Historic Porter this might get a little crazy

[Barley Water]

A friend of mine in the brewclub wants to go in with me on a crazy brew. I am looking for ideas but I thought it might be fun to make a Porter, like they did back in the day. I was thinking that if I could come up with a good recipie, I could then brew it with regular brewers yeast, put it into a cornie with some oak chips (to simulate barrel conditioning) and funk it. After about six months or so brew up a second one and funk that also. Finally after a year, brew yet another one and blend all three going for the three threads effect. Does anybody out there have any good ideas? Surely, you lads living in the land that invented the style have some experience with this sort of thing, right?

As an aside, I learned just last night that the Rosaele (spelling?) blend is now available year round. That means that I can get another keg of Oud Bruin started so I can do some blending with the stuff I made last year (and haven't yet even touched in 9+ months, a new record for me).

[coatesg]

Depends on exactly what you're looking for. Some of the realy old porter stuff is largely unbrewable these days due to brown malt not being diastatic now.

Some recipes from the Durden Park book might be interesting (and probably unlike most things brewed over your parts ). I'm currently thinking about one of their stout/porter recipes around the 1075 mark in the next few months, or maybe something along the lines of the Amsinck double stout recipe in the Camra Stout/Porter book:

7kg Pale
1.65kg Brown
290g Black
200g Goldings 5%

OG1086
Probably age about 6-9 months at least.

I wouldn't do the oak chips or the souring myself

[mysterio]

I have no idea but it sounds great, I would get some Brettanomyces going in there too.

[Barley Water]

Thanks for the formulation, that is what I was looking for. I knew the the boys in the Durden park group made some old historic stuff but I have never seen their book over here so I thought I would go fishing on the forums here. I know way back then, they used to store their porter in gigantic barrels for up to a year to get the flavor that was in vogue at the time. Because conditions were not nearly as clean as they are now, there is no way all that beer wasn't infected with wild yeasts. Additionally, the barrels themselves were surely loaded with all kinds of beasties which are almost impossible to remove once they get into the wood. The other thing about wooden barrels is that they are somewhat permiable to oxigen so the beer would also be somewhat oxidized. I suspect if you want to get an idea what brewing was like in the 19th century in the UK, take a look at what is going on now at some of smaller breweries in Belgium. My understanding is that your great, great grandfathers actually taught our friends over in Belgium how it was done and they have never modernized. Once I come up with a good formulation, the next thing will be selecting the bugs to add once the primary yeast is done doing it's thing. After that, it is just a matter of waiting for nature to take it's course. I have an Oud Bruin going right now so I don't see anything really hard about any of this except the long wait between brewing and consumption.

[mysterio]

Yeah I agree with you. If you want to know what an old style porter or brown ale might of tasted like it was probably something along the lines of the oud bruin/flanders red ales. I reckon an old style English IPA would be something like Orval.

[Horatio]

Sorry if this is a stupid question but... what do you mean by 'funk it'?

[Barley Water]

What I meant by "funk it" was to add wild yeast and or bacteria which can be purchased from either Wyeast or White Labs. Basicly what I plan to do is brew the beer normally with everyday brewers yeast. Once the primary yeast is "done", I will keg the stuff and at the same time add the "bugs" (or as we say over here, "funk it") and some oak chips as well. After around a year, the beer should taste pretty funky, hence the non-scientific term. To get an idea what that tastes like, get hold of some Oud Bruin or Flanders Red and you will see what I mean. Of course, you will then be tempted to go to the "dark side" as well but then that is what makes this hobby fun.

[coatesg]

Cool - it sounds like a fun experiment. The whole "to funk or not to funk" question is one of personal taste - I don't mind sour ales, but I couldn't drink 5 gallons of it! I'd be tempted to split the batch and do a couple soured and the rest not. Didn't Rodenbach learn his stuff over in the UK anyhow - how to age and blend beer? I suspect you are right about the way old beers tasted .

Earlier in the 19th century, the recipes would have been 1:1:1 Pale, brown, black; 1:1 pale:brown; and earlier still, 100% brown. Of course the brown was diastatic then though so this worked fine - nowadays it wouldn't work out so well because of the way brown malt is produced compared to "the old days" - and I'm not sure 100% brown would be preferable to a more modern formulation! You could possibly get 1:1:1 to work with some brewing enzyme (so the book says) - though I have no idea where you can get this from...

[jonnyhop]

I have no experience with blending beer so can't really help with that one, but recently made a slight variation of the Whitbread 's London Porter (1850) from the Durden park website

6000g Pale Malt
1 kg Brown Malt
500g Black Malt
500g crystal malt
And I am pretty sure I threw in some torrified wheat

140g Fuggles 90 mins


I brewed it pretty much as normal except for the longer mash of 3 hours, tried to raise the temp for the last half hour as per the recipe but made a total mess of it (overflowing mash tun) so just got it straight on the boil.


I added the crystal because its in the Original Porter (circa 1750) and the T/W because I like it! Anyhow I put this in the keg a couple of weeks back and it was the best beer I have made. Aiming to age it for six months, but will probably start drinking it when summer comes. Bottled a couple of stubbies to compare to the keg - expecting it to be very bitter in bottles with the high hopage.

[Horatio]

What I meant by "funk it" was to add wild yeast and or bacteria which can be purchased from either Wyeast or White Labs. Basicly what I plan to do is brew the beer normally with everyday brewers yeast. Once the primary yeast is "done", I will keg the stuff and at the same time add the "bugs" (or as we say over here, "funk it") and some oak chips as well. After around a year, the beer should taste pretty funky, hence the non-scientific term. To get an idea what that tastes like, get hold of some Oud Bruin or Flanders Red and you will see what I mean. Of course, you will then be tempted to go to the "dark side" as well but then that is what makes this hobby fun.

Cheers for explaning that! I've never heard of doing that before; that's what I love about Jim's, there is always something new to learn I think I may have to broaden my horizons and get me some Oud Bruin or Flanders Red. I can hear the Dark Side calling me; the force is weak in this one!

[Bryggmester]

A good beer to come out of the GK brewery is their Strong Suffolk Ale. They brew a very high gravity ale and store it in huge wooden vats for a couple of years and then blend it with beer of a more normal strength. The result is a very good beer with a hint of sourness. I have only ever had it in bottles, it does turn up on rare occasions on draught but I have never been lucky enough to find it.

[Barley Water]

Yes, I was looking at the Durden Park website and saw the Whitbread beer formulation, I am leaning towards trying that for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's the right O.G., if you let the beer get too big, the alcholol will kill off the bugs, somewhere around 1.060 or so is about right. Secondly, the Whitbread name is famous and if you are going to do historic beers, that one should be of general interest plus you can get the Whitbread yeast (although I'm sure it has changed over the years). I guess the biggest reason to try that one though is that I am a big porter fan, I just love Fullers London Porter and I would love to try and make something even better. No commercial brewery would try something like this, it would just be way to expensive. Once we get this little project done, I hope to have three beers we can use for blending so the oldest (and presumably most sour) could be used in fairly small proprotions to just add that twang you read about. Since I have never done any blending, that in itself should be interesting and a lot of fun.

Our big contest is just around the corner which means I will be tied up judging beers (it's a hard job but somebody needs to do it) and generally helping out at the event. After that though, I can then spend some time doing fun brews since the next contest I get involved with is not until late summer. This is one of my favorite times of the brewing year since I can generally just get my freak on.