Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

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Eric
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Re: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by Eric » Fri Apr 22, 2022 12:30 pm

Graham repeatedly mentioned his use Muscovado, but can't remember him suggesting it was already inverted, but there it is in your extract. His first book included a method for inverting refined sugar that I would later use with minor variations, but later in conversations he vehemently implied inverting sugar wasn't worth the effort and several of his recipes included white sugar.

Most of my beers are pale and I'm not inclined to add sucrose to give the yeast that would be later harvested the job of inverting it, but have in the past bought dark sugars for brewing then used it with coffee instead. I've also wondered for some time about those Sam Smith's dark beers with "cane sugar" listed on the labels, knowing they wouldn't, by principle, do something that wasn't essential to the process other than for show, like wooden barrels on horse and dray.

I wish I'd bought that cheap polarimeter.
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Re: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Sat Apr 23, 2022 10:09 am

It was a bit of a gamble choosing Graham as a champion of my approach to "invert sugar": He did have that attachment to white sugar (which I wouldn't even put in me tea ... err, I don't have any sugar in tea, so ... which I wouldn't even put in a builder's tea). It didn't last 1/2 day before you picked up on it!

Not that Graham would have approved of me attaching his name to any of my enterprises: I don't think he forgave me for writing that "treatise" on getting "Real Ale" out of a Corny keg (he used phrases along the lines of "Peebee wants to drink keggy-ade, not beer").

But my reason for switching my approach to "invert sugar" was helped by the samples of Ragus sugars sent to me by <I won't say his name in case he gets loads of requests for samples that he might not want!>. The No.3 tasted just like raw brown sugar (like muscovado). No hint of caramel like I "imagined" in the No.2 sample. Though what I'm going to do with all this Lyle's Golden Syrup (5+Kg) is a problem (from when I was advocating caramelising Golden Syrup).

Eric wrote:
Fri Apr 22, 2022 12:30 pm
... I wish I'd bought that cheap polarimeter.
I've got a cheap Alethiometer if that'll be any use? I can't make it work.
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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Eric
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Re: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by Eric » Sat Apr 23, 2022 1:58 pm

Don't think I'd heard of an alethiometer before now, let alone make one work.

You could use the Golden Syrup on Shrove Tuesday next year. Tell the locals you will host a pancake making event where you will supply the treacle if locals supply the rest. Otherwise, use it in dark beers, 3:1 with molasses up to about 5%.

Don't worry about what Graham said, he said many things with his tongue in cheek. You saw that when face to face with him.
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Re: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Sat Apr 23, 2022 2:42 pm

Eric wrote:
Sat Apr 23, 2022 1:58 pm
Don't think I'd heard of an alethiometer before now, let alone make one work. ...
:D
Google it! I don't think we exist on the right astral plane to make it work.
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: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by WallyBrew » Sun Apr 24, 2022 5:39 pm

Eric wrote:
Fri Apr 22, 2022 12:30 pm


I wish I'd bought that cheap polarimeter.
When you do buy one you might want to buy THIS exciting tome. In it you will find most of the equations necessary for polarimetry and for those that aren't there you can practice your substituting into an equation ability to get the one you want.

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Re: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Mon Apr 25, 2022 12:39 pm

Oops. I'm derailing my own thread? But "invert syrups" were integral in many late 19th Century and 20th Century beers. My first attempt in this era was 60L of "Rose 1896 AK" ripped out of Ron Pattinson's "AK!" book which I brewed 6-7 weeks ago. I started the second 19L keg last night:
20220424_204959_WEB.jpg
20220424_204959_WEB.jpg (40.66 KiB) Viewed 290298 times
What a truly rubbish picture! I'll need to update that, but not today 'cos it's one of my assigned "abstention days" (I've got to be careful with all this beer about - public service announcement over and done).

The beer hasn't been vented, is at about 5.5psi ("freeflow", not handpump yet) and has a significant aroma from the Hallertau Hersbrucker dry hops. The aroma will sadly get less (I presume) as the head space gets purged and diluted with incoming gas. The first keg had no aroma but loads of flavour from the dry hops, but that also quickly dispersed. I guess these annoyances are the same as "craft beer" brewers have with their dry hops?

The beer is, as I suspected it would be, an example of decent contemporary Pub bitter ("Real Ale", certainly not the era's awful keg outpourings). For which I'd recommend Ron Pattinson's "AK!" book (and Chevallier barley malt).

But it used caramelised coloured "No.2 Invert Syrup" (cobbled out of Lyle's Golden Syrup as in the OP) which I now know, in a space of 6-7 weeks, to be complete and utter hokum! How much difference a molasses coloured invert sugar will have I'm yet to see.
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: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by Eric » Mon Apr 25, 2022 3:01 pm

WallyBrew wrote:
Sun Apr 24, 2022 5:39 pm
Eric wrote:
Fri Apr 22, 2022 12:30 pm


I wish I'd bought that cheap polarimeter.
When you do buy one you might want to buy THIS exciting tome. In it you will find most of the equations necessary for polarimetry and for those that aren't there you can practice your substituting into an equation ability to get the one you want.
Equations? You getting me to do equations? You getting me to do equations again? Been there, done that, once.

Maybe it's as well I didn't buy that cheap polarimeter. Are you telling me you've not put something into Excel?
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Invert Sugar (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Mon Apr 25, 2022 7:17 pm

So, at what point did I swing from caramelising invert sugar to get the colours to accepting the colours of invert sugar are entirely due to the quality of the source? (Don't read all this thread late at night ... you will fall asleep on your keyboard!). It all started earlier in this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=83681#p862448

No.1, No.2, etc. in those linked "Heron" documents referred to the quality of the source materials, NOT the colour. And there's no mention of caramelising the invert sugar made.

When did the numbers switch from "quality" to "colour"? I went directly to Ron Pattinson (via his blog) and got the reply:
They're still the same fu****g colours.
... which perhaps I didn't appreciate straight away, but it was RP telling me something rather important in his own way!

I kept hunting. The obvious place to go was Ragus. I'd avoided them because I was convinced Invert Sugar was coloured by caramelisation and Ragus were selling "Brublocks"; glucose coloured with molasses (not caramelised) ... who were they trying to kid? But read the following very carefully:

https://www.ragus.co.uk/product/brewing-sugar/

No.1, No.2, etc. always meant "quality", but as quality also determined colour they could be used interchangeably. Invert Sugar was never caramelised for colour, except by misguided homebrewers sometime in the later 20th Century. One person who was not swayed was Graham Wheeler as can be seen from this link:

viewtopic.php?p=450805#p450805

There's also this link:

https://www.homebrewinguk.com/post/maki ... ?&trail=60

One I have linked before but dismissed because much talk was potentially dangerous rubbish. But read discussions near the end of this long thread and ...



Although the myth of caramelising invert sugar appears to have started in the UK, it was picked up enthusiastically by brewers in the US. Many of the instructions to boil sugar syrups for hours on end still come from there. You come across lots of complete nonsense like heating to "hard-crack" temperatures (150-155°C): It can't happen without destroying the fructose created by inversion (fructose caramelises at 110°C). The other explanation is the sucrose was never inverted in the first place. You can also get instructions to increase the pH (above 7.0) to allow "Maillard reactions" to proceed, but alkaline environments will also destroy the sugar. If Maillard reactions do occur it's possibly during the creation of molasses and we need do nothing (apart from add the molasses): Don't really know, a bit more digging about for that one, but Ragus invert sugars all are very slightly acidic not alkaline. And the Victorians weren't even aware of "Maillard reactions".

The icing on the cake was the American "Becker's" invert sugars. I can't find any suggestion that it's caramelised. Just words like "coloured", "made from raw cane sugars" and "interesting flavours". I'm sure the "Becker's" manufacturers are pleased with people thinking their product saves them hours slaving over a hot stove, not "I could make this in seconds from stuff bought down at the Supermarket"?




Finally (phew [-o< ) there's a lot about the need for using "inverted sugar". Read this:

https://edsbeer.blogspot.com/2016/05/th ... sugar.html

Especially the last paragraph. Ragus are the last sugar refinery in the UK churning out "invert sugar" for the brewery industry. It makes up (in 2016) only 2.5% of their business. Apparently, much of the business was whittled away in the 1960s by breweries turning to sucrose syrups!
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: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Wed Apr 27, 2022 4:44 pm

Picture above (1896 Rose AK) updated:
20220427_143358_WEB.jpg
20220427_143358_WEB.jpg (59.4 KiB) Viewed 290248 times
Now you can see the colour! (It's still not vented back to 2psi - it's at about 5.5 psi on "freeflow" tap). Still hazy after six weeks (4 in a fridge - no I haven't changed my mind about "cold-crashing", it's just that beer like this would otherwise be "stale" after this length of time at ambient temperature), I think I can expect that with no cask finings and using old-time - Chevallier - malt. There are a few "floaters" too; does anything remove that hop pellet debris. But despite haze (it is hazy, not cloudy) it moves up to my top spot for repeatability.

I'm spoilt for choice of what I'm doing next-ish now. Ron Pattinson has been having a bit of a blitz on 1880-1920 beers and ingredients on his Blog (and "Hancock" West Country beers), including:
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/202 ... -1914.html
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/202 ... -1914.html
and
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/202 ... orter.html
Porter containing brown malt and No.3 invert sugar (lots!). A case of "two birds with one stone"; that must surely go on the to-do list! There's a strong stout too, but it involved long periods of vatting and I can't be bothered with the inevitable "Brett" that would incur. Porter was on the way out, making way for the likes of:
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/202 ... ck-xx.html
Not an "X-ale" (mild-ale) but an "xx" (a bit stronger). But also No.3 invert sugar, and loads of it, seems the West Country lot (and S.Wales) liked lots of sugar in their beer! But No.3! That's going to be a very dark Victorian "Mild". It must go on the to-do list too. I too worry about that choice of yeast (WLP099): It's a "diastaticus" strain and will play hell on my attempts to keep the FG high.

NOTE: The sugar in the Rose AK was coloured by caramelisation, but for me I won't be doing that again. The "No.3" sugars for these recipes will be raw sugars selected for their colour (due to molasses), a much easier and more accurate way of achieving the flavour and colour than all that silliness with caramelising syrups.
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: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by Big_Eight » Wed Apr 27, 2022 5:08 pm

I love Barclay Perkins blog! I did a 1910 fullers X Dark Mild out of one of his books. I used turbanado sugar since it's basically #3 in color.

I did invert it but after reading your threads here and on another forum I may stop doing that. I'm also going to look in to the muscovado sugar.

I'll post a picture of it on the forum in another week once it's carbonated but the sample tastes pretty nice!

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Re: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Wed Apr 27, 2022 8:50 pm

Big_Eight wrote:
Wed Apr 27, 2022 5:08 pm
I love Barclay Perkins blog! I did a 1910 fullers X Dark Mild out of one of his books. I used turbanado sugar since it's basically #3 in color. ...
At a guess, you are the other side of "the pond"? We don't use the word "turbinado" over here (or at least in the shops about here) but I've been told it's like our "demerara". But I'd think our demerara may be a bit light to substitute for No.3. Americans might have the same battle with "muscovado", but I have been assured it's obtainable in the US? I've no idea why these names got all jumbled up.

RP has only recently posted that "1888 Hancock XX" (linked earlier), a strong (compared to modern day British Mild-Ale) Victorian dark "Mild" containing No.3 Invert. That should be interesting!


BTW. This thread is a "carbonation-free" zone, all cask-conditioned beers 'cos that's what Brits did until the 1950/60s. Says me, who's just posted a photo of a beer carbonated to 5.5 psi and served from a free-flow tap ... well, it could have been bottled? ... Anyway, it's my thread and I can say what I want! Like: "My camera lens was smudged and the photographed beer's actually star-bright". :D (Do you think anyone believes me?).
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: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by Big_Eight » Wed Apr 27, 2022 9:51 pm

[quote="PeeBee"][quote=Big_Eight post_id=862978 time=1651075734 user_id=31806]
I love Barclay Perkins blog! I did a 1910 fullers X Dark Mild out of one of his books. I used turbanado sugar since it's basically #3 in color. ...
[/quote]
At a guess, you are the other side of "the pond"? We don't use the word "turbinado" over here (or at least in the shops about here) but I've been told it's like our "demerara". But I'd think our demerara may be a bit light to substitute for No.3. Americans might have the same battle with "muscovado", but I have been assured it's obtainable in the US? I've no idea why these names got all jumbled up.

RP has only recently posted that "1888 Hancock XX" (linked earlier), a strong (compared to modern day British Mild-Ale) [i]Victorian[/i] dark "Mild" containing No.3 Invert. That should be interesting!


BTW. This thread is a "carbonation-free" zone, all cask-conditioned beers 'cos that's what Brits did until the 1950/60s. Says me, who's just posted a photo of a beer carbonated to 5.5 psi and served from a free-flow tap ... well, it could have been bottled? ... Anyway, it's my thread and I can say what I want! Like: "My camera lens was smudged and the photographed beer's actually star-bright". :D [size=75](Do you think anyone believes me?).[/size][/quote]Yeah so mine is naturally carbonated as I bottled it lol.

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Re: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by PeeBee » Thu Apr 28, 2022 1:03 pm

Crikey! I think I could spend a lifetime just reading the posts on this site by Graham Wheeler. Here's another with lots of valuable snippets. That just happens to show me what I'm doing was done before (the phrase "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants" comes to mind).

viewtopic.php?t=66912#p703275



I've sent a message off to Billington's asking if they have any colour information (EBC for preference, but that'll be unlikely). Otherwise, I'll uses guesses based on GW's analysis of Dark Muscovado Sugar at 600 EBC).
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: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by Trefoyl » Thu Apr 28, 2022 3:17 pm

My muscovado of choice is sold by India Tree. Absolutely luscious but I seldom use sugar in brewing.
https://www.indiatree.com/products/dark ... sugar.html
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Re: Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

Post by Big_Eight » Thu Apr 28, 2022 4:48 pm

[quote="Trefoyl"]My muscovado of choice is sold by India Tree. Absolutely luscious but I seldom use sugar in brewing.
[url]https://www.indiatree.com/products/dark ... sugar.html[/url][/quote]That's who I was looking at as a source looks like you can get both light and dark.

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