British Museum inspiration to start all grain brewing

[Carolyn Copeland]

Hi all
I have been brewing for a while, mainly meads, wines and extract kits
However i recently watched a video on youtube from the British Museum where they brewed a beer using a 2 stage mash and based off of archaeological findings to reproduce an Egyptian beer



I dont know if it was because they seemed to have so much fun or because it appears to be so different to brewing now that it got me intrigued. However I have never undertaken an all grain brew so feel completely out of my depth. Hence my asking here for advice

From reading articles written about the process it appears that they used malted barley, malted emmer and unmalted einkorn. Half the mash at ambient temperature, the other half at 80°C
They then mixed the mash's, cooled and strained into the fermenter. It appears they pre innoculated the fermenter with yeast as opposed to relying on a true wild fermentation.

Dates were added in the video, but not in all iterations of the brew. Other variations included dukkah. I also know that for one annual festival for Sekmet they used to stain the beer with pomegranate juice which sounds cool

Anyway I would like to try the basic brew to start with, just a small 10l batch to trial and see how it goes, in my normal fermenter, not the terracotta one shown
However I have no idea of the proportion of the grains used or what yeast I should try

Any advice would be welcome

 

[skyblue67]

Today I tried an Egyptian ale at Beer Nouveau in Manchester. Sounds similar to the recipe here, it included dates and grapes but no hops, and was fermented with kveik yeast. Steve at Beer Nouveau is usually happy to answer brewing questions and is pretty active on Twitter so you could try asking him about it.

 

[Carolyn Copeland]

Thanks for that info, will try contacting him
I did try asking Michaela Charles for a brew sheet, which she mentioned that she was willing to share, but had no response though the media I asked on. She doesn't seem to be active on the social media I could find her on and then I began to feel like I was stalking...

 

[RM-MN]

However I have never undertaken an all grain brew so feel completely out of my depth. Hence my asking here for advice

Lest start with a simple all grain beer. It requires malted barley that is milled. The finer the milling, the faster the conversion from starch to the sugars needed for it to ferment. The malting of the barley sets the stage for the two enzymes to convert the starches and they only work together within a narrow range of temperatures, about 64C to 71C. At the 80C that your mentioned above the enzymes would be destroyed quite quickly. Once the conversion to sugar is done, one separates the resulting wort from the grains, the brings it to a boil and adds the appropriate hops for bittering, boils for an hour, then chill it before adding yeast. Most of that is the same as using extract.

The easiest way to separate the wort from the grain is to filter it somehow. The old way was to use the hulls of the grains to form that filter but with the advent of woven plastics, one can use a nylon or polyester bag for filtering. That bag forms a huge filter area and allows the grain to be milled much finer as the husk material does not need to be intact. We call this BIAB and there is a section on BIAB brewing here that answers a lot of the questions about the process.

Grab a bit of malted barley, perhaps half a pound. Put it in your blender and chop it into tiny bits. Heat a quart of water to about 160 degrees and dump the barley into it. Wait 20 minutes, then taste the mix. It should be sweet meaning that you successfully mashed an all grain and that it created the sugars for fermenting. That's all it takes for all grain (except for calculating how much grains to add to how much water) plus separating the resulting wort from the grains.

 

[Carolyn Copeland]

Thanks for the long reply. A lot of reading
In regards to the temperature I take it you think there would not be enough enzymes in the cold mash to convert all the available sugars in the hot mash?
I read about the BIAG and that sounds like it would be easy for me to do, so I will try that, thanks

 

[RM-MN]

More reading for you but I really like this article and especially the graph at the end. It may answer some more of your questions including some you haven't yet asked.

https://missionarybrewer.wordpress....ers-window-what-temperature-should-i-mash-at/

 

[NitrogenWidget]

More reading for you but I really like this article and especially the graph at the end. It may answer some more of your questions including some you haven't yet asked.

https://missionarybrewer.wordpress....ers-window-what-temperature-should-i-mash-at/

I started out doing kits then kits with steeping grains, then started collecting parts for my biab setup. Then a 1 gallon biab kit. After that I was all grain 5 gal plus brewing.

 

[Lefou]

This hobby starts with curiosity and then becomes an obsession.

Thanks for the long reply. A lot of reading
In regards to the temperature I take it you think there would not be enough enzymes in the cold mash to convert all the available sugars in the hot mash?
I read about the BIAG and that sounds like it would be easy for me to do, so I will try that, thanks

You're right.
A combined mash done with different ingredients at different temperatures most likely won't yield a complete starch or sugar conversion for various reasons. Doing a simple mash with fewer ingredients with regard to style would be the best place to start. Exotic beers with mixed styles can be some of the most difficult to make well.

 

[Carolyn Copeland]

I do tend to obsess about things, taking them through to what I see as the natural conclusion, where I can do it at least as well if not better than the professionals. Currently making croissants from scratch for lunch, a mead and IPA on brew, about to break out the chemistry set to check my pool and gonna make soap after lunch....
I have a few friends who much prefer my meads/wines to anything they can buy, hopefully I can do the same with beer

 

[Lefou]

If you can understand the chemistry behind a properly pH balanced and clarified pool, then getting the best water you can for brewing isn't far behind.
Welcome to the obsession.