Historical Brewing Equipment

mrbowenz · Jul 17, 2008

As I just finished my Savant Systems 1400, which is fairly state-of -the -art,I am heading the other direction back in time and
I got a gig that I thought I would share:

The town I live in, Bethlehem PA, is an old Moravian Community est. 1741, as it turns out, One of the most influential characters from their history was a German Moravian named Johann Sebastian Goundie. Goundie was Bethlehem's first celebrated brewer and an interesting character.I was asked by the city to portray this guy for one of the many festivals Bethlehem has. I have put together a new/old brewing system from around 1800 or so . This weekend with the help of , HBT member " BobNQ3X ", we are brewing two batches of historical beer as a demonstration in period clothes and on some homemade historical equipment. I was able to score an old copper 50 gallon kettle from a farmer whose great grandfather had brought to PA from France in 1800. Then I built a iron stand to hold it and cut an old whiskey barrel in half for a mash tun and liquor tank.
I also built a mash rake and some other items, distressed and tried to make look old and somewhat accurate. This gig should be pretty fun, albiet fairly challenging to produce good quality beer. I can post some pictures after this weekend of our event. Those near the Bethlehem area can check us out at :
http://www.historicbethlehem.org/events/blueberry-festival/

Heres a picture of the old kettle, never mind the glamour kitty, Goundie didn't make beer out of kittys

PeteOz77 · Jul 17, 2008

It would have been really really cool to make a batch with this equipment and the ingredients of the period and have it bottles and ready for tasting at the event!

Then maybe some "Present Day" homebrew to compare..

Revvy · Jul 17, 2008

PeteOz77 said:
It would have been really really cool to make a batch with this equipment and the ingredients of the period and have it bottles and ready for tasting at the event!

Then maybe some "Present Day" homebrew to compare..

Cool gig, we demand pictures!

You'll be like this guy...

[youtube]mAU4bhjCB08[/youtube]

If you can dig up the dec/jan issue of zymurgy (on Porters & Stouts) there's a great article on the historical brewer at colonial Williamsburg and how he came up with the Porter Recipe they brew there. It's cool becasuse they include the recipe, and describe how to make Essentia Bina (burned Mollases/brown sugar in a cast iron pot) and Spanish Juice (liccorice), the 2 essential adjuncts to 1700's era porters.

Bob · Jul 17, 2008

Revvy,

I've met Rich here and there for years. He's a really knowledgeable guy!

We're brewing two days this weekend. Saturday we're brewing a Porter recipe from Joseph Coppinger's The American Practical Brewer and Tanner, ca. 1815. It consists of Pale Malt, hops, and Essentia Bina, which I'll make tomorrow morning (it's his "Porter Process No. III"). Sunday we're brewing an Altbier recipe of Chris's.

It's going to be a great deal of fun! I can't wait!

Bob

Revvy · Jul 17, 2008

BobNQ3X said:
Revvy,

I've met Rich here and there for years. He's a really knowledgeable guy!

We're brewing two days this weekend. Saturday we're brewing a Porter recipe from Joseph Coppinger's The American Practical Brewer and Tanner, ca. 1815. It consists of Pale Malt, hops, and Essentia Bina, which I'll make tomorrow morning (it's his "Porter Process No. III"). Sunday we're brewing an Altbier recipe of Chris's.

It's going to be a great deal of fun! I can't wait!

Bob

Take pictures/videos please....especially making the Essentia Bina! Please?

Is the recipe in the link? If not will you post the porter recipe?

Bob · Jul 17, 2008

Revvy,

The recipe is in the link. The link sends you to the Project Gutenberg copy of Coppinger; you can search on the terms "Porter Process No. III".

Things to note when examining the original recipe: I'm toasting some malt in my oven to more readily approximate my estimation of locally-sourced malt color. The recipes are for UK (Imperial) Barrels for computational purposes. We're erring on the side of valor in the hopping rates (once you do the linear calculations, you'll see why).

We're both saving wort from these brews to ferment and examine. We'll let you know how it turns out; there's a plan to document our adventure and get it into one of the fairly widely-read glossies.

Bob

mrbowenz · Jul 18, 2008

PeteOz77 said:
It would have been really really cool to make a batch with this equipment and the ingredients of the period and have it bottles and ready for tasting at the event!

Then maybe some "Present Day" homebrew to compare..

Unfortunatly, this event is a dry festival, but I will be keeping some refreshments behind the curtain

, and of course, once fermented , we will get a good taste of how she really works

Revvy · Jul 18, 2008

What are you going to ferment in? Open ceramic jars, or are you going to cheat and use buckets?

Bob · Jul 19, 2008

Revvy said:
What are you going to ferment in? Open ceramic jars, or are you going to cheat and use buckets?

Cheat, of course.

Though I don't see it as cheating.

Round here, those open ceramic jars are wicked expensive. Besides, porter was often fermented in open wooden vats. I've fermented in barrels sawn in half, both unlined (and well-used) and lined with brewer's pitch. The difference between those and a plastic bucket that has "Ale Pail" printed on the side is practically nil (other than visual).

So yeah, count me in as a cheater!

Bob

P.S. I'm sorry I took no photos of making the essentia bina. My photographer (my luvverly wife) was unavailable, and my Greyhounds can't hold the camera.

Revvy · Jul 19, 2008

BobNQ3X said:
Cheat, of course. Though I don't see it as cheating.

Round here, those open ceramic jars are wicked expensive. Besides, porter was often fermented in open wooden vats. I've fermented in barrels sawn in half, both unlined (and well-used) and lined with brewer's pitch. The difference between those and a plastic bucket that has "Ale Pail" printed on the side is practically nil (other than visual).

So yeah, count me in as a cheater!

Bob

P.S. I'm sorry I took no photos of making the essentia bina. My photographer (my luvverly wife) was unavailable, and my Greyhounds can't hold the camera.

You need be better trained dogs!!

So how did it go??? What was your process?

Bob · Jul 19, 2008

If you're referring to the essentia bina, the process is listed in the Porter section of Coppinger. Rather than copy it out, I'll refer you there. It's really quite simple! The result is slightly different from molasses to my palate, but perhaps not so much as a blind taster might notice (IMO). It has just as much tang, but a different sort of tang.

Cheers,

Bob

Revvy · Jul 19, 2008

So you did this???

To prepare it to advantage, take three pounds, or three hundred weight of Muscovado sugar, for every two pounds, or two hundred pounds, of essentia bina intended to be made, put it into an iron boiler set in brick work, ...Put one gallon of pure water into the boiler with every hundred weight of sugar to be employed, that is, one pint to every fourteen pounds weight of sugar, then add the sugar, light the fire, and keep it stirring until it boils, regulating the fire so as not to suffer it to boil over; as it begins to lessen in quantity, dip the end of the poker into it, to see if it candies as it cools, and grows proportionably bitter to its consistence; mark the height of the sugar in the boiler when it is all melted, to assist in judging of its decrease; when the specimen taken out candies, or sets hard pretty quickly, put out the fire under the boiler, and set the vapour or smoke arising from the boiler on fire, which will communicate to the boiling sugar, and let it burn for ten or twelve minutes, then extinguish it with a cover ready provided for the purpose, and faced with sheet iron, to be let down on the mouth of the boiler with a chain or rope, so as exactly to close the boiler.

As soon as it is extinguished, cautiously add strong lime water by a little at a time, working the iron stirrer well all the time the water is adding, so as to mix and dilute it all alike to the consistence of treacle; before it sets in the boiler, which it would do, as the heat declined, in a manner that would give a great deal of trouble to dilute it after, and be imperfectly done then, it is easy to conceive this kind of work requires to be done in an open place, or out-house, to prevent accidents from fire. If the essentia bina is neither burned too little nor too much, it is a rich, high-flavoured, grateful bitter, that preserves and gives an inimitable flavour and good face to porter; to be added in proportion as the nature and composition of the grist is varied with a greater or less proportion of pale malt.

I bow before your awesomeness... :mug:

Did you do it outside?

So are you doing essentia bina and Spanish juice (licorice water- in this buck it is a mixture of licorice and dry mustard)?

Bob · Jul 20, 2008

I didn't make the full-sized batch, no!

And I did it inside, much to my darling wife's dismay. I made a little less than a cup of the stuff, and probably will never do so again. What a massive pain in the ass to make something that, to my taste buds, is exactly like...molasses. So we added 20 fluid ounces of molasses and this cup of essentia bina.

We decided to forego the mustard and licorice this time, in the interest of simplicity, and in the interest of not blowing 15 gallons of wort if it turns out nasty. I'll brew this someday soon in a 2-gallon batch and actually use all of the ingredients listed.

My portion of the wort is in my basement. It came out to 1.061, and looks like a deep amber ale. The wort was remarkably bright out of the kettle, and tastes very nice indeed. Nottingham is beginning to chew on it; I'll keep you posted.

Cheers,

Bob

mrbowenz · Jul 21, 2008

Here's some pictures from this past weekend, everything worked really well (big thanks to my partner Bob Davis, our beer demonstration was extremely popular with the crowds of people that visited us. In Pa this weekend it was 94 degrees on Friday, 98 Sat, and 92 on Sunday, we absolutely roasted ourselves being in period clothes, and burning a large fire for 8 hours a day. We were completely historic for 1820(the period we were presenting) until we chilled with an IC on a cordless drill pump w/ice water (normally we would have had a cistern or stream to cool our beer, and wanted something we could drink later), we were in a field

Ask any questions you may have either Bob or I will do our best to explain

mrbowenz · Jul 21, 2008

A COUPLE OF MORAVIAN BREWERS: WE HAD A BLAST DOING THIS

Revvy · Jul 21, 2008

Too Cool guys!!!!
I'm thinking about pitching the idea of doing this at our annual "Feast of St Clair" festival here in town every spring...It recreates life here during the voyageur's period around the time of the French/Indian War....

What's under the white cloths?

mrbowenz · Jul 21, 2008

Revvy said:
Too Cool guys!!!!
I'm thinking about pitching the idea of doing this at our annual "Feast of St Clair" festival here in town every spring...It recreates life here during the voyageur's period around the time of the French/Indian War....

What's under the white cloths?

I say do it, people were fascinated with this thing, most people have no idea how beer is made, and we had more than a few chuckles over the three days, we had people eating grain, rubbing hops , and tasting wort, we were fairly interactive with them yet at times , we tried hold back the laughs at peoples knowlege about beer. most folks are clueless, and they ate it up.

Under the cloths are a mash tun and liquor tank , we preheated with hot water. It is a lot of work though, I built all of this in three weeks and some hard labor

Revvy · Jul 21, 2008

Did you guys take pics of the mashtun and liquor tank?

Bob · Jul 21, 2008

Not that I know of. While they work pretty well, they're not exactly right.

The underback/liquor back just had a hole drilled into it and a wooden tap hammered in. The mash tun has a brass spigot fixed to it and a bazooka screen inside it.

Not something I'd be comfortable advertising, as the probable means of getting the liquor/wort from the tun/back was through a hole in the bottom of the tun, plugged with a long pole tapered at the lower end (that plugs the hole). The mash would be "filtered" through a bed of clean straw scattered over the bottom of the tun.

We decided that, as it is impossible to get clean straw, we'd use a modern-ish method to strain bright wort from the mash.

Bob

Bob · Sep 14, 2008

An update:

I bottled my 5 gallons of Porter yesterday.

We mashed at 153degF and collected 18 gallons US in the copper, which yielded 15 gallons of bitter wort.

It started at 1.061 and finished at 1.010, for an ABV of 6.72%.

Fermented in cellar at 64-68degF with 11g of Danstar Nottingham.

Tasting notes at bottling: Quite bitter. Some diacetyl, some residual sweetness from molasses/essentia bina. Wonderful brown colour. Definitely not what one would consider a Porter, Robust, Brown or otherwise. More like a strong English Brown or Old Ale.

When it's carbonated and loverly, I'll post piccies.

Bob

Kauai_Kahuna · Sep 14, 2008

Hey, thanks for sharing this. It has been a good read and very entertaining. Glad to hear that you had fun.

Thurz · Sep 16, 2008

That's awesome! I'm thinking of making some of my Iron Age ale next summer, using a wooden trough, heated stones, and a linen sack, or perhaps even a wicker basket. Perhaps an iron cauldron for the gruit. I'm really looking forward to this as I've been thinking about it for quite some time! Even though my current instruments are fairly primitive already, since all I really use when brewing are my pots, pans and my fermentation buckets and carboys. Never used any sorts of measuring equipment except for the obvious volume indicators on the side of the carboy.

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