finally got around to using all the bags of 'brown malt' i've been making lately. After having a go at a Whitbread Porter recipe posted by Ron Pattison on his blog (from 1811 - mostly pale malt with some brown but no black) i decided to try and have a go at an 'original style' porter from the mid 18th century, using a grist of 100% old high-dried brown malt. This is possibly similar to the old brown malts used in Butt-Beer, Stitch, Common Brown ale, and original porter, kilned over hornbeam. Here's a pic of the brown malt i was using (weighing it out for the recipe):
And crushed ready for mashing in:
to work out a recipe i looked at Ron Pattison's online summary of Combrune's "Theory and Practice of Brewing" (1762) in which the volumes of malt and weight of hops are given for different beers and ales of the period. In the text, the author recommends between 2.9 and 3.5 bushels of malt per barrel for porter. Ron calculated the corresponding OG as being between 1.055 to 1.067 (average OG of 1.060).
For the hopping rate, Ron observed that roughly 4x the quantity of hops were used in 'beers' of the period in comparison with an 'ale' of similar grist and OG. I converted the hopping rate stated for 'strong brown ale’ in London and Country Brewer (1736, p. 73), to a hypothetical porter of a similar gravity (1.090), then scaled the recipe back (malt and hops) to a gravity of 1.060. In beersmith this resulted in an IBU of 60 (using Fuggles, - one of the closest 'modern' hops to the older varieties, this batch at 3.8 alpha). However it is not clear whether these were all 'new' hops or a mixture of old and new, or just aged hops. There is a paragraph in the text that mentions that the 'best' hops should be aged a year, so this would further reduce the IBU. I decided, based on the fact the beer will be drunk 'mild' this time around (intended for a x-mas do) to reduce the IBU to around 50. This gives a 'buffer' of around 10 IBU's for loss of alpha acid due to age and for vatting the beer. Next time i'll go for the full 60IBU and age properly, which i think at this time was still only about 4-6 months.
ok so on to the brew. Here's the recipe:
Recipe: Original Porter (1762) TYPE: All Grain
Style: Specialty Beer
---RECIPE SPECIFICATIONS-----------------------------------------------
SRM: 108.0 EBC
IBU: 50.2 IBUs Tinseth
OG: 1.060 SG
FG: 1.017 SG
Calories: 572.2 kcal/l Est ABV: 5.6 %
EE%: 72.00 % Batch: 23.00 l Boil: 29.09 l BT: 90 Mins
---WATER CHEMISTRY ADDITIONS----------------
Amt Name
40.00 l London, England
4.00 g Chalk (Mash 60.0 mins)
2.00 g Baking Soda (Mash 60.0 mins)
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
7.600 kg High-Dried Brown Malt (Hornbeam Batch 1) Grain 4 100.0 %
Total Grain Weight: 7.600 kg Total Hops: 112.00 g oz.
---MASH PROCESS------MASH PH:5.40 ------
>>>>>>>>>>-ADD WATER CHEMICALS BEFORE GRAINS!!<<<<<<<
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 19.82 l of water at 75.7 C 68.9 C 45 min
---SPARGE PROCESS---
Drain mash tun, Batch sparge with 2 steps (18.88l, 10.36l) of 75.6 C water
---BOIL PROCESS-----------------------------
Est Pre_Boil Gravity: 1.052 SG Est OG: 1.060 SG
The intention was to brew 46L to fill an oak firkin (a purchase from Alastair Simms, poss last Master cooper in the UK for beer casks?), and a few litres for bottling. As I don’t have room in my kit for that brew length I brewed this twice over a weekend then mixed both gyles together in a large fermenting bin.
Day 1: well in summary a bit of a failure… I mixed several batches of brown malt, a) batch of blown brown I’d malted myself (initially diastatic but had to kiln it a second time to dry it which killed off the last few enzymes), b) some very ‘high-dried’ brown that was probably pushing it a bit. I mashed in and realised the software was set to try and fit everything in my little picnic cooler no matter what – result: extremely stiff mash. I also stupidly went for a high temp mash (70C) for lots of body. Ultimately it failed to convert. I knew the high-brown stuff could convert, but I reasoned that perhaps with so few enzymes a slight over shoot on the temp could have destroyed them (all my ‘experiments’ had been around 66C). I think in one of those old text books someone mentions mashing cool to counter the ‘fire in the malt’ or something like that. Anyway seemed to be sound advice that I should have paid more attention to. With the non-diastatic blown malt on board and almost no liquid medium for the enzymes to ‘get around’ in, it wasn’t a good look. After a lot of waiting, swearing, waiting, fussing etc. I eventually mixed in 2 kg of pale ale malt and it converted. Phew.
Day2: much, much better day. I used 100% brown malt again but didn’t use the non-diastatic stuff, and kept the mash at a more normal sloppy ‘porridge-like’ state. Mashed in to hit 66C. converted in 1.5 hours no problem – was so excited (100% hornbeam kilned brown malt grist! Huray!).
Used up some fuggles and other low alpha hops I had lying around using first-wort hopping approach which apparently was quite common back then (although steeped in water rather than the wort).
Recirculating the first runnings:
Running off the wort (pre-hop addition):
After the boil, took some pics of the wort (note pint of bitter – just for comparison of course):
A view of the colour of the wort post-boil, held up to the light:
A view of a pint glass of the wort to get a sense of what the beer might look like as, well, a pint.
Interesting colour. Looks almost black in a pint glass until you hold it up to a very bright light and then it looks a dark ruby red. Darker than the 1811 porter although I guess that’s to be expected, but not like a modern stout. Still can't get over it just being 100% brown malt, no black, choc etc. Really looking forward to trying this from the cask at Christmas and will post an update when its ready for drinking.
