How do I brew the old fashioned way?

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MikeICR

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My last few brews, as well as some of my next, have peaked my interest in traditional brewing techniques. Most of the styles I prefer to brew originate from 16th/17th century Germany and France (and area). I know I can imitate the original brews with modern techniques and technology, but I'd like to know more about how "they" did it back then. I plan to order "Brew Like A Monk" and "Farm House Ales". Are there other resources on the topic? German brewing is a real interest of mine. Please, tell me what to read!!
 
"Early German beers were usually dark brews "mashed" from half-baked loaves of bread made from coarsely-ground barley or wheat. The gentle, moist baking of the loaves probably had a similar effect on the grain as today's malting, that is, of activating the enzymes required for the conversion of starches into fermentable sugars. This "modified" bread was then soaked in crocks filled with water, where it fermented. The result was a murky and sour ale, full of floating husks and crumbs--a far cry from the clean and crisp beers made in Germany today" http://www.germanbeerinstitute.com/history.html LOL thats maybe a little earlyer then you would like to go back :p
 
There are lots of different resources. How deep do you want to dive into this?

Bob

(who's been practicing historical brewing for more than a decade)
 
Thanks guys!

Great link, ChaosStout. That'll keep me reading.

Radical Brewing is on the to-buy-list.

As for how far I expect to take this... I don't want to make beer from bread (sounds cool though) or make something too far from what is now known as "beer". I'd like to continue brewing with water, grain, and yeast (not home cultured). I know hops were just one of several flowers and herbs used so I'd be interested in learning more about that. Basically, I'd like to explore the origins of what is now known as all grain home brewing. No ph tests, no thermometers, and no hydrometers, except to track my successes and failures.

Bob, what have you been doing? What kind of beer do you make? How do you make it?
 
That's far, far more than can be encompassed in this forum, alas. :D

I've done everything from plausibly medieval English unhopped ale to 1950s American (Brooklyn) lager, using equipment and techniques appropriate to the beer. I figured out how to look at mash liquor and tell if it's the right temperature, how to redact things like what the hell is a Haarlem achtendeel.

For me, historical brewing is an obsession within the obsession of brewing. There's a lot of it - like figuring out what mash temperature liquor looks like - that's best done learning with someone who knows it through and through. You know, like a medieval apprentice! I did it the hard way, with thermometers and dozens of notebooks full of carefully-scribed charts.

It really is pretty easy - the hardest part is mash temperatures. Once you figure how to do that without instruments, the rest is freakin' cake. Boil. Cool to blood-warm or below. Ferment. When fermentation ceases, package.

It's actually quite refreshing from the really anal-retentive OCD we usually practice, with our refractometers and gram scales and methylene blue stains. Yeah, it's nowhere near as consistent, but it always tickles the hell out of me when I taste a beer I made over a freakin' fire without instruments and it tastes good. :)

The best place to start is making friends with a reference librarian. The books referenced above aren't even good starts. They're full of poorly understood, uncited misinformation. Know that the further back in time you go, the less well-documented will be your journey. I don't venture too much further back than the 1550s, because it's too hard to find firm data. But there are all kind of master's theses and stuff that can be utterly fascinating glimpses into the brewing industry of, say, the Netherlands in the early to mid-16th century.

Simply put, my advice is to travel back step by step. Go gently, in stages. Visit the early 20th century, then walk through the 19th, and so on. You'll start divesting yourself of technology the further back you go, and gain some valuable brewing XP every time you level.

Check this thread:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/beer-history-sites-58021/

and Flyangler's Medieval Ale thread:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/medieval-ale-discussion-experiences-101776/

Try the latter; you won't regret it, even though it's well outside the norm for what we think of as "beer".

Cheers! :mug:

Bob
 
One interesting method is one I tried once and it was pretty fun. The method is called "Stein" beer. and refers to how you boil your wort. I believe it was practiced in early Germany. Anyways, everything up to the boil can remain normal. While getting to that point, have a nice fire going with some nice coals built up. Put pieces of granite into the fire until glowing red. Have more in reserve to replace each time. What you do is take a few stones out of the fire and drop them into the wort. Instant boil, it's incredible. When it slows, take them out and fresh hot ones in until you reach your OG. Note; boil off is huge. It is really vigorous.

Next, save those rocks in a sanitized bucket until your primary is done. Rack your beer over the rocks and it's starts a secondary ferm from the carmalized sugar on the rocks.

It is fun, and I made a nice Scotch ale by this method. Great smoked character. I just didn't plan for the intense boil off so it was much more stronger than intended.

Give it a go, but be careful. Use a colander or something to remove the rocks from the wort, and long fire tongs to get them from the fire.
 
You'll start divesting yourself of technology the further back you go, and gain some valuable brewing XP every time you level.

Huh. I guess I am not the only one who told their friends that I have "Leveled up to All Grain brewing".
 
Sorry for the hijack.
Bob,
How was brewing done before malting was discovered? Did they just mash for a long time? I raise wheat and barley and have wondered if I could make beer from unmalted grains. Malting and drying as a separate step must be a relatively new invention considering beer has been made from grains for thousands of years.
 
Huh. I guess I am not the only one who told their friends that I have "Leveled up to All Grain brewing".

Dude, my first few attempts were this:

331601615v2_480x480_Front_Color-White_padToSquare-true.jpg


How was brewing done before malting was discovered? Did they just mash for a long time? I raise wheat and barley and have wondered if I could make beer from unmalted grains. Malting and drying as a separate step must be a relatively new invention considering beer has been made from grains for thousands of years.

Now we're treading dangerously closely to the whole beer vs. bread debate, which, while entertaining, is ultimately pointless, for we'll never know. ;)

We do know that malt of a kind has been around for as long as the process of extracting beverage alcohol from grain. Indeed, as modern brewing science tells us, you can't have booze without malt; the enzymes present only in malt are the only naturally-occurring way to get from grain the sugars yeast require. The arguments revolve around how exactly malting took place. One hypothesis is in the German quote above. The short answer is "Nobody really knows." There are a lot of really, really educated guesses out there - certainly more educated than anything I'm likely to develop - but no rock-solid fact. The process of malting is not technologically challenging. It is labor-intensive, but in pre-Modern cultures that wasn't really a concern.

Suffice it to say, malt had to have existed, or there would have been no beer.

Now I'm off to bed. :D

Bob
 
Humm. Interesting. I may have confused terms. I understand that malting (activating enzymes in grain) is needed to make beer. I guess I am assuming the process of malting grain then drying it for later use is a somewhat new invention. Is my assumption true that in early brewing the malting and brewing processes were somehow combined?
 
I don't think so, except that the processes were combined in one facility. Records are very scant - and those secondary - prior to monastic brewing records in the 9th and 10th centuries CE. And in those records, malting and brewing took place in the same overall facility; economies of scale dictated the economics thereof. That's also the same reason the bakehouse and brewhouse were usually one building.

In BCE, even bread was made with a certain amount of sprouted grain. It wasn't long before the two processes were isolated. There is evidence that early Egyptians manufactured malt in a process not unlike the traditional floor maltings which exist today, and the Germanic tribes described by Tacitus brewed on a scale which strongly implies that malting was taking place on an equally massive scale. Economics and urbanization in Carolingian Europe shows the rise of malting as a separate craft (ca. 500 CE). It's also possible that the "bake a loaf and soak it" brewing process existed coincidentally with separate crafts for the maltster and brewer in Europe and elsewhere, most likely as a function of scale.

Thus your assumption is both true and not true at the same time, because it's damned near impossible to state anything so simplistically and definitively about prehistory or even the early Medieval period. ;)

Bob
 
Wow. Thanks for the great info. My interest is peeked. I will be reading some of the books mentioned earlier.
 
If you're after real historical data, don't bother.

BLAM and Farmhouse Ales are outstanding for insight on modern Belgian brewing practices, but the little history contained therein has no useful detail.

For brewing history, look for history writers, not beer writers.

Here's real history. There's a LOT of good primary documents in there.

Bob
 
This is incredible! Thanks for all the input and links. Looks like I've got a lot of reading to do.

I'd love to keep learning. Keep typing!

Where can I find historical recipes? (I plan to try the one gallon medieval ale mentioned earlier in this thread)
 
Read through some of the source material in the link I provided. They'll leap out at you.

:mug:

Bob

Edited to add: There are historical recipes in my Recipes dropdown under Mr Fawkes at left.
 
If you're after real historical data, don't bother.

BLAM and Farmhouse Ales are outstanding for insight on modern Belgian brewing practices, but the little history contained therein has no useful detail.

For brewing history, look for history writers, not beer writers.

Here's real history. There's a LOT of good primary documents in there.

Bob

OUTSTANDING !
I can not thank you enough for the info,
 
My last few brews, as well as some of my next, have peaked my interest in traditional brewing techniques. Most of the styles I prefer to brew originate from 16th/17th century Germany and France (and area). I know I can imitate the original brews with modern techniques and technology, but I'd like to know more about how "they" did it back then. I plan to order "Brew Like A Monk" and "Farm House Ales". Are there other resources on the topic? German brewing is a real interest of mine. Please, tell me what to read!!

How to brew like you were in the 1500/1600's

1. Use a wooden barrel, most definitely needs to be infected with brett, pedio, lacto, other misc bugs that have no place in most beers.

2. Make sure your entire brew space is heavily, very heavily, infected with some sort of wild yeast, preferably multiple strains.

3. Make sure a manure stable is somewhere close to your brewery and shares the same airspace.

4. Ferment openly, no airlocks, and whatever you do, hot water and metal chains are the only methods you can use to sanitize anything.
 
How to brew like you were in the 1500/1600's

1. Use a wooden barrel, most definitely needs to be infected with brett, pedio, lacto, other misc bugs that have no place in most beers.

2. Make sure your entire brew space is heavily, very heavily, infected with some sort of wild yeast, preferably multiple strains.

3. Make sure a manure stable is somewhere close to your brewery and shares the same airspace.

4. Ferment openly, no airlocks, and whatever you do, hot water and metal chains are the only methods you can use to sanitize anything.

Sounds appealing ;)
 
so, i'm reading through some of this, and having an issue (maybe not) with some measurements.
notably, i'm reading this one
they start talking about typical beers... "...ale made from worts whose average
specific gravity is about thirty pounds
(which answers to about two barrels
from a quarter of malt)..."
i know (i think...) that a quarter of malt should be 28 lbs
2 barrels is about 86 US gallons

so with the conversions i can find, they're using less than 1/3 lb/gallon?
that doesn't seem right to me, unless i'm missing some huge bit of information...

so what unit am i getting wrong?
or is the beer they're talking about ~ 1.010 OG?
 
In Winchester measure (which is what you're dealing with), a quarter is eight bushels. The weight of a bushel changes depending on the grain therein; malt is 34 pounds, wheat at 60, oats 32.

Thus: 34*8= 272 lbs of malt, or 3.16 lbs per gallon.

Edited to add: If you look on page 13 of the referenced text, you'll find a handy chart to reference pounds of dissolved sugar to specific gravity. Handy. ;)

Cheers,

Bob
 
Bob said:
In Winchester measure (which is what you're dealing with), a quarter is eight bushels. The weight of a bushel changes depending on the grain therein; malt is 34 pounds, wheat at 60, oats 32.

Thus: 34*8= 272 lbs of malt, or 3.16 lbs per gallon.

Edited to add: If you look on page 13 of the referenced text, you'll find a handy chart to reference pounds of dissolved sugar to specific gravity. Handy. ;)

Cheers,

Bob

Oh. I had assumed it was a quarter of a hundredweight. Thank you. And good tip on that chart. No I can make sense of their hydro readings
 
I don't think so, except that the processes were combined in one facility. Records are very scant - and those secondary - prior to monastic brewing records in the 9th and 10th centuries CE. And in those records, malting and brewing took place in the same overall facility; economies of scale dictated the economics thereof. That's also the same reason the bakehouse and brewhouse were usually one building.

In BCE, even bread was made with a certain amount of sprouted grain. It wasn't long before the two processes were isolated. There is evidence that early Egyptians manufactured malt in a process not unlike the traditional floor maltings which exist today, and the Germanic tribes described by Tacitus brewed on a scale which strongly implies that malting was taking place on an equally massive scale. Economics and urbanization in Carolingian Europe shows the rise of malting as a separate craft (ca. 500 CE). It's also possible that the "bake a loaf and soak it" brewing process existed coincidentally with separate crafts for the maltster and brewer in Europe and elsewhere, most likely as a function of scale.

Thus your assumption is both true and not true at the same time, because it's damned near impossible to state anything so simplistically and definitively about prehistory or even the early Medieval period. ;)

Bob


Just from an intellectual exercise point of view here:

I assume that back several hundred years ago (or thousands if we're talking super-early) they didn't really have any sort of humidity control on grain storage facilities. So, while this is great in arid regions, if you're in a region with higher ambient humidity (like near river valleys, where most civilizations sprang up) then within a relatively short time, any grain you had in storage would either 1) mold, or 2) sprout.

And just because it sprouts you're not about to throw it out, so what do you do with it? Answer: turn it into bread or brew it into beer.

Once they got sophisticated enough to learn about what causes the sprouting process and how to control it (i.e., malting) you probably would have seen a dramatic increase in the quality of the beer they were producing. Similar to once they discovered yeast and the role IT plays in brewing.
 
In Winchester measure (which is what you're dealing with), a quarter is eight bushels. The weight of a bushel changes depending on the grain therein; malt is 34 pounds, wheat at 60, oats 32.

Thus: 34*8= 272 lbs of malt, or 3.16 lbs per gallon.

Edited to add: If you look on page 13 of the referenced text, you'll find a handy chart to reference pounds of dissolved sugar to specific gravity. Handy. ;)

Cheers,

Bob

and page 12 was even moe helpful on the topic "would, if filled
with sea-water, weigh 1028. If we wish
to reduce the saccharometer indications
to the proportion of a thousand, we have
only to multiply them by 2 7/9, because
1000 is 2 7/9 times 360. Thus a wort
which shows 9 lb. by the saccharometer
is equal to 25 parts'of 1000, and in the
table of gravities would be written 1025."
 
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