I am gonna brew this - and a life lesson!

[gunhaus]

I have been laid up for a few days, and have been doing all manner of things to alleviate boredom. Last night, I dug out some of my old brewing note books and started down memory lane. One in particular has a recipe that I have ZERO recollection of. I do not remember brewing it, nor do i ever remember using the techniques! I found the note taking (Or rather the pitiful lack of proper note taking, humorous as hell!) I am going to sort out a couple of things so they make sense with today's ingredients. Some real notes and better details might have been nice!!! But this must have been good stuff in some way, because the page is covered with stars, and a big WOW!!!!!!, and several plus signs. But I cannot say if i brewed this or if i had this and got the recipe because i was enthused by the beer.

The note page say:
Ken Benn's Stout

4 pounds of malt extract
2-1/4 pound of barley flakes
1 pound of roasted barley
1/8 pound of sour malteds (That is what is says!)
1 pound of regular malt grains

1-1/2 to 2 oz of hops

Yeast

Put 3 gallons of water in pot. heat to 155-160 degrees. Add malt and stir good (I assume I meant extract) put smashed grain in a grain baggie, add to water and keep at 150 to 155 for 1 hour. Drain well in a strainer. Take another pot of water that is 170 - 180 degrees, and ladle one ladle at a time slowly over grain bag till you have 6.5 gallons. (Takes a half hour - 45 minutes or longer - go SLOW)

Boil with the hops for 1 hour - cool down to 75 or so, add yeast, Put in jug with air lock, siphon to second jug after two weeks, and air lock. After one more month bottle like normal.

The only date is 1992. I was WAY scientific and scrupulous about my records as you can see!

Ken Benn was an old timer and local farmer who was a bit of a brewing mentor. He had learned from his dad, who had learned from his mom and dad who were immigrants One from Germany one from Holland. When modern material and equipment came along Ken jumped right in and brewed right up till his death about 7-8 years ago. (I believe he was 91 or 92, but there were some in his church who thought he MIGHT have been as old as 99! A month before he died he borrowed a chamber reamer from me. He was making a new deer rifle! He was still pretty spry right to the end. I like to believe it was the home brew)

ANYWAY - I have no idea what to think of this but i am gonna try it anyway. I have 4 lbs of Light DME, and i have some 2 row, a couple kinds of roast barley, aciduated malt, and flaked barley on hand so matching something up should be easy enough. I am not sure about that partial-mash, mini-mash, extracty sort of technique i outlined but it should be interesting!!!

I am thinking either an ounce and a half or so of Kent Golding or Fuggles or something along that line. Not sure what I have on hand.

Maybe WLP004?

THE LESSON: If you are just starting out - it would pay to be DETAILED with your notes. You never know when one of your home brews will sneak up and kill off a few important brain cells and you won't be able to recall WHAT the hell you were writing or thinking a gazillion years ago! Let the adventure begin!

 

[doug293cz]

Looks like a brew in a bag (BIAB) partial mash recipe. All the crushed grains and flaked barley go in the bag and get mashed at 150 - 155 for an hour. 3 gal of strike water at 155 - 160 sounds about right to get a mash temp of 150 - 155. Do the sparge (pour water over bag in strainer) and proceed to the boil. Extract can be added at any time during the boil, but many brewers like to add the extract near the end of boil (at least for pale beers, which this isn't.) Turning the heat off while dissolving the extract is a good idea to prevent scorching.

Brew on

 

[gunhaus]

Yes sir I get it - I just don't remember ever doing it! To tell the truth what is throwing me a bit is the "sour malteds" thing i had listed. My first thought was sauermalz - so just use the aciduated malt I have on hand. Then I decided to call Ken's grandson, and see if he knew anything about it. He dabbles with brew a bit too. He said that ken used to make up a "beer" in quart jars that he soured, and added to some beers in various quantities. Something Kens grandmother insisted on. Since I had it listed by weight I am going on the notion i meant something dry! But now i wish i had not asked! Got my wheels turning and that is always bad. He also had NO IDEA what the heck the recipe is - so THAT was no help. We shall see.

The directions i had written down called for the extract before the mash so what the hell! We'll give it a go. And although I have it written down as being loaded into a grain baggie, I have a BIAB bag that fits my 8 gallon pot I think I will use that>

You would think If I made this, I would remember AT LEAST ladling spoons full of hot water for an hour as a sparge! It'll be fun no doubt. I even have access to the house I was living in then - thus the well water I would have used. I am gonna Tom Sawyer my son into going over for a couple of big jugs full. I had never heard of water chemistry back then so i sure heck would not have done anything but draw it from the tap and brew away - So that is what we shall do.

I have some Goldings so that is the Hop.

I only need some yeast - My brother is up near the LHBS we'll see what he can find me and I will make some brew!!!

Curious as to thoughts on what Ken could have been making for "sour beer" to flavor with. I understand Guinness sours beers to add to their product - A homemade/farmhouse version of this sort of thing perhaps? I don't recall him ever adding such stuff but his grandson is pretty sure about it.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

He had learned from his dad, who had learned from his mom and dad who were immigrants One from Germany one from Holland....

I am thinking either an ounce and a half or so of Kent Golding or Fuggles or something along that line. Not sure what I have on hand.

Maybe WLP004?

I guess the question in this kind of case is if he learned from his dad who learned from his dad - how much there would have been "doing things like in the old country" and how much was make do with the materials immediately available. I guess that on hops they would have used US hops rather than importing Hallertau or Tettnang from the old country - and before the mid-70s the US hop scene was almost all Cluster.

It's possible that they had brought their own yeast from Europe - in which case you might look at an alt/kolsch yeast, or something like WLP515 Antwerp (which in fact is a relative of the US yeasts like BRY-97) or even a lager yeast like 34/70.

Or they had to get a yeast locally - you don't say where he lived, perhaps you could deduce a "local" yeast.

it would pay to be DETAILED with your notes. You never know when one of your home brews will sneak up and kill off a few important brain cells and you won't be able to recall WHAT the hell you were writing or thinking a gazillion years ago!

+1 to this, in so many fields.

 

[gunhaus]

Ken told us, that his dad and his uncles all had a "chore" when it came to beer. They were farmers and they grew little patches of barley, wheat, oats, etc that were malted, dried, toasted, etc all under their mothers watchful eye, He told us a story about how when he (Ken) was about 14 his Grandmother was somewhat crippled up and could not stand or walk much, but she would sit in a chair and run the boys like a band leader through the steps as they brewed. As a teen he was given meaningless chores so nothing got screwed up (Grandma was picky about her beer!)

By the time I got to know Ken, he was fully embracing ANYTHING that made life simpler. He preferred malt extract to malted grains (Even once we could get good grains easily) He said he had had enough of making malt, and roasting and drying and flipping etc, by the time he left for the War! Beer making was less a passion for him i think that a bit of a snub at having to go to to buy "store bought" Ken was not big on most things store bought. He did not drink a whole lot, but he did like darker brews than what we could buy in our rural local conveniently. He did grow hops. And by the time i knew him we could get a number of brewing yeasts. Sadly, I was so un-sophisticated at the time it NEVER occurred to me to ask how and where they harvested their yeast when he was young- I would LOVE to know about that now. When i knew him he bought his yeast like the rest of us - in packets full of dead and dying dry thingies as a rule!

Since my date is 1992 on this , I am really thinking this was more a concoction of Kens rather than a hand me down recipe of any sort. I know that when he talked about it, by his time they did not make any of his granddads beers. All the recipes his dad and uncles made came from his grandma. He also told us he did not care for them all that much!!! He learned to like beers he got in England and when i knew him that would be what i called the "style" of his brews. I SERIOUSLY doubt that Ken EVER considered the "style" of anything like that! trust me on that one! If it was good - it was good. "Here's how I do it . . . " if you follow me!

 

[madscientist451]

Thanks for posting, an interesting backstory.
Most of the recipe is extract, spending and hour carefully adding hot water to the grain bag with a ladle seems like a waste of time to me, I'd do a dunk sparge and be done with it.
I also don't see the point of adding the extract while steeping the grain.
I respect old ways of doing things, but that doesn't mean you have to do it the exact same way to get the same result.

 

[gunhaus]

Thanks - And i agree for the most part. Thing is i don;t know so much that this is an "old way" It is in fact more of a "what the hell was i thinking!" And i am curious as to what i was thinking! It's mostly leftovers and odds and ends so what the heck - we'll see.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

So if he was growing his own hops then they were surely Cluster, unless they had been brought from the old country (and I'm guessing that at the time, hop rhizomes weren't #1 priority?).

I don't know what the yeast position would have been in 1992 in the US, presumably it would have moved beyond bread yeast and onto the crappy early dry brewing yeast? In the UK we would have been using stuff like EDME - allegedly that's now morphed into Fermentis S-33.

 

[gunhaus]

Remember, Ken was a couple gens removed from the old country, it was his grandparents who emigrated here. He was pretty skilled in malting and other techniques - but he was by no means as dedicated to it as his grandparents or even parents were. And he truly embraced malt extract and package yeast, and simpler items. It was a full time job plus a couple hours running a dairy farm!

Our yeast situation in my area was still pretty rough in 92. If I traveled south to one of our bigger cities I could get a pretty good selection of decent dry and liquids. But locally there were only a few dry yeasts for wine and beer and they were often past their prime! Our hop situation was better though. We could usually get several varieties vacuum packed, and just north of us we had guys already getting into growing on a substantial level.

What exactly the hops were on his farm i would have no idea! They are long gone now, and where and when his grandparents acquired them i could not guess.

I guess this all started for me today because i found a certain charm in the utterly ignorant, simplistic, shot-in-the-dark nature of the my notes and efforts in those days. And when i found a recipe I can't even remember, using techniques i can't believe i did then I thought go-for-it. Since i don't remember making this beer, and cannot remember what it tasted like then, I am quite confident what i brew will be a dead ringer for what it was then.

 

[imasickboy]

I love the story. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Remember, Ken was a couple gens removed from the old country, it was his grandparents who emigrated here. He was pretty skilled in malting and other techniques - but he was by no means as dedicated to it as his grandparents or even parents were. And he truly embraced malt extract and package yeast, and simpler items. It was a full time job plus a couple hours running a dairy farm!...

What exactly the hops were on his farm i would have no idea! They are long gone now, and where and when his grandparents acquired them i could not guess.

Well that was my point about thinking of all the possible places they could have come from, even if I'd be 95% certain they were "local", in which case there's a 95% chance that they are Cluster, because Cluster was so dominant in the US for most of the 20th century.

 

[glugglug]

Great story and memories for you. I wish I had a mentor like that when I started. I made a brew log sheet early on in my brewing, but I recently went through it reminiscing about past brews and maybe rebrewing some. I was amazed at how many times I didn’t bother with final gravity. Take good notes!! Thanks for the story. Hopefully you’ll name this beer in honor of your friend and mentor Ken.