General questions about brewing "primitive" beers/etc

[lifeisafarm]

Wiki says:

A grain is a small, hard, dry seed, with or without an attached hull or fruit layer, harvested for human or animal consumption.[1] A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legumes.​

 

[ancientmariner52]

Check out Dr. Jarrad Diamond's 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'.

The reasoning goes that the hg bands collected the largest seeds, with the loosest hulls. When they got around to planting them, deliberately or otherwise, those were the ancestors of all modern grains. Over thousands of generations the grains got plumper and the hulls looser.

Similar situation with domestic animals. But you have to have the suitable plants and animals to start with, and the climate has to be suitable for wide dispersion.

Eurasia is aligned parallel to the equator, so you can move thousands of miles without major climate change. Africa and the Americas are at right angles, so you can't go very far without drastic climate changes. And poor Australia and the Pacific islands never had a fair chance.

Wow, digressin' like a great big ugly digressin' thing. Sherman, to the wayback machine!

 

[Zimm9]

I'm just replying to follow. Really interesting discussion!

 

[Miraculix]

Regarding ground ivy, yes, right after fermentation it tastes unpleasant but changes than over a few weeks to really rally nice and floral. It works really well with mugwort and meadowsweet in combination.

Have a read on my second post I wrote in the gruit thread,I do a sum up of all the psychoactive effects I could research there.

Regarding yarrow, yes the herb changes the "buzz" of the brew. It is stronger with yarrow. Other herbs do other things but nearly none of them only adds flavour.

Google " malt diastetic power ", there are good articles explaining the enzyme activity that converts starches, but you already understood the main points.

Please let me know if I forgot to answer on something!

 

[lifeisafarm]

The reasoning goes that the hg bands collected the largest seeds, with the loosest hulls. When they got around to planting them, deliberately or otherwise, those were the ancestors of all modern grains. Over thousands of generations the grains got plumper and the hulls looser.

Similar situation with domestic animals. But you have to have the suitable plants and animals to start with, and the climate has to be suitable for wide dispersion.

Yep, no it makes total sense to me, great input @ancientmariner52, thanks.

Regarding ground ivy, yes, right after fermentation it tastes unpleasant but changes than over a few weeks to really rally nice and floral. It works really well with mugwort and meadowsweet in combination.

OK, that's splendid because I love mugwort and meadowsweet! I wonder if mugwort's psychoactive effects are deactivated during the fermentation process? Else we could have a beer that gives us very lucid dreams!

I want to try a mugwort brew because I love its flavours/aromas, and I keep a lot of dried stuff about because I put it in my churchwarden pipe. It holds a great smoke, which is why it's called 'sailor's tobacco' from back before we imported actual tobacco from the new world.

Regarding yarrow, yes the herb changes the "buzz" of the brew. It is stronger with yarrow. Other herbs do other things but nearly none of them only adds flavour.

Really learning a lot of new things here – and I call myself a forager! Had no idea. This is super interesting for me especially being into the very "wild" brew styles.

It makes me realise just how little we have yet to understand about the world of fungi and micro-organisms, especially when they're interacting with our food and drink (and our bodies) in such varied ways, particularly with wild beers that are as much art as science and can be complex due to numerous environmental variables that industrial/modern brewing understandably seeks to factor out of the equation.

Example: I just finished making 10L of mead from local chestnut honey; I added ginger, dates, lemongrass, and citrus peel. It was a total flavour/fermentation experiment. It began to fizz and bubble after about 11 hours, quicker than almost any added yeast I've used including "turbo" varieties I picked up from homebrew stores. Right now, it's been three days – still going strong! Tbh I even thought I would have killed much of the wild yeasts in the honey, because I used very hot water (hardly cooled from the kettle), poured straight into the demijohn onto the chunks of fruit/etc.

Now it gets VERY interesting (for me at least, geek-out!) because I recall reading somewhere about the "viking beers" with the magic sticks, which had yeasts with a vigour comparable to or often surpassing turbo/hybrid lab strains! Which is quite something; but that's not the amazing part – the really intruiging bit was that these wild yeast strains seem to tolerate very high heats (and in fact, fluctuations of extreme temparutures). Domesticated varieties in the same conditions would have died off.

Intuitively, it makes sense, no? Wild things are just gernerally more stubborn and hardy than their domesticated cousins, whether that's wolf vs dog, or wild herbs vs weak pot herbs from the supermarket.

Down the rabbit hole again?!

EDIT: Good read this: https://meadbeerwine.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/viking-totem-sticks.html

 

[ancientmariner52]

Wild things have to be more hardy. Don't have hooman beans watching out for them. Compare horse to zebra, Jersey cow to bison. Same for plants and fungi.

It's Dr. Jared Diamond. Should have looked, it was right in front of me.

 

[Miraculix]

Please read the book "ancient and herbal healing beers" and the book "how to brew mead like a viking", you will heavily enjoy both I'll bet.

Gets even better regarding mugwort and ground ivy... The combination of those two enhances the effects of the herbs. At least this is what I read. Especially the first book had a lot of stuff about gruit herbs inside. The second one is more focused on wild fermentation, but still also covers gruit.

Wow, ten gallons of wild mead surely is a lot! This can take a long time to be finished, hopefully it will be great!

 

[bernardsmith]

OK, that's splendid because I love mugwort and meadowsweet! I wonder if mugwort's psychoactive effects are deactivated during the fermentation process? Else we could have a beer that gives us very lucid dreams!





recall reading somewhere about the "viking beers" with the magic sticks, which had yeasts with a vigour comparable to or often surpassing turbo/hybrid lab strains! Which is quite something; but that's not the amazing part – the really intruiging bit was that these wild yeast strains seem to tolerate very high heats (and in fact, fluctuations of extreme temparutures). Domesticated varieties in the same conditions would have died off.

Intuitively, it makes sense, no? Wild things are just gernerally more stubborn and hardy than their domesticated cousins, whether that's wolf vs dog, or wild herbs vs weak pot herbs from the supermarket.

OK - two quick thoughts.
1. The Protestant Church was quick to shift from gruit herbs to hops not only because gruit was a monopoly controlled by the monasteries but many of the herbs had mild psychotropic effects , yes, even in alcohol (or perhaps, especially in alcohol). Hops on the other hand are considered soporific (they induce sleep) and they cause what used to be called "brewer's droop" if yer knows what I mean... so the more Puritan aspects of the Reformation preferred hops to gruit. http://www.gaianstudies.org/articles6.htm
2. It is not so self evident that indigenous yeast is more "hardy" than lab cultured strains. Lab cultured yeast are in fact "engineered" by the lab to share very similar characteristics in ways that wild yeast would not have. Lab cultured yeast are harvested in ways that select the cells that flocculate similarly, that thrive at particular temperatures, that survive at particular concentrations of sugar:water, that produce certain kinds of and levels of acidity etc etc etc. A colony of indigenous yeast that you grow may or may not all be so similar - so some cells may simply curl up when faced with the level of acidity that other cells produce or may prefer to transport sugars through cell walls at lower or higher temperatures. Many cells may not tolerate more than 1 or 2% alcohol by volume and so forth. With indigenous yeast you are rolling dice... or buy a lottery ticket and that is OK if that is something you are prepared to do because while with lab cultured yeast you know what the outcome is likely to be (think: your weekly or bi-weekly paycheck); with indigenous yeast you may hit the jackpot and win the lottery or you may have junk on your hands...

 

[ancientmariner52]

We might want to define 'hardy' here. I would use to mean able to adapt to a wide range of the conditions met with in the wild. If you mean cultured and 'purified' to be very good at serving human purposes, that's good too.

 

[bernardsmith]

We might want to define 'hardy' here. I would
Ouse to mean able to adapt to a wide range of the conditions met with in the wild. If you mean cultured and 'purified' to be very good at serving human purposes, that's good too.

OK but what indigenous yeast is submerged in gallons of liquid with an SG of 1.090 (a typical wine) , a pH of about 3.2 (again fairly typical) and at about 70F, under pressure from the CO2 billions and billions of similar cells are producing? The "wide range" of conditions that your wild yeast might experience is very, very far from the experience that any yeast cell you are using to make a wine or a mead (or a beer - OK more like an SG of 1.050) will ever face when it enters the damaged skin of a sugar rich berry or other fruit

 

[ancientmariner52]

Ain't my wild yeast. Don't got no wild yeast. Don't want no wild yeast.

Let's turn it around. Say I take a packet of US05 out in the woods and pour it on the ground. How many descendants will be alive come spring? And will they still be recognizable as US05.
I don't want to fight with anybody, I'm genuinely interested.

 

[lifeisafarm]

I wonder if the herbs might have been able to prevent the ales from turning to VINEGAR. Every fermented product, whether it is beer or cider or mead, will eventually turn into vinegar if exposed to air at all. I wonder if the herbs inhibited the growth of acetobacter?? Experiments would be in order to test this theory. I mean, it’s one thing to have a lactic acid sourness in an ale. It’s another thing to have it turn into vinegar, which is much more intolerable to most people for regular consumption, except of course in the smallest quantities like on a salad or bread or whatever. So I do wonder about this.

Just a quick update!

I finished a few batches of "ancient" mead experiments and decided to crack them out this month for tasting – the best part! The main ingredients were: honey (some organic/expensive/wild, some very cheap!; dates (for the yeast & sugars); ginger (for flavour & possible preservation effect; mugwort (wild foraged then dried) as a "gruit"/test for one batch only.

Method was using luke-warm water (pre-boiled then cooled) to melt honey; added chopped ingredients, and melted honey-water via funnel into demijohn; added bung/airlock. Done! (I know, I know, you semi-pros must be horrified at my common, mucky ways!)

Here are some observations:

– The mead with mugwort did in fact prevent sourness compared to the others and yet didn't impart much noticeable "herbal" flavour beyond that, which is good IMO.
– I also noted that the mugwort seemed to hasten and extend a very bubbly fermentation and better clarify or "colour" the mead.
– The raw/wild honeys didn't do so well, but those ones didn't have the mugwort added. I'm annoyed at that, as the honeys were expensive! And also because now I don't know if it was something in the raw honey or the lack of "gruit".
– I did not have a control, so this isn't very scientific; just some observations/speculations. Next experiment is going to be more controlled and of course, beer related, not mead. I find beer much harder.

I also used demijohns but I do want to try using a crock-pot like this one. I think it can be done, as there is a water-seal, and it may better emulate our ancestors, because for example the Egyptians and other ancient brewing cultures used stone vessels and wonderful pottery (and earlier cultures, potentially even in wooden troughs!).

I am going to research locally growing herbs (Sussex area). So far I know of: mugwort, marjoram, bog myrtle (sweet gale), pine/spruce tips/needles, nettle, juniper (haven't found any but apparently there is some around), nettle (love this one!), rosemary, yarrow, lavender (yuck?!), mint family. What else? I thought maybe twigs and flowers from e.g. apple/pear tree. And all kinds of berries, my favourite being ripe himalayan honeysuckle. Brambles maybe? And I really, badly want to try cloveroot aka wood avens for a mulled-spice note.

I've heard oats can help equalize and thicken beers, so I might try something oat based. But I've yet to get a definiteive answer on if/how I can ferment an oats-only beer. It does seem the earliest recorded "beers" were actually often hybrids, that is, a mix of grains (beer), fruits (wine), and honey (mead). So I could add oats for flavour only, but then that's not a beer if I'm not converting the oat sugars to starch but only extracting flavours, I suppose?

Thoughts and comments appreciated!

Luke

 

[Miraculix]

Just one thing that came to my mind is that the wild mugwort might have introduced a lot of wild yeasts that might have been the reason for better fermentation. Dates are usually treated with chemicals or radiation to kill everything living on it and raw honey doesn't have that much of yeast usually, a bit of a shot in the dark.

Or did you use completely untreated dates?

 

[dmtaylor]

Just a quick update!

I finished a few batches of "ancient" mead experiments and decided to crack them out this month for tasting – the best part! The main ingredients were: honey (some organic/expensive/wild, some very cheap!; dates (for the yeast & sugars); ginger (for flavour & possible preservation effect; mugwort (wild foraged then dried) as a "gruit"/test for one batch only.

Method was using luke-warm water (pre-boiled then cooled) to melt honey; added chopped ingredients, and melted honey-water via funnel into demijohn; added bung/airlock. Done! (I know, I know, you semi-pros must be horrified at my common, mucky ways!)

Here are some observations:

– The mead with mugwort did in fact prevent sourness compared to the others and yet didn't impart much noticeable "herbal" flavour beyond that, which is good IMO.
– I also noted that the mugwort seemed to hasten and extend a very bubbly fermentation and better clarify or "colour" the mead.
– The raw/wild honeys didn't do so well, but those ones didn't have the mugwort added. I'm annoyed at that, as the honeys were expensive! And also because now I don't know if it was something in the raw honey or the lack of "gruit".
– I did not have a control, so this isn't very scientific; just some observations/speculations. Next experiment is going to be more controlled and of course, beer related, not mead. I find beer much harder.

I also used demijohns but I do want to try using a crock-pot like this one. I think it can be done, as there is a water-seal, and it may better emulate our ancestors, because for example the Egyptians and other ancient brewing cultures used stone vessels and wonderful pottery (and earlier cultures, potentially even in wooden troughs!).

I am going to research locally growing herbs (Sussex area). So far I know of: mugwort, marjoram, bog myrtle (sweet gale), pine/spruce tips/needles, nettle, juniper (haven't found any but apparently there is some around), nettle (love this one!), rosemary, yarrow, lavender (yuck?!), mint family. What else? I thought maybe twigs and flowers from e.g. apple/pear tree. And all kinds of berries, my favourite being ripe himalayan honeysuckle. Brambles maybe? And I really, badly want to try cloveroot aka wood avens for a mulled-spice note.

I've heard oats can help equalize and thicken beers, so I might try something oat based. But I've yet to get a definiteive answer on if/how I can ferment an oats-only beer. It does seem the earliest recorded "beers" were actually often hybrids, that is, a mix of grains (beer), fruits (wine), and honey (mead). So I could add oats for flavour only, but then that's not a beer if I'm not converting the oat sugars to starch but only extracting flavours, I suppose?

Thoughts and comments appreciated!

This is really cool -- thank you for sharing your experience!

I made a bad mead once. It was the one time where I did not heat the honey-water mixture to 160 F to pasteurize. I know most meadmakers poo-poo the idea of heat treatment, but in my experience, I know it is possible for mead to get contaminated by wild critters in the honey, or otherwise come out much more poorly relative to every heat-treated mead I have ever made, one of which won a Best of Show out of 18 other meads so I would hope maybe I kind of know what I am talking about.

Note: I love sweet gale, I think it’s awesome. Definitely pursue that one in particular.

Regarding oats, I have had a couple of oat malt beers. Oat malt is a good option, at least in theory, because it contains the enzymes to convert its starches to sugars. Otherwise, with just plain rolled oats, it’s all starch and isn’t fermentable by conventional yeast. On the other hand, while these oat malt beers do taste slightly more oaty than a regular beer, honestly, I really don’t think the oat malt adds a noticeable body. So if you are looking for body, I might go with rye malt instead, which absolutely improves body AND contains enzymes for self-conversion. In any case, you’re going to want to do at least a mini-mash, unless you don’t mind a lot of unconverted starches in your fermented beverage. There are a lot of wild organisms that are able to eat starch, but..... yeah, it all depends on what you want. Do you want to use wild yeasts, or conventional yeasts? Conventional only eats sugars and not so much starches.

Hope this helps. Keep on keeping on!

 

[lifeisafarm]

Just one thing that came to my mind is that the wild mugwort might have introduced a lot of wild yeasts that might have been the reason for better fermentation. Dates are usually treated with chemicals or radiation to kill everything living on it and raw honey doesn't have that much of yeast usually, a bit of a shot in the dark.

Or did you use completely untreated dates?

That's a really good point. I had ASSUMED there was no (or little) active yeast in the mugwort only because it was DRIED herb from the previous summer's forage. Can yeast preserve in a dried state like that? The herb was kept in a ceramic pot.

I do know that mugwort contains a LOT of some kind of very potent fungi/yeast because of previous experiences trying to dry it to smoke as pipe weed. If its left with even a little moisture in say, a plastic carrier bag, then it becomes utterly overrun by a white fungus or colony of fungi within days; few other herbs I collect are so quick to mold over like this.

As for the dates, also a good point. I am pretty sure they were organic bla bla... but even so, can't rule out some kind of "organic" treatment?

Thanks for the feedback, I will add these factors to my experimentation list.

 

[lifeisafarm]

This is really cool -- thank you for sharing your experience!
I made a bad mead once. It was the one time where I did not heat the honey-water mixture to 160 F to pasteurize. I know most meadmakers poo-poo the idea of heat treatment, but in my experience, I know it is possible for mead to get contaminated by wild critters in the honey, or otherwise come out much more poorly relative to every heat-treated mead I have ever made, one of which won a Best of Show out of 18 other meads so I would hope maybe I kind of know what I am talking about.

Thank you for this feedback. I didn't consider major "impurities" like this in raw honey, because I assumed filtering or quality checks etc, but yes it makes sense; something like a small bug or piece of dirt could really turn the fermentation figuratively (if not literally) sour!

Note: I love sweet gale, I think it’s awesome. Definitely pursue that one in particular.

My only reservation with this one, was that fellow foragers tell me it's an abortifacient and I wondered what other toxins or volatile compounds it may contain; however it has a long history of use in early gruit beers, so I'd like to try it. I wonder how they used the plant – whether it was leaves, twigs, catkins, shoots, tips... more experimentation! Counter-point: elderberries are toxic if ingested raw, however they produce to my mind the finest vinegar one can make! The fermentation process does seem to break down any toxins without cooking the berries first, so I wonder if using a lot of bog myrtle (aka sweet gale) in gruit beers or for meads is fine, since any "unfriendly" compounds get broken down during fermentation?

Regarding oats, I have had a couple of oat malt beers. Oat malt is a good option, at least in theory, because it contains the enzymes to convert its starches to sugars. Otherwise, with just plain rolled oats, it’s all starch and isn’t fermentable by conventional yeast. On the other hand, while these oat malt beers do taste slightly more oaty than a regular beer, honestly, I really don’t think the oat malt adds a noticeable body. So if you are looking for body, I might go with rye malt instead, which absolutely improves body AND contains enzymes for self-conversion. In any case, you’re going to want to do at least a mini-mash, unless you don’t mind a lot of unconverted starches in your fermented beverage. There are a lot of wild organisms that are able to eat starch, but..... yeah, it all depends on what you want. Do you want to use wild yeasts, or conventional yeasts? Conventional only eats sugars and not so much starches.

Hope this helps. Keep on keeping on!

Thanks for the encouragement!

Do I understand correctly from what you're saying here, that one can simply boil regular porridge oats into a "mash", then cool and ferment this mash using regular old brewer's yeast (or possibly wild yeasts)? The only other ways I can think of to do it would be either by baking them into a kind of cake, biscuit or even a flapjack (!) and then boiling those afterwards; or, by doing it "the chicha way" – and I don't fancy chewing back on loads of dry oats even if it did work...

 

[Miraculix]

I think yeast can survive decades without water, obviously the longer, the lower the percentage of surviving cells, but there will be something left after a year for sure.

You cannot ferment boiled oats, as there is no sugar present, just starch. Brewers yeast cannot digest starch. You boil the oats to gelatinize the starches in order to make them accessible to enzymes that cut the starch into sugars during the mashing process after the boiling. Those enzymes are usually provided by malted barley.

 

[dmtaylor]

Oats need to be mashed, which means soaking them in warm water WITH some malt at about 150 F for at least 20-30 minutes. Otherwise they'll be all sticky starch that most yeast cannot ferment. You can use any kind of malt for doing this, including regular barley malt, or wheat malt, oat malt, rye malt, whatever. A handful or two of crushed malt should be sufficient to mash a couple of pounds of oats probably.

Regarding sweet gale / bog myrtle, I use the leaves and twigs together. I really don't know much about the toxicity, but I believe that in the small amounts needed in beer, the effect should be minimal, if that makes any sense. But for a woman who is trying to become pregnant, it may be wise to keep away -- I honestly don't know enough about it.