Your favourite 18th century porter recipe is.... ?

[dmtaylor]

My best theory is that historical brown malt was kilned in a gradient where the bottom of the batch closest to the heat was dark brown/blown malt and the top of the batch was barely kilned at all, so you'd end up with a diastatic malt which ranged the full spectrum from pale to black

I think you may be right. I have experimented with this. Last year I made a pretty good Munich dunkles lager using none other than home-kilned American 2-row pale malt. It was a true SMASH beer. Turned out to be a deep copper colored beer about 19 SRM. Here are my detailed notes about how I kilned the malt in my oven:

Toast malt a day ahead 2 inches deep at these temps and times:
170 F for 30 minutes
200 F for 30
230 F for 30
375 F for 20.
You might think the last step is the only one that actually matters, but based on discussion with Jordon Geurts of Briess, ensuring the malt is totally dry before kilning further is essential to preservation of the diastatic enzymes. Any moisture at high temps will kill the enzymes.

The malt was never stirred during kilning -- it was allowed to get dark in the corners and edges, and remained more pale in the center, and yes this was done on purpose.

I got 82% brewhouse efficiency, and the wort was definitely sweet. Single infused at 149 F for 75 minutes. I ended up with 50% attenuation (Diamond lager yeast), so I added enzymes at the end to bring the attenuation up to a more reasonable 69%. I was happy with how the final beer tasted, which included notes of dark bread crust, nuttiness, and caramel, with slight hints of acrid burntness which diappeared after longer aging. If I did it again, I'd mash much longer, maybe 2 whole hours, due to the low diastatic power, and thus hopefully be able to skip the additional enzymes.

EDIT: Oh, wow. I had zero recollection of posting so much information on your previous link. Well this here above might be a good overall summary anyway. Cheers!

 

[Miraculix]

Not something I've done myself but I have tried a friend's effort who split a batch and Bretted some of the bottles. Which made a big difference but was a bit much on its own - the ideal was maybe a 1:2 blend of Bretted:unbretted. Which of course sounds rather like the traditional blending stock ale with fresh.

If it was something that I'd drink enough of to make it worth the effort, I'd make it an annual brew, keeping back 1/3 to age with Brett clausenii, and then blending 2/3 of the new batch with 1/3 of the previous year's aged with Brett for portery perfection.

I got several 4.5 l balloons sitting around, doing nothing since years.

This would be perfect for a Brett secondary.

I know, We've been here before, but, any brett recommendations? Yeast recommendations as well?

I will bottle about 1/3 directly, the rest will get the bretts. Probably one of these brett mixes would be best?

 

[Miraculix]

I had a thread where i attempted several methods for making diastatic brown malt without success.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/loss-of-diastatic-power-from-toasting-malt.684036/
My best theory is that historical brown malt was kilned in a gradient where the bottom of the batch closest to the heat was dark brown/blown malt and the top of the batch was barely kilned at all, so you'd end up with a diastatic malt which ranged the full spectrum from pale to black

This sums up my thoughts as well! I fully agree.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I know, We've been here before, but, any brett recommendations? Yeast recommendations as well?

I will bottle about 1/3 directly, the rest will get the bretts. Probably one of these brett mixes would be best?

If you're trying to be historical then you want a light hand with the Brett, hence my suggestion of claussenii ("Brett-C"). Especially if you're leaving it for a while the Brett starts trampling over everything else, which is not what you want - hence diluting it with fresh.

For big dark beers I'm finding it hard to get past harvested Rochefort dregs, noticeably more complex than WLP540, cheaper and you get "free" Rochefort to drink!!!

[talking of which, for anyone in NW England, I found Rochefort 6 in a Booths supermarket a few weeks ago and the dregs seem to be successfully fermenting wort at the moment, previously I've successfully harvested from Rochefort 10]

 

[Miraculix]

If you're trying to be historical then you want a light hand with the Brett, hence my suggestion of claussenii ("Brett-C"). Especially if you're leaving it for a while the Brett starts trampling over everything else, which is not what you want - hence diluting it with fresh.

For big dark beers I'm finding it hard to get past harvested Rochefort dregs, noticeably more complex than WLP540, cheaper and you get "free" Rochefort to drink!!!

[talking of which, for anyone in NW England, I found Rochefort 6 in a Booths supermarket a few weeks ago and the dregs seem to be successfully fermenting wort at the moment, previously I've successfully harvested from Rochefort 10]

Are these beers brett beers? Or is it more like a super belgian yeast?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Are these beers brett beers? Or is it more like a super belgian yeast?

No, this is just using the Rochefort Saccharomyces for the primary fermention, it's just a really nice yeast for that.

Given that WLP540 is firmly in the British family of yeasts, and allegedly came from Rochefort, one might assume that Rochefort are using a British yeast - they had some problems reestablishing after your boys trashed the brewery in WWII, and ended up getting a yeast from the Palm yeastbank in the 1960s so it's quite possible that they ended up with something British. But no doubt it will have adapted to stronger worts since then.

 

[Dyke Busters]

I do historical reenactment, English Civil War 1640s a little bit before the original post idea, but that is another story.
Anyway i set up a messenger chat group over 3 years ago and we have made many discovery's.
unfortunately I u use kits and wanted people that did grain brews to help with information in these books.
If any of you would be interested in my chat group please feel free to message me on here. Or if you want to try some reenactment , look up the Sealed Knot and look up Lisles (Royalist). 9r also contact me on here.