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

[PeeBee]

And this I found useful too when picking over the unexpected outcome of my "Stitch" recreation: The Theory of Mashing - BrauKaiser (it helped better than the "update"!). Combined with using a grain combination with a calculated "Diastatic Power" (DP) of about 30 (calculated) I guess I was fairly lucky to end up with something fermentable at all.

(I'm well aware that some have an unhelpful and simplistic belief that "30" is some sort of magic number with "DP"; anything less and the mash won't "self-convert". "DP" appears to be a ragtag parameter of malt grain that needs plenty of caution to get anything remotely useful out of it).

[PeeBee]

I was struggling a bit with "Ale". It's really quite difficult to find authoritative writings on the subject, though I had managed to glean "Ale" did finish with a high gravity, by mid-17th Century brewing was becoming industrialised, and "Ale" by mid-17th C. was most likely hopped rather than "gruit" infused. But searching on an entirely different subject (beerstone, which is messing up my heat-exchange's efficiency) I came across this: ancient malt and ale (Blog). The author, Graham Dineley, describes his Blog with "an archaeologist, a brewer and a blog about how the ale was made". Well, that should keep me in reading matter for a while!

He also links Merryn Dineley's (presumably his wife!) work/thesis here: Barley Malt and Ale in the Neolithic and The Ancient Magic of Malt. And in those there are enough references for a lifetime of reading.

Archeology! Okay, descends much further back in history than I want to go practically, but as I've found with this venture one's efforts need a solid foundation to avoid writing complete garbage. (There's plenty of garbage about these brewing forums, I need to try hard not to add to it).



I've lost the connection to the English Civil War re-enactment group that had me kicking off this "project" (the group had finished their "project" on the subject a while ago). We didn't see eye-to-eye (even when I am wearing my eye-patch) and that seems to have got me "blackballed". I was an odd addition to their group, I've no interest in "Re-enactments", so inevitable I suppose.

[PeeBee]

I'm drinking my "Ale" now, as there didn't seem to be much point maturing it (being "Ale", maturing it without all the modern-day equipment, careful sanitising and understanding of undesirable microbes, would have quickly led to something that wasn't "Ale"!). Initially I was pleased with producing something I could believe was "Ale" (hopped variety), but very quickly the doubts rolled in. Here it is, and after the initial shock of the flavour and mouthfeel of the stuff (although much was predictable) I'm really quite enjoying it:

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(Christmas card piccie; I don't really drink such piffling quantities, but to catch the light it was taken before noon, and I try not to be consuming alcohol that early!).

That colour! The recipe was based on an interpretation of 18th C. "Stitch" Ale recipe described in the 1736 edition of London & Country publication. But my brown malt emulation was based on later descriptions for "Porter". "Porter" brewing collected a number of shortcuts which perhaps kept the price down (which made it popular!) and this would include quick drying and kilning the sprouted barley which would deeply darken it (as mentioned previously, by caramelising the barley, there was a limit to charring the barley because it risked it bursting into flames). So, the malt was perhaps lighter in colour and not so caramelised? Another recipe derived that publication is for "Strong Butt-beer" does include a discussion mentioning "pale malt" and that "brown malt" was lighter than that later created for "Porter".

Lighter in colour wouldn't mean "pale malt" as we now know it, but most likely not as dark as my "emulation" has created my "Ale"?

Ahh, doubt and confusion, just what I don't want just now. And then there's the yeast (which they would not understand as we now do)!

[PeeBee]

After the Christmas excesses (for me, not all drinking too much homebrew, but also too much "healthy" walking ... groan, I hurt) first correct something I wrote earlier:

... I came across this: ancient malt and ale (Blog). The author, Graham Dineley, describes his Blog with "an archaeologist, a brewer and a blog about how the ale was made". ...

It's not "his" (Graham's) blog, it's his wife's (Merryn). He just "borrows" his wife's Blog to post some snippets now and again. Like I use this forum for my "Blog" posts (and here's another!). I didn't really need look further than the browser address bar to figure that out, things just take longer to sink in these days.

Graham posted a very prophetic piece in another of his posts. This quoting John Tyndall FRS, extracted from his speech on "Fermentation" amongst the Glasgow Science Lectures of October 19th 1876:

Our prehistoric fathers may have been savages, but they were clever and observant ones ... the art and practice of the brewer are founded on empirical observation ... the brewer learnt from long experience the conditions not the reasons for success

Not sure about the "savages" bit, but condensing those "long experiences" is what I'm trying to achieve with all my waffling. I don't have the time to build my own "long experiences" (though this project seems to be taking me forever) so I'm condensing whatever I can find of other peoples' experiences. And it's a good reminder not to dwell too much with the scientist view ("reasons for success") and remember to soak up the everyday persons' view ("conditions for success"). Easy to forget from our "enlightened" modern day viewpoint. I.E. Don't get bogged down looking for the "reasons" these brewers did anything because they were working to an unfathomable (to us) set of reasons.

"Thought for today" brought to you by PeeBee. About the most unreliable thinker I can (unreliably) think of.

[PeeBee]

"Ale" to see the New Year in! But as previously mentioned, the "Brown Malt" used to create it I don't believe would be representative of that era.

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So, I've attempted to make a diagrammatical representation of "Brown Malt" through the last four centuries (1600s to 1900s):

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This only summarises the available brown malt through time. There is no scale! It provides me with a better means of judging the type of brown malt to formulate for a particular ale or beer. I'll explain it better in a follow-up post, but the most dramatic change occurs as pale malt increasingly substitutes "brown malt" in the early 1800, late 1700s: Diastatic brown malt dwindles, being replaced by non-diastatic brown malts (stronger in colour and flavour). And "Amber Malts" are carved off as separate entities.

Serving that "Ale" was tricky. I didn't really want to use a handpump as it might add "inappropriate" qualities, or, mainly, I hadn't a free pump anyway! A 50-150mbar LPG regulator has been installed on a gas-line intended for free-flow (the LPG regulator effectively becomes a tertiary regulator!) and a small pump on the beer-line to the free-flow tap. The gas has to be turned up (150mbar) to push the "Ale" up to the pump, the gas regulator turned back down to 50mbar, and the pump turned on to push the "Ale" out. What a phaff! A better way would be to have the keg higher than the tap so the "Ale" is delivered by assisted syphon. But I haven't the space.

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[PeeBee]

More explanation of that diagram:

17th C. (1600s): Most made do with the "Malt" that they themselves could have made. Malted on earthen floors and "kilned" over open fires. It would get singed hence we think of it as "brown". It would have been kilned over wood (perhaps even peat in some places). Rich households wouldn't need to make large quantities and had paid skilled workers allowed more time who could create paler malts, kilned over straw to keep it from making the ale reek of smoke. Some areas (like around Derby or "Darbie") were forming groups who had the job of creating malt for brewers, and they used techniques like straw fired kilns, and later coke fired kilns, coke created from sea-coal. Malt was increasingly made in special buildings on more "industrial" scales.

18th C. (1700s): Increased industrialisation, increased access to "cleaner" (less reeking) fuels. It was still more expensive making "pale malts" than typical "brown malt" but there was an increasing acceptance that "pale malt" was more economical than brown (the introduction of hydrometers made this fact accessible to more people, previously working out the "extract" was limited to those with the arduous means of making those measurements). Much "brown malt" was replaced with "pale", the brown malt was created darker and with more colouring and flavouring components (but less ability to convert malt to sugars ... no ability even). Beers became far more popular than "Ales". Gruit ales (rather than hopped ales) had vanished. Improved transport made some ales widely known ("Burton Ale" for example).

19th C. (1800s): Diastatic brown malts disappeared. All brown malts became non-diastatic, but with enhanced colour and flavour to compensate for the lower quantities in the grists. But these enhancements were not without cost, and many malt houses burnt down in the attempt to keep up supply of brown malt (for Porter and Stout). Black Malt was invented. The process for making black malt could be applied to other malts and new malt types could be produced (all indirectly heated in the kiln, i.e. without introducing smoke flavours). Smoke began to be purposely introduced into malt for flavour purposes after over a century and a half trying to irradicate the flavour. Porter (the main user of brown malt) began to decline after peaking about 1860.

20th C. (1900s): Brown malts (and Amber malts) continued to decline until gone by mid-century. The new malting (kilning) techniques were producing numerous "new" malt types, including amber and brown malt, though they were quite different to the "extinct" malts of the same name.



Oooo ... I wonder how many marks Teacher would have given me for an essay like that?

[PeeBee]

A bit more to add to that diagram ...

The rotating cylinder kilns introduced in 1817 were increasingly adapted to handle other malts (and create new ones like "crystal malts"). Brown malt making became a hybrid kilning process in which most of the drying and kilning was started in the cylinder kilns and "finished" by the direct fire methods. Pale malt kilning must have transferred to rotating kilns around this time. Wire mesh rotating kilns were being introduced for finishing brown malt over open flames.

These changes must have led to a more uniform product (with less fire risk for brown malts) but must have also reduced some of the flavour and colour components in brown malt? New crystal malts do seem to appear in porter/stout recipes (20th C.), to perhaps compensate? But porters' popularity (and "English" style stouts) was waning anyway.


The axes on that chart/diagram: X is time as could be easily guessed (from early 1600s to late 1900s), Y is less clear. It could be colour, but that doesn't hold true much into the 19th C., or it can be considered as relative quantities. As pale malt increases relative quantity (at the expensive of "brown") it doesn't get darker! A bit of "artistic license", I have warned there is no scale, just don't read too much into what the chart tries to indicate!

The increasingly non-diastatic brown malt has been labeled "porter" malt but might include the other variants like "blown" malt, etc. Pale Malt can include (the darker?) "High-dried" malt of that time (it should fit better in that category?).


I don't touch on that "pneumatic malting" business that must have had an influence in the 20th C. , I think I could safely assume it didn't much affect what I'm trying to do. Unless I'm convinced otherwise? It's beyond the scope of this thread anyway (as is a lot of this post).

[PeeBee]

Hmm ... I failed to cause any controversy with those last three posts. Perhaps no-one is disagreeing with my conclusions? Okay, with that assumed vote of confidence I'll set about bulldozing some often repeated myths! (Warning: I will be mentioning "pyknometers" again!).

Firstly, I did have a little panic reading a post by Ron Pattinson about 19th/20th C. Brown Malt in his Blog, thinking it contradicted some of what I've been concluding. Except it doesn't, it was just my imagination, but might also be the imagination of others out there? The bit Ron has quoted is from a letter by Guy Horlock (2002/2009, Curator, French & Jupps Museum, Stanstead Abbotts, Hertfordshire). Rather than link Ron's Blog this link contains the full texts (only two pages):

The Production of Brown Malt by Guy Horlock 30-10-2002
The Production of Brown Malt by Guy Horlock Part 2 1-6-2011

But Ron neglects the word I'm after (Why shouldn't he! The letters don't mention it either!): "Diastatic". Maybe it was? But it didn't need to be because it was used in a grist composed mainly of diastatic pale malt. I suggested 19th C. brown malt wasn't diastatic.

Next: Some rabble rousing: Malt wasn't smoky because it was kilned with Hornbeam wood. Note from the letter that so was the Hertfordshire brown malt kilned with hornbeam wood, yet the letter also said "A modern equivalent of Brown Malt is produced in a roasting cylinder, but lacks the smoky flavour of the true material". Use of Hornbeam (and straw, coke or anthracite) will have reduced the smokiness considered so nasty in in the 18th C., but it did not eliminate it: That had to wait until later in the 19th C. (cylindrical kilns). The second letter notes that smokiness was also introduced with other woods (oak) in 19th/20th C.

Hornbeam smoke will have also introduced colour. I've read elsewhere that hornbeam is particularly good at that.

More rabble rousing. Often quoted is the use of diastatic brown malt became un-necessary when the hydrometer came into play and proved it was economically better to use pale malt. Complete boll****! And how do I know? I haven't even researched it in any historical record. I know because it is written on every hydrometer used for beermaking! I.E. With the letters "S.G."!

A hydrometer does not use "SG" (specific gravity) natively; it is an instrument depending on buoyancy and displacement. It just that there is a handy correlation between buoyance and "SG". SG, or "relative density", like straight "density", uses mass (weight) per unit of volume. The "S" (or "relative") bit just makes it convenient: "Relative to water" (which is 1.000g/ml near enough, at 4°C), but "SG" being a ratio isn't cluttered with all that "unit's" business. So, water has an SG simply of one (but with hydrometers, to be precise, you do need to get the sample temperature right).

18th C. brewers, before "hydrometers", could still make extract measurements (measuring density in "pounds of sugar per barrel"). Alot of phaffing about though, so many brewers didn't bother. "Hydrometers" only made taking such measurements easy, so more brewers began to understand "brown malt" wasn't such a good deal.

I use "pyknometers" which do measure density directly (I can't easily see hydrometers; complicated, glasses can't correct it). Modern (in the last decade) cheap electronic weighing scales eliminate the phaff out of making such density measurements.




[EDIT: Stanstead Abbotts Local History Society - https://www.salhs.org.uk/ - is proving to be a wealth of beery info. Haven't explored it much yet, but try http://salhs.org.uk/folders/FJupps/]
[EDIT 2: Better targeting of the links to "Guy Horlocks's" letters held at salhs.org.uk]

[PeeBee]

Pah!

I thought attacking everyone's seeming love affair with hydrometers was bound to start an argument. "SG" being an alien measurement for hydrometers, etc. But not a squeak.

Did I mention ... before hydrometers (1700 and sum'it) you didn't need to worry about temperature of sample and all that "calibration temperature" twaddle. Just measure the density of your water "reference" at the same (unspecified) temperature of the sample. (Actually, I don't bother with that either, I just look at the temperature and think "20°C, that'll be 0.9982g/ml" ... okay, who just said "sad bast...", I heard you, now own up ... ).

I need less than nine hundred hits to get "10K" stuck to this thread (collected in less than nine months too). I'll just have to do it myself. Post this and that's one, log off this thread ... log back on and edit this post: This is two hits. Doesn't look like I'll get much sleep tonight.

[Big_Eight]

Of course they didn't need a hydrometer. They didn't have the technology. The hydrometer is simply an advancement in technology that allows more precise control of the process as it measures density directly. You can use less efficient techniques or more modern ones that produce more consistent results.

That said I like playing around in the old world and how they did things.

Sent from my Pixel 6a using Tapatalk

[PeeBee]

Eureka?

No, not because I've finally triggered a conversation in this thread (thanks "Big_Eight"), or because I've hit the 10K of hits for this thread (I haven't!). But because they did have the hydrometer technology, ever since Archimedes and his "eureka moment" (about 2 Centuries B.C.!). But seems brewers didn't make the connection for another millennia.

Ron Pattinson is extending his brown malt research at the moment ... https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/202 ... -malt.html. Suggesting brown malt wasn't so inefficient after all. I guess it was the increasing risk of fire that did for brown malt, as they upped the temperature to compensate for less flavour (less brown malt used as pale malt became the dominant base malt). Bit of "chicken or egg" in that argument though.

[PeeBee]

I like that post by RP linked above 'cos it limits the spread of "blown malt" (or snapped, popped, etc. malt) to Hertfordshire (at least in the 19th C. it does) and "blown malt" is a right pain to figure out without actually making the stuff. But does RP's post hold for the 18th C.? Seemingly not according to Gary Gillman's Blog: Brown Malt and 1700s Porter: New Insight and the book he links: The Compleat Dealer's Assistant: Or, The Maltster's and Mealman's Useful Pocket Companion. But GG's post might be considered outdated by now (but not that I'm aware of)?

Lots of comments to RP's post, some about "diastatic power" (or, has it got any enzyme left?). RP thinks so, I think not, but in the 19th C. does it matter? Brown malt doesn't need enzyme at that time 'cos it's mixed with loads of diastatic pale malt. Which provides the opportunity to up the roasting temperature in an attempt to get more flavour out of the reduced brown malt quantity (shouldn't need more colour 'cos the black malt was brought in to deal with that).

[Eric]

You will get your 10000 hits PeeBee, don't you worry. I'm convinced you will find much more to add in weeks to come, but if the next milestone was to be 100000, that would be a lot harder of course.

As for Torrified Brown malt, that interested me but I have my doubts that malt which burst from heat would have many, or any, active diastatic enzymes after the process. For years I've torrified barley for use as an adjunct to replace flaked barley or even torrified wheat. I found barley much easier than wheat to torrefy and the reaction is vastly more obvious in barley, much like popping corn, compared to being often imperceptible with wheat.

If anyone would like to try the process, wash a handful of barleycorns, then let them soak in water for several minutes before draining any surplus water. Spread them one deep on a microwave oven turntable and set full power for 4 minutes and listen to hear them begin to pop. It might take a minute before the first corn pops, but the rate increases to a peak and begins to decline. The rate of popping soon reduces when the power should be stopped to avoid browning the corns. I'm told a popcorn machine does the process better. I've tried the same in a fan oven, but the result has been a goodly proportion did not pop while many were partially roasted.

I also thought you would have mentioned, or did I miss it, the process of floating an egg on wort and measuring the surface width against the diameter of a groat to determine extract before the hydrometer. By the 17th century we had ships that had circumnavigated the globe and displacement in liquids of differing densities was well understood by ship builders and navigators, so I'm sure there were advanced brewers who understood density a lot better than we might think.

[PeeBee]

...
I also thought you would have mentioned, or did I miss it, the process of floating an egg on wort and measuring the surface width against the diameter of a groat to determine extract before the hydrometer. By the 17th century we had ships that had circumnavigated the globe and displacement in liquids of differing densities was well understood by ship builders and navigators, so I'm sure there were advanced brewers who understood density a lot better than we might think.

Eggs! I have enough trouble with fragile hydrometers, I think I'll give the eggs a miss.

Rather jolly though, I wonder if you can buy plastic floating eggs calibrated in groats? A "Tilt Ovum" perhaps?

I'm not so sure brewers did accept the connection between density and displacement/buoyance? There still seems to be evidence that before 19th C. they were measuring extract in density units like brewer's pounds per quarter, etc., not "buoyance" like displacement tonnage, etc.

Anyway, having figured that I was perfectly correct in choosing to use a "pyknometer" and not the ever popular, but utterly alien, "hydrometer", I'm going to squeeze it for every drop of nose thumbing that I can get out of it!

...
As for Torrified Brown malt, ...

As for Torrified Brown Malt ... I've run out of puff, so I'm deferring an opinion until another time!

[PeeBee]

... Right! I'm puffed up ("torrified"?) again! So where was I?

Ahh. "As for Torrified Brown Malt" ... I had hoped Ron Pattinson's digging about had provided an excuse to ignore the "blown malt" ("torrified") babble 'cos it'll be a right pain to duplicate (Eric's nudging is great, but I'm not doing that for 10 kilos of malt - it'll take me a month of Sundays). But as an excuse for doing nothing, Ron's diggings didn't regress much past 1800, whereas Gary Gillman's stuff was covering "blown malt" in the 1700s (18th C.).

It is going to be a difficult one to ignore, but for now I think that's what I'll do (ignore it!). The question is, would "blown malt" add anything to beer?