Replicating Historical Pale Malt

I was recently inspired by Phil Markowski's Farmhouse Ales to brew a batch of traditional, funky farm ale/saison. He states (I can't quote because I have since lent the book to a friend) that old farm ales brewed with pale malt were significantly darker than today's ales. This is in part due to rudimentary malting techniques leading to uneven heating of the malt. The end result was usually an amber beer. Not worrying about style guidelines or anything, I figured I'd try a historical approach to the style and used Weyermann light munich malt to approximate the old time base malt.

Now, a week after brewing, I am reading Scotch Ale by Gregory Noonan (Classic Beer Style Series #8). I notice that he describes historical Scottish pale malt also as being darker than the modern pale malt. "Malts were darker roasted than today's pale malts in older scotch ales, and gave a very different character." (p. 104) Noonan goes on to recommend using 5-10% Amber/Biscuit malt in conjunction with a base of pale malt to approximate this flavor.

I'm wondering if I should have used this approach with my old-style farm ale. My first impression to approximate an old, darker base malt would be to use a darker kilned malt with some diastatic power, such as Vienna, Munich, or even Aromatic, rather than a some toasted malt. Does Noonan's Scottish approximation apply to Franco-Belgian brews too? And is it accurate?

Groovy,

I am not enough of a beer historian to make a proper evaluation of what will produce a more accurate "historic" beer character...

However, when you said, "...old farm ales brewed with pale malt were significantly darker than today's ales. This is in part due to rudimentary malting techniques leading to uneven heating of the malt. The end result was usually an amber beer..." I was shouting, "Weyermann Light Munich! Weyermann Light Munich!" (not only because I love that malt, but) because of the following reason:

The Munich malt solution uses a single malt to approximate a single malt. The earlier malts, as you surmised, (because of the early malting techniques) likely had lower, only self-converting diastatic powers, and were darker than modern pale malts...

As far as Noonan's solution, I imagine that there weren't a heck of a lot of specialty malts "back in the day", so trying to achieve character by adding a specialty malt to a modern pale malt seems untrue to what you're trying to achieve (if the earlier technique is also a virtue).

Will the world ever know what those early beers REALLY tasted like? Hmmm. Might adding a specialty malt to modern pale approximate the REAL taste of that earlier beer better? Perhaps. However- how much character was contributed by the early beer yeast strains to those beers (each farmhouse probably had its own resident strain)? HOW accurate are you trying to get? If I was personally trying to replicate a very early style, then I would go with the simplest solution in order to best also replicate the process (because that's how they brewed):

-Use the Munich malt. Keep it simple.

-Use a nondescript/early yeast strain.

If you want to get super authentic, no hydrometers are allowed, no iodine droppers to confirm conversion, yadda, yadda- batch-to-batch variation was the nature of the beast back then- Therefore, the character of YOUR batch could theoretically fall within the range of the bell curve of what was within the variation of those early batches at a given farmhouse... Heck- consider covered, but not airtight, fermentation... Don't use StarSan, and use wooden spoons... How authentic are we getting here?

I don't mean to digress, and I definitely do not mean to criticize. I find your pursuit highly noble! I just wanted to "high five" you on arriving at the Munich malt conclusion, as I think you were right with that, and I find the preservation of early beer styles fascinating.

Thats my vote- Any other takers? This should be an awesome thread!