Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Fri Feb 25, 2022 5:59 pm

Hang-on ... my last post doesn't add up with the 1849 Whitbread Porter I attempted to emulate last year (detailed earlier in this thread). This is the clip from the table that was based on (most years clipped out to only show the relevant 1844 year):
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Same book, no doubt the same source for the information. But where has that black malt popped up from? If you add the black malt and brown malt together you do get the amount of brown malt from the previous table where no black malt is recorded (near enough; results to two decimal places can be a little too accurate).

And to think I posted "well-respected Ron Pattinson" ... the... the... the absolute bounder! I'll need to have words with him :D .
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Sat Feb 26, 2022 12:03 pm

I couldn't let this lie! A bit more snooping around and I got the impression Whitbread were an early adopter of black malt. Wish I was more diligent recording references, but this is interesting ("Fuggledog" doing what I'm doing, but the hard way - really making brown malt, - and ten years ago!) >here<

But I finally found the proof I needed, from none other than ... Ron Pattinson! The same book too (Porter!). He was obviously having a "senior moment" writing that earlier snip I posted. Well, we can allow the odd "off-day" (I have loads).
Whitbread Porter 1805 - 1819
... <cut> ...
Just one year later, in 1817, it arrived in the form of Wheeler's patent malt. Malt that was roasted in a drum to give it a very high degree of colour. Being malt, it was perfectly legal for brewers to use. You'll see below just how quickly Whitbread adopted it.

The amount of black malt in the grist was initially very small. Less than 1%. That would change later. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. That will be the subject of further posts. As I investigate Whitbread Porter in my trademark ridiculous level of detail.
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Pattinson, Ronald. Porter! (Mega Book Series) (Kindle Locations 17562-17577). Kilderkin. Kindle Edition.
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Brewhouse Efficiency

Post by PeeBee » Tue Mar 01, 2022 11:04 am

As I'm not likely to wander into the 18th century for a few months, I thought I'd take a few more swipes at 19th century beer emulations:

I'd been troubled by this idea of "brewhouse efficiency". Tweaking translated brewery recipes based on "brewhouse efficiency" is all about adjust quantities to get the right OG. But the tweak is applied to ingredients that play no part in the "efficiency", either because there's nothing to extract, or all the "extract" is already in the form of sugars. So, these ingredients should not be tweaked. The obvious one (for me!) is black malt! Our "brewhouse efficiency" can't be as good as big breweries because the proportion of equipment losses has to be greater for smaller kit, but to compensate you should only be adjusting the percentage of ingredients that contribute extract only after being mashed.

All too controversial and complicated? On another forum I learnt this is already done (in Germany). And they have a name for it! "Sudhausausbeute".

Thanks to Kristoffer for pointing this one out. You can read about it >here<.
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Using Multiple Sources for Base Malts

Post by PeeBee » Tue Mar 01, 2022 11:19 am

Another useful bit of information I gleaned in preparing to brew these old recipes:

It comes from Graham Wheeler himself! It is about ten years old so take that into account ... viewtopic.php?t=39388#p416969

The entire thread is "entertaining". A bun fight: only read further into it if you have a strong constitution! It involves Kristen England, Ron Pattinson, as well as Graham.
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by f00b4r » Tue Mar 01, 2022 5:37 pm

PeeBee wrote:As I'm not likely to wander into the 18th century for a few months, I thought I'd take a few more swipes at 19th century beer emulations:

I'd been troubled by this idea of "brewhouse efficiency". Tweaking translated brewery recipes based on "brewhouse efficiency" is all about adjust quantities to get the right OG. But the tweak is applied to ingredients that play no part in the "efficiency", either because there's nothing to extract, or all the "extract" is already in the form of sugars. So, these ingredients should not be tweaked. The obvious one (for me!) is black malt! Our "brewhouse efficiency" can't be as good as big breweries because the proportion of equipment losses has to be greater for smaller kit, but to compensate you should only be adjusting the percentage of ingredients that contribute extract only after being mashed.

All too controversial and complicated? On another forum I learnt this is already done (in Germany). And they have a name for it! "Sudhausausbeute".

Thanks to Kristoffer for pointing this one out. You can read about it >here<.
I think you have misunderstood about Sudhausausbeute, as far as I am aware and what Kristoffer has said is that it is just a different measure of brewhouse efficiency, so isn’t really that relevant which system is used.
The question around translating recipes is really interesting though. Just adjusting the base malt(s) though may also be a far to simplistic approach, maybe it means that it reduces errors at one end but introduces others by fixing the amounts of all of the other parts of the grist? Also surely brewing sugars would not change in efficiency between commercial and home brew setups.

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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Tue Mar 01, 2022 7:48 pm

f00b4r wrote:
Tue Mar 01, 2022 5:37 pm
I think you have misunderstood about Sudhausausbeute, ...
I think you're probably right. The word "Sudhausausbeute" just seems to translate (Google!) as "Brewhouse Yield". But I think I was picking up what Kristoffer was trying to put over? He was certainly agreeing with how I was interpreting what he said.

So perhaps I haven't got a name for it, but I don't seem to be alone struggling with the distortion to homebrew recipes translated from commercial brewery records.

I'll apply my trademark brewing principles to come up with something frighteningly complicated! :twisted:
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by f00b4r » Tue Mar 01, 2022 7:52 pm

Shall I complicate things further by telling you that modern breweries can get greater than 100% mash efficiency?

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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Thu Jun 23, 2022 12:33 pm

WallyBrew wrote:
Tue Jun 21, 2022 3:33 pm
...
So another bit.......
The brown Malt is the soonest and highest dryed of any, even till it is so hard, that it's difficult to bite some of its corns asunder, and is often so crusted or burnt, that the farinous part loses a great deal of its essential salts and vital property, which frequently deceives its ignorant brewer, that hopes to draw as much drink from a quarter of this, as he does from pale or amber sorts. This malt by some is thought to occasion the Gravel and Stone, besides what is commonly called the Heart-burn; and is by its steely nature less nourishing than the pale or amber malts, being very much impregnated with the fiery fumiferous particles of the kiln, and therefore its drink sooner becomes sharp and acid than that made from the pale or amber sorts, if they are all fairly brewed. For this reason the London brewers mostly use the Thames or New River waters to brew this malt with, for the sake of its soft nature, whereby it agrees with the harsh qualities of it better than any of the well or other hard sorts, and makes a luscious ale for a little while, and a But-beer that will keep very well five or six months, but after that time it generally grows stale, notwithstanding there be ten or twelve bushels allowed to the Hogshead, and it be hopped accordingly.
So you need a brown malt that has been treated more harshly than the brown you can get so you may want to try to burn a bit of it in the oven or cook some on the barbecue with some straw to get that authentic flavour :shock: ...
Sorry Wally, I've dragged your reply from another (related) post to one that's more relevant to what you're saying. I'll leave the other post to be attempting to drum up info on 18th Century hop rates:

You quote from what seems to be mid-18th, 17th Century malting practices? Exactly where I'm heading with brewing "Stitch"-like ales (and then perhaps some brown beers from that era?). I had been considering some "post-assembly" treatment of my brown malt emulations using a barbeque in an attempt to "meld" the different emulation components to something more "as-one". My 1804 Barclay Perkins TT attempt (I was still using "diastatic" emulation, although I'm gathering by that time brown malt was becoming increasingly darker and "non-diastatic") wasn't getting what I hoped from the emulation; flavours "too modern", although that is a very subjective conclusion. Using straw to get the "authentic" edge isn't something I'd thought of: Thanks for that!

The mention of "fiery fumiferous particles" worries me! I know "brown malt" was responsible for burning down many a malt house, and during the 19th Century when "brown malt" was reduced to only 10-20% of the grist the urge to recreate the lost flavours (relative to using 100% brown malt) resulted in an increased fire risk!

I'm fortunate that my mucking about with brown malt is coinciding with Ron Pattinson's current drive on "brown malt". Although he's distracting me be also having a drive on "Invert Sugar".
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Thu Nov 17, 2022 12:28 pm

After a year of distractions brewing with "Invert Sugars", I'm back brewing with emulated 17th/18th century brown malt (the diastatic sort).

First off, a recipe based on the interpretation of "Stitch" from "London and Country 1736" (CAMRA's "Homebrew Classics Stout and Porter" Pg.76). Quite a task, I've never attempted brewing an "Ale" before (a historical "Ale"). A hopped Ale that is. There are a few things to get used to: Like the bitterness from hops is estimated as 9IBUs (I chickened out and upped it to 10.5), it's 100% "brown malt" giving an OG of about 1.070, fermentation is warm compared to beer (I've gone for 24°C), and FG should be pretty high (I'm aiming for 1.025 - 1.030 by mashing at 69-71°C ... it will be sweet, but dextrin, like malt-triose, isn't that sweet) 'cos it provided a large proportion of carbohydrate for the soldiers and farmers drinking it. And by the 18th century consumer pressure had got rid of most of the smokiness from drying the malt, but in the 17th century the malt was usually very smoky.

I've used smoked malt in my brown emulation, but it was over a year old and most of the stench had dissipated. The resultant wort in a pyknometer bottle looked like this (yes, I know the bottle is properly filled for weighing, but it was filled properly and has just "evaporated" a tiny bit).
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Pretty black! But nothing darker than a scrap of pale chocolate malt in that.

Fermenting away at 24°C at present. Whitebread's yeast used (Wyeast #1099) because it's quite impossible to determine what was used (they didn't even know about "yeast"), but it is malt-triose averse, and I can at least understand it a little.
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by IPA » Thu Nov 17, 2022 4:33 pm

PeeBee said.
"but in the 17th century the malt was usually very smoky."
Are you old enough to have tasted it :) :)
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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:57 am

I'm not very practiced at my "Ale" ferments (i.e. I've never done one!), so missed the target by quite a way. Still, I was cheating using a "modern" yeast culture (the guys back then hadn't heard of yeast ... it was "Godisgood" and the eggheads thought the mucky sediment that appeared was the waste product from a chemical reaction), guessing as to what the target should be (I was aiming for 1.027) and guessing as to what "warm" might mean for fermentation (I picked 24-25°C, as high as Wyeast recommended for that yeast):
Screenshot 2022-11-19 094605.jpg
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I've had a taster ... this will be radically different to any "beer" I've made! And not because of the skimpy amount of hops, but that level of unfermentable carbohydrate makes it "interesting". Smokiness is disappointing, perhaps it needed a more recent sample?

It would have been a "common brown ale". 1.060-70 might sound strong, but as it's resulting in about 5% alcohol it isn't that strong. They would have been brewing the "common brown beer" ("Butt beer" - the precursor to 18th century Porter) about that time too.

I think I could do with some input from anyone else who's attempted brewing historical ales?

On the hardware side: Notice the temperature. The Grainfather fermenter was set to 24-25°C. Quite a temperature gradient in those fermenters. At start up I thought the probe was bust but look how the temperature rises once fermentation starts stirring things up.





IPA wrote:
Thu Nov 17, 2022 4:33 pm
PeeBee said.
"but in the 17th century the malt was usually very smoky."
Are you old enough to have tasted it :) :)
Don't be daft! 'Cause [EDIT: "Of course" ... oops! But I'm old enough to forget me grammar ... did I ever know it?] I'm not. I met this guy in the Pub who gave me the phone number for his mate in the 1600s. Bit of language difficulty but okay if I only ask yes-no questions.

Only costs me £2000 per annum (cash only, which is a bummer). A snip! I'm so lucky to stumble on such a resource.
Last edited by PeeBee on Mon Nov 21, 2022 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Mon Nov 21, 2022 6:41 pm

PeeBee wrote:
Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:57 am
... the guys back then hadn't heard of yeast ... it was "Godisgood" and the eggheads thought the mucky sediment that appeared was the waste product from a chemical reaction ...
Someone was looking out for me! Sent me this link: When did people start reusing yeast?
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Sat Nov 26, 2022 8:40 pm

The "Stitch" ale got casked yesterday. It was a moment I was dreading! I'd tasted it a week ago when it was getting a desperate rousing (which had zilch effect). Tasted of raw wort before you bring it to boil and toss hops in. So, I held my breath and took a sip ...
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Well . It wasn't 'arf bad! Not horrendously sweet and raw tasting at all. Thick, dark and (presumably) nutritious (where have I heard that line before?). The rest (of the sample, not the barrel!) quickly followed. Some things stuck me (hoy, can you stop chucking them bricks about). It really could do with some aromatic flavours, like "Bog Myrtle" and perhaps other components of a "gruit" (I never knew "Myrtle" was hallucinogenic, and poisonous!) . But more surprising, I was happily drinking a SG1.070 beer less than two weeks old.

It was of course lacking any carbonation, and possible best kept that way (I'll let develop a small amount of fizz, say 1.0 "volumes", if only to keep the Corny keg lid sealed).



But to put it in perspective, I prefer a "regular" beer, and I'm well aware that a lot of people would hate this stuff.

Going forward, I'd like to convert this "Stitch" ale to a "beer" of that time. Something like the Dutch labourers had introduced, and the Army was brewing for their soldiers (!!! - apparently the army liked "beer" 'cos it kept better than "ale"). But I'm not finding much idea of the difference (apart from more hops ... beer was fermented cooler and could be fermented during the Summer in larger volumes 'cos fermentation wouldn't get out-of-control hot ... why was that???).

Those old "beers" must have still used the dark, smoke-reeking, "brown malt", 'cos the paler classy stuff for the likes of "Darby Ale" and the later (early 1700s) "Burton Ale" was only for the rich (like Samuel Pepys who did mention it).

I presume the "beer" of the time was well under attenuated like this ale I've been messing with. Because the army wouldn't be mucking with it if it wasn't effectively feeding their soldiers? Low attenuation would also explain why early 18th century beers dug out by DPBC had (seemingly) such crazy strong potential alcohol content. I think if I was to repeat this "Stitch" I'd be looking for an OG of over 1.100 to get a decent alcohol content (say 8% ABV, like Ron Pattinson recently suggested for "Stitch" in a "throw-away" comment on his Blog).



Not far to go. I only want a decent stab at what the soldiers were drinking while beating the hell out of each other in the English Civil War.
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by Eric » Sat Nov 26, 2022 9:31 pm

Fascinating to read PeeBee. Your mention of beer for soldiers reminded me of reading about beer supplies during the Hundred Years War, which, of course, was earlier than the period you cover here. British troops demanded British Ale and there were the inevitably vital logistics problems to prepare for action.

I've read much suggesting early British beer was made with relatively few hops, and while there was most certainly a period when hops were not used in Britain when they were in other parts, it is my belief that during the period you cover here, that the move to Beer from the Ale of old was a technological change by brewers to cheapen the product, in no insignificant part by the newer product having fewer hops.
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Re: Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Sun Nov 27, 2022 9:16 pm

Cheers Eric :thumbsup:

Couple of things I forgot.

That CAMRA "Stout and Porter" is a fine reference but some of the older recipes are a bit dodgy! I think the draft got scattered in the wind on the way to the printers: The "Stitch" was fairly easy to sort out 'cos it included an approximation of hop bitterness (in IBUs) as well as the estimated amount of hops. 88 grams of 5% alpha acid hops in 23L wort does not equal 9 IBUs! Some of the other recipes have no such cross reference and some very suspicious values.

Re-reading the book it does mention "Ales" were covered during fermentation to help prevent infections. Beer was fermented in open vats, the hops providing some protection from infections. The open fermenters kept things cooler whereas the covered fermenters held in the heat and could only be used outside the summer months. That explains that reasoning - missed it first time I read through.
Cask-conditioned style ale out of a keg/Cornie (the "treatise"): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwzEv5 ... rDKRMjcO1g
Water report demystified (the "Defuddler"; removes the nonsense!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

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