like the Pale Ale it had to survive a sea voyage of 4-6 months. To do this it was made very strong (8-9% or more) and hopped to the hilt, probably with a goodly amount thrown in at the end. It is interesting that so many of these historic Porter recipes ask for a maturation period of 4-6 months, the same as a sea crossing to India. So was the same stuff made for the domestic market? The big brewers were financially sensitive, that's how they got stinking rich, so I doubt they would fork out the extra cost of malt and hops and the long storage period if they could get away with it. I suspect that the Porter for the domestic market was weaker, less hoppy and not matured for so long (and it wouldn't surprise me if the India Porter was watered down when it got over there). Besides, this was a nutritious drink to quench the thirst of the workers, for inebriation you went to a Gin Palace!
So when we think about Porter I think we should distinguish between an English Porter and an India Porter, and perhaps try to judge historic recipes in that light. At the end of last summer I brewed a Porter based on the Durden Park '1750' recipe. At 7% it wasn't quite as strong as they made it and not so heavily hopped. I kept it for four months (should have been six) and it was pretty good. Based on my theory, and also having this idea of emulating historic brown malt (the idea being picked up from the Durden Park site), I wanted to see if I could brew something less strong and with a shorter maturing period, three months maximum. This is what I came up with:

Warminster Maris Otter 34%
Crisp Chevallier 34%
Weyermann Rauch Malt 8%
Weyermann Acid Malt 1.8% (to help with my alkaline water)
Warminster Brown Malt 9.5%
Warminster Crystal Malt High Colour 9.5%
Warminster Chocolate Malt 3.2%
2 step mash, 45 minutes at 66 degrees, 60 minutes at 71 degrees (Chevallier needs a longer mash but I have probably been excessive).
70 minute boil with East Kent Goldings to 50 IBU, 15% being added 15 minutes before the end.
SG 1.065, FG 1.024, 5.7%ABV.
Three months maturing at 12 degrees with 4psi pressure.

After three months it's rounded and very good and I don't think it needs longer, but I'll try to keep some back to see. However, I'm not putting the recipe up to sing its praises or for others to use so much as to offer my own critique of it. It's dark, which ticks one box. It's bitter enough for me, but I don't like heavily hopped beers and prefer them just balanced which it is; others might like more but I'll tick the 'bitter' box. A friend described it as 'a meal in a glass', so that ticks the third box (nuritious). Oh, and Terry the postman reckoned it was the best beer he'd ever tasted, but I suspect that was just flattery! It certainly has that 'lucious' quality, probably from the Chevallier (not available in the 18th century so incorrect historically for early Porters). However, it's a bit roastier than I would have liked and I will cut that down to between 2 and 2.5% in the next attempt. The amber malt seems like a good idea to me so I'll swap out some crystal, and perhaps a bit of brown, for that - I think it will help with the lucious. Mild ale malt would have a place, too - am I correct in the understanding that it has greater diastatic properties? Finally, I will increase the hops just a tiny tad. Whether it will be a historically correct Porter or not I will not be able to say, but if it improves on what I have now it will be a stonkingly good beer and I'll just sit back and enjoy it!
But before I brew it I'll follow these investigations of brown malt emulation for a while and study all the recipes in Edd's blog and other links that PeeBee has included. It's all good thought-provoking stuff.
Thanks for the tips, PeeBee, you're on a bit of a roll here!

[PeeBee]

PeeBee, have you also tried actually asking the Durden group how they formulated their recipes? I’m guessing they have not blindly come to their choices either and might have some very useful information/sources.

Hang on! I haven't finished the first task you set me yet.

But that's a good point. It is easy to forget the Durden group is still active. Even though I still use their Web site that someone is obviously keeping up-to-date.

And then this "Muttonchops" appears and gives me the reading equivalent of War & Peace to read

[f00b4r]

PeeBee, have you also tried actually asking the Durden group how they formulated their recipes? I’m guessing they have not blindly come to their choices either and might have some very useful information/sources.

Hang on! I haven't finished the first task you set me yet.

But that's a good point. It is easy to forget the Durden group is still active. Even though I still use their Web site that someone is obviously keeping up-to-date.

And then this "Muttonchops" appears and gives me the reading equivalent of War & Peace to read

If I don’t keep you busy you just get into mischief.

[PeeBee]

PeeBee, have you also tried actually asking the Durden group how they formulated their recipes? I’m guessing they have not blindly come to their choices either and might have some very useful information/sources.

Still not yet! But I have noticed that I'm inadvertently putting up "my own version of history" which would leave me wide open to criticism if I don't sort it out first. I'm surprised no-one here has picked me up for it. Folk are perhaps being "nice" to me? But that's not a sentiment I'm used to around here.

This was a surprise! Having previously posted a list of Edd's recipes (https://oldbeersandbrewing.blogspot.com/) for Porters, Stouts and Milds, I'd gone on to write:

... "Mild" in Victorian times was a description not a type of beer. "Mild" as in "not aged (stale)". But the recipes do share a feature with modern milds; as they weren't aged, they didn't require such high hop amounts (the Victorians did know hops had "preservative" power). ...

But included in that list was https://oldbeersandbrewing.blogspot.com ... d-ale.html Which is undoubtedly a Victorian example of "mild" as a style, not just an unaged beer/pale-ale. A dark mild at that (loads of No.4 Invert Sugar).

Doesn't look a half bad recipe either. I'll have to add it to the "list".

There's actually loads of such recipes going back to the "Free Mash-Tun Act" of 1880 when sugar could be added again.

There's got to be a point "mild" as a new "style" of beer divides "mild" as a description of an unaged existing style of beer (mild pale ale, mild porter, etc.), but is such a "point" such a clear demarcation that I could say such a thing?

E.g. I'm suggesting a clear demarcation between Fast drinking pale ale and Early "Mild" ale. But apart from a big difference in ABV there is not a huge difference.

Hum. I'd see it as a good excuse to start a bun fight even if no-one else does.