Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)

[MashBag]

Tbh I thought invert sugar was just sugar, water & an ammount of acid. I use citric (1g/1kg/1L off the top)

I also make a jar full of viscous uninverted chocolate syrup for bait from just white granulated.

[Eric]

There're loads of other interesting sugary stuffs on that site!

Indeed there are, some of which date back to when their sales to breweries were greater than today. Some seem to have been removed, but not all, and if any have links to brewing invert on the Ragus site that are accessible but not currently indexed, could you please post those links?

This is one I can't currently find, although someone might come straight back to show how I'd missed it.
https://www.ragus.co.uk/brewers-sugar-block/

This paper from 120 years ago, when considered in context with more recent technology and equipment as seen on the Ragus site, might highlight some misconceptions posted on Home Brew Forums from time to time.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epd ... .tb00086.x

[guypettigrew]

Tbh I thought invert sugar was just sugar, water & an ammount of acid. I use citric (1g/1kg/1L off the top)

I also make a jar full of viscous uninverted chocolate syrup for bait from just white granulated.

Good grief. You have time to go fishing?!

Guy

[MashBag]

All the time in the world...but not for fishing. Rat bait.

[PeeBee]

Rat bait? I use a ready prepared grain based one. The blue dye makes for an interesting hue to any beers I use it in.

Watch the video in that "Golden Syrup" link I posted about invert syrup (five or so posts back) ... it is just water sugar and acid (but they use horrendously strong acid to speed things along). It messes up some thoughts I'd had of how Golden Syrup is made, but sugar refining has changed a lot and the original materials are just not made any longer. So, they fabricate Golden Syrup and the like (e.g. Brewer's Invert Sugars) out of what they do have.

Learning "partial inversion" is now just fabricated is a bit of a let-down

[MashBag]

Video, will do. Thought I might have missed the point.

The rats seem to have become resistant to the blocks I use. New recipe required.

[PeeBee]

The driving reason why I split my "historical" shenanigans about the mid-19th century (i.e. with this "late 19th Century and 20th Century" thread) was the dramatic changes to UK beer taking place at that time. The old "brown beer" brewing methods had reached their peak with "Porter" and were giving way to lighter beers. The most popular being "X-Ale" or "Mild Ales" (they were pale, even by WWII they were generally no darker than darkish amber). I wanted to capture and understand (better) the reasons for that without muddling it all up with the Porter years and earlier.

Certainly, more information available (like from Ron Pattinson's digging about in the brewery/library archives), more significant wars (humans were getting much better at killing each other), more taxes impacting beer (to pay for the wars), advances in creating malts for beer (the subject of this post!), more advances in creating sugars for beer (a major subject in this thread so far), ... any other reasons?


So. Malts. I'd started this in the "Ales and Beers (17th, 18th and a bit of 19th Century)" thread but it was wandering well outside the subject (time period) of that thread. A description concerning "Amber Malt" on Crisp's Website was causing me confusion (mainly by the way it referenced "roasting", "kilning" and "white malt"):

This is the palest malt made using a roasting technique. After conventional kilning, the malt is dry and pale in colour hence it is known as “white malt”. It is transferred to our Speciality Malt Plant and passes through the roasting column where the flavour is transformed through the application of heat. The temperatures used through the column determine the colour and flavour of the roasted malt.

This, I've concluded, isn't Crisp trying to redefine "kilning" and "roasting" of malt, but how they define the processes they use to create different malts. The more "normal" methods drying and kilning the diastatic "base" malts, such as in rotating cylinder kilns. And the quite different methods of creating coloured and "speciality" malts in "column" roasters. The malt is first prepared (dried and lightly kilned) to create a very pale malt which they describe as "white malt" before colouring it in roasting "columns". Of which "Amber Malt" is the lightest in colour (the roasters destroy all the enzymes too).

Other maltsters undoubtably use subtly different methods. It certainly clobbers the idea I still had that maltsters continue to use the "traditional" rotating kilns to produce "Black Malt" which is what they were designed for way back in 1817. More to the point, it drives a further wedge into to the difference between modern amber and brown malts and the old amber and brown malts (used before the 20th C.).

For "White Malt" (and "East India Malt", although I've never come across mention of it) I'll continue to take the recommendations in the Durden Park Beer Circle's booklet "Old British Beers ...", and use 50/50 Lager and Pale malts (or even the "Extra Pale" British malt varieties). Their descriptions of homemade amber and brown malts are surprisingly similar to the process described by Crisp. I still don't see the "Brown Malt" instructions being of value for 19th C. and earlier recipes, but the "diastatic amber malt" instructions should fit okay for this: Let's Brew 1867 Reid Export Treble Stout (that's an interesting recipe with 57% Diastatic Amber Malt!).

Anyway, enough conjecture for a Monday morning. I'm off out in this spring sunshine.



[EDIT: The "East India Malt" (aka, in the booklet, "white malt") is described as EBC 4.0. Hence a 50/50 (1:1) mix of lager (EBC 3.0) and pale malts (EBC 5.0). But all the pale malts I use are EBC 6.5. May need some adjustment to the proportions? But I've suggested using "extra light pale" at EBC 3.5 as a direct substitute; they wouldn't have had access to "extra light" in the 1970s.]

[MashBag]

Historically were British beers ever brewed without boiling?

[Cobnut]

I suspect it depends how far back you go...

I've read that the limitation for many early brewers was availability of vessels in which to boil which needed to be made from metal which was highly priced (or even prized). This led to "stone beers" where hot stones were added to heat up the (wooden) vessel full of liquor or raw ales which were not boiled. That said, what I've read talks about these sorts of beers being made in continental Europe, especially the Nordic and Baltic states.

Maybe we Brits had better availability of metal and better metalworkers meaning we had easier access to vessels suitable for boiling over fires?

[PeeBee]

Historically were British beers ever brewed without boiling?

I've only attempted to go back to about mid-17th C. (1650 - UK Civil War) and I've since bounced back to the 19th/20th C. But going back that far, brewing was well on the way to being "industrialised" (less "brew your own") and most was turned out as "beer", not unhopped "ale". The processors at that time seemed to involve boiling, especially to incorporate the new fangled "hops".

So, my view would be: Beers with no boil? I'm sure it probably happened, but it would be very unusual. Ale (unhopped) without boiling? That may well have happened, but you may have to look earlier, like before the 16th C. to get examples?

The earliest credible reports I've found is of Henry VIII's sailors being supplied beer because it kept longer on-board ship than (unhopped) ales. I would imagine if keeping was so important that hops were preferred, they wouldn't have not been boiling! The point being .... if back then they knew hops helped to keep ale/beer longer, they certainly knew boiling ensured the resulting ale/beer kept longer.


As "Cobnut" said, there are Nordic/Baltic examples of "raw" ales bandied about (not hopped, Juniper seems to get mentioned lots). One had a name ... began with "S" and seemed/sounded like a Japanese word to me!

From what I've gathered; "beer" does indicate a hopped drink, whereas "ale" may be either (hopped or unhopped). Mainly due to most people not having heard of or seen hops, let alone grown them to put them in ale or beer. The Continentals beat us to that idea and imported the idea to the UK (about 15th C.) where it was met with a lot of resistance!

[zipfly]

I think the beer you are thinking of is Sahti

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[f00b4r]

Take a look in Martin Cornell’s ‘Amber, Gold and Black’, he talks about historic English wheat beers, which were likely to be not boiled. There again they apparently put eggs in during the brewing process at some points too!
Travelling at the moment so I don’t have access to it but it also speaks about white malt too IIRC.
The wheat beers apparently got almost killed off thanks to William of Orange taxing malt in England for the first (not Scotland initially) for the War of Succession; it meant you could only brew with taxed barley malt.

[PeeBee]

I think the beer you are thinking of is Sahti

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That's the one!

Hang-on (cor... my drawer's a mess, have I run out? Ah, here go) ...

Screenshot 2023-03-29 192534.jpg (3.25 KiB) Viewed 213485 times

[PeeBee]

Take a look in Martin Cornell’s ‘Amber, Gold and Black’, he talks about historic English wheat beers, which were likely to be not boiled. ...

I've got a nasty suspicion you're referring to this: West Country White Ale?

Oh no. Not the wheat/white mish-mash again, we only just survived going through voluntary lobotomy the other week.

But. Seems it was a no-boil recipe (an "ale" not a "beer")? Perhaps Mashbag will make some for us?

[MashBag]

I am

Started another thread so as not to derail this one.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=84084&p=866854#p866854