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

[PeeBee]

The next two brews I'm planning from this era are a 1835 Stout from Black's (Aberdeen) and an alternative (Whitbread) to DPBC's choice of 1850 Whitbread London Porter. All this digging about in the history hi-lights a bit of irony in these choices of beer:

My earlier clone brew (now awaiting casking) was Cobb & Co's 1823 Amber Small Beer. Cobb (of Margate) was a very old brewery going back to the early 1700's. Cobb's success perhaps lent on the even earlier (1600's) glowing reputation of "Margate Ale". Cobb & Co kept going into the late 1960's when it was taken over, and subsequently shut, by one of the "Big Six" predatory breweries back then ... Whitbread!

http://abetterbeerblog427.com/2017/09/2 ... h-ale-and/

Black's had a more torturous decline, but it wasn't Whitbread that eventually saw them off.


I may have gleaned enough to have a go at a 17th Century (1600's) inspired hopped ale (not beer) after that. And it wont be "Mum" (I do not fancy beans in my ale)!

[PeeBee]

1849 Whitbread's London Porter under way. Using the "fabricated" pre-20th Century malt emulations. Chevallier barley malt makes up the majority of the "pale malt" emulation, but no special treatment for mashing so a high finishing gravity is expected. The recipe has been lifted from Ron Pattinson's work "Porter!" (Mega Book Series) Kindle Edition, Whitbread's brewing books, dated 1st August 1849. It's been chosen as an alternative to DPBC's well known, but seemingly badly translated (in their 1975 booklet) 1850 recipe (modern brown malt and too much black malt).

This is a mid-19th Century recipe when Porter was in decline, although Whitbread were still using the old "vatting" method (not being copied here). It is a test of my "brown malt" emulations as it would have been unlikely that "cylinder roasted" brown malt would have been used at that time. I've also emulated old style pale malt although it could have been possible they were using rotating cylinder kilns for that? But have used malt created from Chevallier barley which was prevalent at that time. And black malt, for which the rotating cylinder kilns were developed.

I haven't been too concerned about yeast, and am using a maltose [EDIT: "Maltose"? Maltotriose, or dextrines, I think I meant to say!] adverse dried S-33 yeast.

20210715_084822_WEB.jpg (72.91 KiB) Viewed 6782 times

The grains, in about the proportions used. They were mashed "full-boil-length-mash" (i.e. no-sparge, much like BIAB) for 75 minutes 67C followed by 30 min at 70C (including rise). This all went to plan, as did boil (75 minutes) with 130g Goldings (plus 45g pelleted Goldings half way through boil in a hop spider). Then the problems started: All too much for the Grainfather kiddie pump. An afternoon jugging out the beer into FV and arranging alternative cooling.

The TILT played up dramatically during fermentation (18-20C) but I should have a batch of "authentic" Porter to cask in a week or so.

[PeeBee]

Ah, despite my TILT denial those mashing figures I wrote in the last post aroused some suspicion. Quick check of my notes and ... I only mashed for 45 minutes at 67C, not 75 minutes.

Even my own earlier posts in other threads recommend mashing Chevallier barley malt longer than that. Chevallier does need a bit of gentle handling. I cave in and make a swift check with a refractometer. 1.027 ... funny, that's exactly what my TILT has been trying to tell me.

Bit of a gentle rousing and in goes a (unauthentic!) 1/2 pack of S-04.

[PeeBee]

No conclusive reanimation of fermentation. Still flat-lining according to the TILT. But, early days ... ?

But some good can come of this? 17th/18th Century "Ales" did finish high apparently (what can be gleaned from recent Web researches) and this "abusing" Chevallier barley malt to get high FG might yet come in handy (even if Chevallier barley didn't exist at the time). Old Scottish recipes seemed to have very high FGs too. Being able to significantly tune down attenuation might well come in useful.

[PeeBee]

1849 Whitbread's London Porter under way. Using the "fabricated" pre-20th Century malt emulations. …

Underway, but soon to halt at SG 1.027 'cos of a "miscalculation" with Chevallier barley malt (only mashed @ 67°C for 45 minutes and I originally intended 75). But after a bit of rousing it shifted down ... only to stop again at 1.025. After two weeks I'm looking to cask it but am met with:

20210731_104444_WEB.jpg (35.17 KiB) Viewed 6663 times

So I'll give it a day or two longer. Morel: Treat Chevallier barley malt a bit carefully, it's not the same as modern malt.

Anyway, that's not why I started this post.

… It is a test of my "brown malt" emulations as it would have been unlikely that "cylinder roasted" brown malt would have been used at that time. …

I did know that as brown malt was replaced with pale malt it was kilned hotter to increase colour at the expense of ability to convert its fermentables, but perhaps I'm guilty of under-stating this? Reading through Ron Pattinson's "Porter!" book (again) it seems this would have been more common mid-19th Century. The emulation I'm using is based on the 17-18th Century descriptions (with increasing effort to eliminate smokiness in the 18th). For mid-19th Century brown malt the "curve" would have the apex shifted further right (darker colour, even less, or no, enzyme activity).

The 19th Century also saw increased use of smoke as a flavour for Porter whereas the 18th Century it was all about eliminating smoky flavour. The increasing use of rotating kilns (1850-ish) would then end the smokiness as it was using indirect heat. Perhaps these moves also saw the reduction of "crystal" components as drying ahead of kilning might of been more careful, complete and cooler so less chance to stew. Popping (snapping, whatever) seem to take on more emphasis (why?). (Also at https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/200 ... -malt.html and a number of follow-up blog posts). The reasons to tweak the emulation for these later Porters seem endless.

Finally: Grubbing about in Ron's work turned up the likes of "1804 Barclay Perkins Table Beer". Only OG about 1.030 and IBUs less than 20. Apparently brewed to fit in to the low tax bracket, although Ron speculates it could be used to "water down" the Porter sold in unscrupulous Pubs. No black malt (not invented) but lots of brown and amber malt with the pale (about 1:1:1). Look great to try my emulated malts on! Drunk "mild" (unaged) but these "Table Porters" were in no way "mild ales": Don't make that tempting connection. (In his books, but also https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/sea ... ble+porter).

[PeeBee]

This is a better link for that "1804 Barclay Perkins Table Beer", although I prefer the one in the book "Home Brewer's Guide to Vintage Beer" (Ron Pattinson); well it's much stronger for a start (all of OG 1.030)!

https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/201 ... rclay.html

Though look at the tasting notes in that link: "... instantly turns tannic and grainy drying on the finish" - sounds lovely! This is what you get using "modern" amber and brown malts. It's the reason I'm trying to develop those "emulated" historical malts.

The "emulations" used for the 1849 Porter should be fine for this much earlier 1804 recipe. Minimal smoke, diastatic, assumption it was kilned "traditionally" (quite damp). These "table beers" should be great for playing with emulations, the (defective) 1849 Porter won't be ready for 3 months whereas these table beers are ready in 3 weeks.

Of course I could have just "invented" a scaled down version of the Porter for trials, but it's not the same is it.

[PeeBee]

Wayward (stuck) 1849 Whitbread Porter casked eventually. The additional S-04 yeast seemed to take a hold and after a week dropped the gravity down from 1.025 to 1.011. Target FG was 1.018, guess I can't have everything. The original S-33 yeast would not have attenuated so low. Initial indications are that this will be lighter on flavour than expected (but what should I have been expecting!); I should have tweaked the emulated "brown malt" to have been darker, more flavoursome and less diastatic (not diastatic even).

The Black's 1835 Brown Stout is ready to make, but I've probably missed Christmas 2021 for this one?

The Cobb & Co 1823 Amber Small Beer is now drinking:

20210816_200006_WEB.jpg (65.5 KiB) Viewed 6538 times

Darker in colour than previous "Victorian" pale beer attempts, but still quite drying and astringent (nothing like as bad as the previous attempt). I guess (after two attempts) this will be one of those beers I'm just not going to get excited about. There's nothing I'd be likely to change about it, except perhaps a bit lighter on the smoke as even the small amount used is quite noticeable and Georgian drinkers weren't keen at all on smoke and could perhaps reduce it some more? I also think the attenuation has been higher than it should have been?

Technically I'm fairly happy with the emulations. But on taste grounds nothing to make me deliriously happy just yet. Still, only one completion and one needing a couple of months on one side - too early for conclusions! And I'm still in the 19th Century!

[Eric]

Many thanks for your report. I look forward to further progress and your conclusions. A great mid-term report in an epic post.

[PeeBee]

Many thanks for your report. I look forward to further progress and your conclusions. A great mid-term report in an epic post.

Thanks Eric! I might be posting as a "blog", but I still welcome feedback. Otherwise I might really lose my way!

A small change to my last post: My keg cooling arrangements are being revamped at moment so last night the "Amber Small Beer" was serving at ambient temperature (18-19C) rather than 14-15C. Any astringency was mellowed a lot by this, but the smokiness was enhanced.

I can't guess how smoky the original Georgian stuff was, I only know from what I've read that smokiness was not appreciated and maltsters used ways to minimise it (e.g. coke and straw dried Derby malt for 17th Century for "Derby Ale" and later Burton Ale). But I'm not ecstatic about smoky flavour either (there's only 3% of Bestmalz beech smoked in that "Small Beer") so achieving the merest hint of smokiness for my tastes might be less smokiness than back then, but it should successfully emphasis the minimal smokiness in beer back then … at least to me!

So, for next time, even less smoke and perhaps less fermentation attenuation.

And for these "small" beers and "table" beers ambient temperature is fine: These beers were often drunk at home, not in Pubs with cool cellars, and even when bottled wouldn't have much carbonation? Refrigeration, ice-houses even, weren't available even to the rich until Victorian times. Many on this forum (me included) remember well ventilated "pantries" in kitchens to keep food/drink cooler in the 1960s, perhaps even the 70s? They weren't very effective in Summer! So warm (room temperature) small and table beer seems most likely for most folk in Georgian times. (A cellar was for coal!).

Fortunate for me who thinks even the "accepted" beer cellar temperature (13C) is a bit cold.

[Eric]

I don't have any beer cooling, well, I don't have a fridge for beer, so I mostly drink my beer near ambient and only rarely wish I had, but on those days G&T makes a nice change. Living near the North Sea, we rarely get long hot days and an ice cube in the beer glass requires less space and is a lot cheaper than a purpose built refrigerator.

Interesting the smoke is more noticeable while the astringency declined and I wonder if that might be simply a comparative increase as I would expect both to reduce with time, like many flavours do.

Let's be real, I don't suppose maltsters set out to increase smoke flavours in their malts, instead attempted to find an acceptable level or type of taste and aroma, so maybe you shouldn't get fixated on that, just that having some would make it more authentic than total absence. I think Derbyshire led the field in smoke free malts is as you say with coke kilning of malt apparently first perfected there from a suitable supply of coking coal. There was plenty of that also here in County Durham, just that there was a ready market for the product in London homes.

A for fermentation and attenuation, have you listed to this? Yeast and more?

[PeeBee]

…
Interesting the smoke is more noticeable while the astringency declined and I wonder if that might be simply a comparative increase as I would expect both to reduce with time, like many flavours do. …

Ha! So you fall foul of my favourite gripe. Claxons sound, lights flash (… I watch too much "QI" on the telly). "Astringency" isn't a flavour. Though I can't begin to explain why the sensation gets less with warmth? But cold stewed tea is often mentioned as a way of experiencing it. There seems to be doubt as to what causes "astringency" anyway, but I do like the idea that it's the saliva proteins being denatured in the salivary ducts (gives it a sort of "twilight zone" twist).

As for the yeast link: Yes, 'cos you have pointed me towards it before Must dig about those Brewlab yeasts 'cos I really miss those "corky, oaky" flavours that I used to get drinking "Real Ales" but don't seem to capture in home-brew (I was reminded in my first post-Covid visit to a Pub last weekend - we do have, admittedly rare, "Real Ale" Pubs in the secluded backwaters of North Wales!). This Pub was https://thecrowninn.wales/. I guess the woodsy flavours are yeast connected? And perhaps Brewlabs is the best place to find them, and I'd like them "unmodern" tastes in my historical beer attempts. I'm grubbing about stuff they've got on "attenuation" at the moment as I had a bit of trouble with my 1849 Whitbread Porter.

[Eric]

'There seems to be doubt as to what causes "astringency" anyway, .... reminds me of my early days of brewing with grain. I knew what caused it, my alkaline water, but how to control it with exactitude eluded me for yonks, or so it seemed, probably was. In your case it might have something to do with the grains used with the variation in darker malts from different maltsters and what homebrew suppliers stock.

Sadly Brewlab have not been responding well to homebrewer's requests of late. I don't if this might be due to the pandemic, or they purposely subcontracted the supply to the likes of us with this in mind. I've previously directly obtained some incredible yeasts and will be saddened if I cannot replace some when I've managed to kill them all. It could be well worth an email telling them what you are doing and what they might have and suggest for a yeast.

[PeeBee]

Wayward 1849 Whitbread Porter clone sampled. Bit early, but I wasn't for waiting longer:

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It's not brown no more! It's cleared to a deep garnet, undoubtable the black malt at work. It over-carbonated, but as experienced before with strong "stout", it doesn't really make much difference (apart from excess head). Very mellow, smooth flavour (at odds with it being over-carbonated), but not anything like my in-me-face "Porter" from a few years back (100% emulated brown malt, but a much cruder emulation).

Substantial bitterness, but even this young the bitterness is smothered by the maltiness. Adding black malt at the end of the mash so as only to provide colour, not harsh roast flavours certainly worked, but also made it obvious that the Porter could easily handle black malt added at the start with the rest of the mashed grain. There are "caramel" flavours for sure, but nothing like the powerful flavours when I made 100% brown malt Porter. Makes sense really, this is less than 20% (emulated) brown malt.

This Porter had fermented out much further than intended, in fact the SG in the glass (quick, dirty refractometer test) showed the FG (all primings have gone) to have continued to drop and was 1.008 (1.018 had been planned). Despite this the beer had ample mouthfeel and my partner's first comments were "this is sweet"! The effect of Chevallier barley no doubt. But it has less weight than imagined which makes it very hazardous ... it's approaching 7% ABV yet is very easy to quaff. It really needs that extra weight and even the edgy flavours of black malt. Smoke flavour is undetectable (didn't really want any, but just the hint it was there would have been nice).

There are some rough edges that could do with a little more time to see off, but I might be imagining it. I'll see. But the main question is; is it better than the dodgy, but popular, DPBC's take on a Whitbread 1850 Porter recipe that started me on this project? Of course it is! Loads of modern-day brown malt (and excess black malt) simply has no place in historical recreations.

The emulations appear to work, in that no one malt takes centre stage. It's easy to deceive one's self (well, deceive me that is) that it is made with just three malts and not the huge array of base and specialty modern malts that it's really made from.


BTW: Porter with tomatoes really sucks!

[PeeBee]

My current attempt is a porter from the last 1/4 of the Georgian period, a 1804 "TT" from Barclay Perkins; a period when there was no "black malt" (grubbed out by who else but Ron Pattinson).

Barclay Perkins TT ii.JPG (38.81 KiB) Viewed 6304 times

Appears to have finished fermenting. None of the "stuck ferments" of the earlier porter attempt! FG had been predicted as 1.018, so no problem with that yet.

The spreadsheet used to "calculate" the emulations can be downloaded from my Google drive:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... p=drive_fs

If its allowed to Google will display it in Google Sheets, but it's probably better downloaded and viewed in Excel? Being on a public area of my Google drive means it will be updated and therefore may change. I haven't got the "curves" in the spreadsheet yet, but for now they are the same as published earlier in the thread. Recent changes include altering the crystal malt contents "on-the-fly" without changing the "curves" ) just change the percentages of the connected malt components). The results are admittedly complex, and will remain so while I tweak them and only then start exploring how to simplify them.

There can be no hard and fast "right" answer to the emulations as in the 18th and 17th centuries everyone had there own ideas of the best way of making the malts; in particular "Amber Malt" would have covered a huge range of colours from a bit darker than Pale to a Lighter Brown malt, not just two as I've presented (inspired by DPBC). For the emulations just keep the ingredient list sensible and the "curves" will see to the blending.

My own feelings (from continued reading on the subject) is to darken the Amber Malt (more crystal too?) and perhaps the Brown. And perhaps weight the emulations depending on the period they supposed to cover: Smokier in the 17th century, less smoky (minimal) in the 18th with the dark amber and brown malts getting progressively darker and more flavoursome (at the expense of enzyme activity) as more Pale Malt was introduce, until the 19th century where rotating heated cylinders began replacing kilns in the 19th century (although kilns were still kept for finishing off brown and amber malts into the 20th century, even intentionally adding back a bit of smokiness). Basically, a lifetimes worth of farting about.

I also rustled up the "William Black's 1835 Brown Stout" (using the older emulations) which at that time could incorporate black malt so perhaps not so "brown"? But that wont be ready for quite a while (7-8% ABV). Recipe inspired by DPBC.

[PeeBee]

Digression to explain a slight change of tact. Ignore this post if you don't want to know!

In my quest to make the "emulations" simple, seems I was doing the opposite instead! The idea was to create a "curve" to represent the changing shades of colour in the kilned malt then squeeze the "curve" together so that the same curve can then represent a lighter coloured emulated malt.

Squeezing up the curve would shift the "mode" (most common value represented by the curve's peak) left, meaning the most common value gets lighter in colour. But this wouldn't happen. Instead the kiln would be running for longer and may involve more raking (keep heat in the grain bed more even). If anything, the peak would move right (the "mode" colour gets darker as the "mean" colour gets lighter).

So keeping it simple is the road to making it complicated and its doing my head in as a bonus prize.

This came to light because someone else looking into diastatic brown malt used an emulation containing lager (pilsner) malt to keep the diastatic activity high. Switching my own graphs to use pilsner malt doubled the amounts of coloured malts I could use. Hooray! And triggered cerebral meltdown. Boo!

So, for the sake of keeping my sanity (if I've any sanity left?) and not wandering into potentially impossible scenarios. I'll redraw my curves with a fixed left-hand profiles so all the "emulations" share the same "mode" base malt. Then I'm not suggesting one thing or the other!


All incomprehensible? Probably is. I'm trying to keep "transparency" in what I'm doing. I'm not trying to dictate a "solution", only present a "foundation" should anyone wish to build their own solution on top of it.