Historical Beers 1880 Whitbread Porter

[duncan_disorderly]

Amber and the normal brown malt might be similar in colour but they are quite different.
Amber is more similar to biscuit (Belgian) or victory malt (US) so like the name says a similar to a low sugar dry biscuit/cookie flavour; a bit like these guys:
View attachment 860022

For me brown malt tastes like bread crusts on the type of bread where the inside is white but the crust is dark brown.
The first time I brewed with is was with the Warminster version in a brown porter and on the first sip I instantly thought of the crust on this type of bread.

View attachment 860023

I like your descriptions, thanks. I've been using Crisp and Baird amber malt recently though, and they seem to have a stronger and more distinct flavour than those digestive biscuits. I'm going to have to make some grain teas. I need to get hold of a brown malt that's not Simpson's to compare those, before I do.

 

[kevin58]

I'm thinking of brewing a porter this weekend. Any updates on this one?

I've brewed several times playing around with different malts.. roast malt, Simpsons Imperial in place of the brown. Different yeasts... S-04, Imperial Pub, Omega London ale. I've added cherries and oats. I have not tried smoked malt yet but I want to make one with just a bit of it. The goal there will be to add just enough that you don't notice it but if it's left out you will notice some difference even if you can't identify what it is.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

I've brewed several times playing around with different malts.. roast malt, Simpsons Imperial in place of the brown. Different yeasts... S-04, Imperial Pub, Omega London ale. I've added cherries and oats. I have not tried smoked malt yet but I want to make one with just a bit of it. The goal there will be to add just enough that you don't notice it but if it's left out you will notice some difference even if you can't identify what it is.

You might invent a homeopathic remedy to help people stop smoking.

 

[Peebee]

Never heard about that. Where do you got that information from?

I'd been tasked to figure out what the soldiers drank in the English Civil War (about mid 17th C.) ... Or, I'd tasked myself, they'd invited me to look at this project (Civil War battle enactment bunch) that was pretty much finished. But I did what I do best of all ...

I pi**** them off, so they "sacked" me.

But going backwards, started off with Ron Pattinson ... he generally dries up in the 18th C. (well, there's not much in the way of records to write about back then), Ron covers all the malting of that period including the reintroduction of smoke ... then some thin scratching about with the likes of 1736 edition of "London & Country" publication ... and then this Canadian chap talking about where I lived as a kid (including the scary lock full of water and frogs): http://abetterbeerblog427.com/2017/10/28/struggling-with-1600s-derbyshire-strong-ale-part-1/ and http://abetterbeerblog427.com/2017/...600s-derbyshire-strong-ale-part-2-the-son-of/. An' a load of filling in stuff. Including the "Water Poet" and his hatred of smelly hops and beery things (it had to be Ale). Talking of hops ... King Henry VIII liked them 'cos the new-fangled "beer" he was giving his ship-borne troops didn't go off as quick as the "Ale".

If that ain't enough, read the thread on Jim's! And the "Beers (late 19th Century and 20th Century)" one (though that's got a load of garbage in it as I was coming to terms with "sugar" and the 18/19th C. slave trade).

There's 3-4 years of posts in there ... that'll keep you busy!

 

[Peebee]

@Miraculix: I struggled to find reference* to recent "smoking" of Brown Malt, but it is a more recently accepted view. The problem you can come across is writers viewing history through a telescope: "brown malt is smoky", or "brown malt is carefully made so it's NOT smoky". It's actually all those things but depends on what bit of history you look at. Look back far enough (not too far!) and there is no brown malt ... just "malt" at whatever colour it comes out. This is fairly recent (2022) from Ron P. (from Last bit on malt 1880 - 1914):

Brown malt
Not left on the withering floor as long as other malt and spread in the drying kiln no more than 1.5 inches (37.5 mm) thick. Initially the heat was moderate, but when all the moisture in the malt was gone, the heat was suddenly increased by adding oak or beech wood to the fire. The sudden heat caused the grains to swell by 25%. The smoke from the wood gave the finished malt a smoky flavour.

The deliberate addition of wood to create smoke and allowing it to come into contact with the malt is very different from 18th century practice, where every attempt was made to prevent this happening. Though with the much-reduced proportion of brown malt being used in Porter and Stout - a maximum of 20% - the smoky effect would have been much less than in a beer made from 100% brown malt.

The method of making brown malt was changing, for a variety of reasons, one of which was the high risk of a fire.

"it was formerly the custom to dry brown malt also on ordinary kilns, with wire floors, but the labour on these was of a most disagreeable and exhausting character, and brown malt is now generally dried in wire cylinders."

He's also talking about the common practice of the period (at least by French & Jupps who supplied Whitbread and much of London at that time) of intentionally "blowing" or "popping" grain (torrified). Never tried it, but makes it much lighter, causing confusion when malt was measured by volume, not weight. Ron adjusts his recipes to be weight orientated, many writers do not, hence discrepancies!

Note the bit "Not left on the withering floor as long as other malt" ... that means it was kilned damp (like "Munich" malt and crystal malts). The last bit of that snip is also valuable: "generally dried in wire <rotating> cylinders".

All came to an end (because of fire risk) and all Brown Malt is now dried/kilned in enclosed kilns ... no smoke, much more uniformly darker, and no enzymes. A very different product to "traditional" Brown Malt, and the reason I'm always whinging about folk using "modern" brown malt (and "amber" malt) willy-nilly in historical recreations. And "no", modern stuff is not close at all to historical Brown Malt ... I say that, before anyone starts claiming it is!


* I've tried "cataloging" stuff, but me distorted brain never remembers where I catalogued it, whether I did catalogue it, or where I've put the flippin' catalogue! These posts have to be my "Catalogue" ... well, it works for a short period.

 

[patto1ro]

@Miraculix: I struggled to find reference* to recent "smoking" of Brown Malt, but it is a more recently accepted view. The problem you can come across is writers viewing history through a telescope: "brown malt is smoky", or "brown malt is carefully made so it's NOT smoky". It's actually all those things but depends on what bit of history you look at. Look back far enough (not too far!) and there is no brown malt ... just "malt" at whatever colour it comes out. This is fairly recent (2022) from Ron P. (from Last bit on malt 1880 - 1914):



He's also talking about the common practice of the period (at least by French & Jupps who supplied Whitbread and much of London at that time) of intentionally "blowing" or "popping" grain (torrified). Never tried it, but makes it much lighter, causing confusion when malt was measured by volume, not weight. Ron adjusts his recipes to be weight orientated, many writers do not, hence discrepancies!

Note the bit "Not left on the withering floor as long as other malt" ... that means it was kilned damp (like "Munich" malt and crystal malts). The last bit of that snip is also valuable: "generally dried in wire <rotating> cylinders".

All came to an end (because of fire risk) and all Brown Malt is now dried/kilned in enclosed kilns ... no smoke, much more uniformly darker, and no enzymes. A very different product to "traditional" Brown Malt, and the reason I'm always whinging about folk using "modern" brown malt (and "amber" malt) willy-nilly in historical recreations. And "no", modern stuff is not close at all to historical Brown Malt ... I say that, before anyone starts claiming it is!


* I've tried "cataloging" stuff, but me distorted brain never remembers where I catalogued it, whether I did catalogue it, or where I've put the flippin' catalogue! These posts have to be my "Catalogue" ... well, it works for a short period.

For Obadiah Poundage we got Andrea at Valley Malt to make brown malt the scary way. That is, using hardwood to boost the temperature right at the end of kilning. The grains that resulted were very inconsistent, varying from pretty much pale malt right through to scorched black. It looked like several types of malt had been mixed.

 

[Peebee]

I came across this recently:

A Most Wholesome Liquor: A Study of Beer and Brewing in 18th-Century England and Her Colonies - Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library Research Report Series

Some nonsense about Ralph Harwood and "Three Threads" (well, considered nonsense now), but otherwise a most useful article. Would have helped me ages ago if I had it then ... ah well, I have it now!

Doesn't go back that far, it starts a century past "Darbie's" ascension to top place of UK brewing ... Burton was no-where to be seen back then as they hadn't extended the Trent navigation that far. But @patto1ro should be pleased; Nottinghamshire (next-door to Derbyshire and "Darbie") get a mention for its beer brewing.

 

[robint]

this is a must read https://research.colonialwilliamsbu...cfm?doc=ResearchReports\RR0364.xml&highlight=

 

[Peebee]

For Obadiah Poundage we got Andrea at Valley Malt to make brown malt the scary way. That is, using hardwood to boost the temperature right at the end of kilning. The grains that resulted were very inconsistent, varying from pretty much pale malt right through to scorched black. It looked like several types of malt had been mixed.

Okay. So, I'm name dropping (as long as you know the name behind the barely "cryptic" array of letters numbers)! But I can't miss this opportunity!

I first came on this forum to defend myself from nasty smears about my views on beer brewing fermentables. One of those fermentables being historical "brown malt". Those "smears" are well past now.

Here we have Ron talking about "Brown Malt". And it seems I never got around to detailing my "emulations" of "brown malt" (or any historical malt). I'm pretty vocal when it comes to people abusing the "modern" stuff, but really, I should be backing up my moaning with some alternative. This method is for "emulating" the stuff; I haven't the time or physical capacity (I'm disabled) to attempt a real kilning. Ron said (of Andrea at Valley Malt's output) "It looked like several types of malt had been mixed" ... Oh aye, I can do that!

I had intended to develop this arrangement to be an "all-in-one-place" application ... but I'll never get around to it (it's already four years old). So, it uses Microsoft's "Visio" drawing package with Excel spreadsheet (but I'm sure it can be cobbled together in the "free" LibreOffice "Calc" and "Draw" packages). The plan was to move it all into a single spreadsheet (including the graphic "boundaries") and automate the emulation designing ... tricky, but feasible. But, this manual creation can do for now:

I'll start it in a separate post, and it may take two or three posts to describe it well. The end result is a "brown malt" tailored for this 1880 Whitbread Porter.

 

[Peebee]

The "emulation" needs some boundaries to define it. What I use is a "distribution curve". We should all be familiar with the "bell-shaped" distribution curve, but this will be with "positive skew" (not symmetrical, one leg longer than the other).

This curve is superimposed on a chart/graph. A "Histogram" ... a sort of "bar chart" where not just the bar's height is important, but the bar's width is meaningful too. The area enclosed by the "bar" (called a "bin") is illustrating the proportion of the item it represents compared to the other items in the chart ... All the bins added together is 100% of all the items combined.

Sounds horrific, an example is required:

There shouldn't be a need for so many malts, but it makes a better illustration! The widths are a proportion. So if there was only "Dark Munich" malt and it was 100 units high (don't care what "units" are) then 100 x 1.0 = 100 (which in that case will be 100%).

The red line is the "distribution curve with positive skew". The "bins" (representing the different malt) are fitted under the curve such that a bin's centreline at its peak crosses the red distribution line. [EDIT: And the other end of the centreline intersects the "EBC" axis to match the malt being represented.] The curve almost defines its own shape! It doesn't allow outlandish mixes because they'll create a mash, that creates a wort, that can't be fermented!

Moving the curve's apex (A) left or right dictates where most convertable malt exists. Moving the curve's "belly" (B) in and out dictates how hot (or close to) the fire kilning the malt is, and the length of the chart how long the grain stays in the heat ... too long and darker roast malt colours would appear, and a few minutes later the entire malt stack would self-combust! Err ... not the computer generated emulation! That's why there was no "black malt" until they changed the kilning methods (1817).


That'll do for now. Next: How that (arty, farty) information is transferred to a (robot understandable) spreadsheet. And what's all that crystal malt about?

 

[Miraculix]

My guess is that the malt wasn't dried perfectly back in the days, so it partially converted into crystal malt.

 

[Peebee]

My guess is that the malt wasn't dried perfectly back in the days, so it partially converted into crystal malt.

Sorry ... my fault, my writing can be a bit melodramatic at times. It was a rhetorical question! And I appear to have swallowed a dictionary. I'll have the answer in the next post. (It was intentionally kilned a bit damp ... can't be wasting too much time waiting to properly dry it!).

 

[kevin58]

Sorry guys but is this tangent conversation about the recipe I posted or someone else's need defend their views on a particular fermentable?

 

[Peebee]

Sorry guys but is this tangent conversation about the recipe I posted or someone else's need defend their views on a particular fermentable?

Hey! I thought you'd appreciate this 4+ year old thread awakened with a different slant to try?

It remains your choice of recipe. I'll be rather chuffed if I were to convince you to try the "variation" and report back on the difference. These "emulations" have not been widely tried yet, I've only been doing them 3 or 4 years, and I haven't enough years to take on such a big undertaking (has anyone). Rather than "tangential" I was hoping you'd find it "parallel"?

All this "brown malt" chatter does appear to have attracted "another" interested party too! (Moths! Where'd they come from?)

 

[Peebee]

(There will be a short interlude in what I was writing about "Brown Malt" while I sort out any offence I might be generating with the OP's author, @kevin58.).

 

[bike2brew]

You're cool. I have enjoyed following the thread as a fan of historical beer, and in particular my continuing development of a brown ale recipe. Reading in Ron's book the recipes of the time appear to be very uncomplicated grain bills. I have not as yet used Amber malt in my brown but have that planned for the future.
Keep posting as the spirit moves you.

 

[Miraculix]

You're cool. I have enjoyed following the thread as a fan of historical beer, and in particular my continuing development of a brown ale recipe. Reading in Ron's book the recipes of the time appear to be very uncomplicated grain bills. I have not as yet used Amber malt in my brown but have that planned for the future.
Keep posting as the spirit moves you.

Same here!