General questions about brewing "primitive" beers/etc

[lifeisafarm]

Hi all

Total newbie really! Registered a couple of months back but since my intro post I quit my job and things were too hectic to carry on my beer projects. So, coming at this from an unusual (?) angle: I am interested in very primitive/simple/ancient brewing methods.

End goal being, to be able to cut out as much as possible in terms of machinery/gadgets or modern day luxuries like being able to buy yeast/sugar from shops. Imagine trying to brew a vaguely drinkable "beer" from one's own homestead without industrial equipment. That kind of thing.

My current idea is to try to ferment basic fruit "beer" in (unused) sauerkraut pots – the ones that have that water-seal around the top. I am not looking for a high-quality beverage here! Something vaguely drinkable is fine. It's almost more a science experiment! (Sure sure, that's what we all tell the wives...)

So anyway my questions are:

– I've read a lot about ancient "unhopped" beers using things like thyme, mugwort or bog myrtle instead. Does the need for herbs stem from preserving i.e. as a bittering agent? Or mainly flavour, or both? I like the idea of using ground ivy (glechoma hederacea), tastes very hoppy!

– Do you think brewing in simple clay/stone jugs or pots is even possible? What about e.g. using a heavy weight on top instead of a plastic airlock? Apparently e.g. ancient Egyptians/Sumerians tried it that way.

– Oats! I know this sounds odd but... do oats give off sugars the way other brewing grains do? I have read something (I didn't quite understand) about oats being unable to be converted into fermentable sugars, so only used for flavour e.g. toasted? (Actually, I am trying to grow amaranth and apparently, same problem with that...)

– Do you know folks on this forum (or companies) who do not use ANY refined sugar but only get sugars from grains and/or added fruits/roots?

– I'd read about "viking beers" using a "magic" brew-stick. I like the idea of this, IF I can get one successful batch, to be able to use for the second. Any recommendations for making a simple brew-stick, what wood, etc?

– Would you say Spring is the best time to source wild yeast due to the pollination period, or can I do it in winter using e.g. juniper or rosemary branches (in theory)?

– Curveball! Sorry, I know I'm a total ignoramus, forgive me, but... I've seen a British company use recycled bread to make beer, 'Toast Ale'. I can't find their processes in detail. Are they using ONLY bread or is the bread really for flavour and not fermentable sugars?

– What I mean is... can I use toast to make beer???!!!!

THANK YOU LOVELY PEOPLE!

Luke aka 'Life's a Farm'
Sussex, UK

 

[Miraculix]

I would say go out into the fields and find yourself some Sloughs. They should be covered with wild yeasts.

The best gruit beers I brewed were ground ivy ones, they also did not turn as sour as the other ones did. But especially if you are relying on wild fermentation, you will create a sour beer without hops, which is of course fine to drink, but brave yourself for some funky tartness.

I would try to cultivate a small starter on top of the wild sloughs to get the yeast going and then go from there into the fermenter.

The sauerkraut pot sounds fine, at the end its just a pot with an oversized air lock.

The herbs they used in gruit were added for multiple reasons. Taste, preservation, effect. I brewed gruits with all of the major gruit herbs and found only ground ivy to slow down acid producing bacteria.

After fermentation, ground ivy tastes like rubbish. Give it one or two months in the bottle and it will turn into a really great and floral aroma.

Edit: and quit this "aiming for the lowend thinking". You can brew perfectly fine sour gruits with this method. Has to be noted that I always used commercial yeast. Wild yeast might take up to a year to produce a good result, depending on the type of yeast and the wort used.

 

[MaxStout]

Hi all

Total newbie really! Registered a couple of months back but since my intro post I quit my job and things were too hectic to carry on my beer projects. So, coming at this from an unusual (?) angle: I am interested in very primitive/simple/ancient brewing methods.

End goal being, to be able to cut out as much as possible in terms of machinery/gadgets or modern day luxuries like being able to buy yeast/sugar from shops. Imagine trying to brew a vaguely drinkable "beer" from one's own homestead without industrial equipment. That kind of thing.

My current idea is to try to ferment basic fruit "beer" in (unused) sauerkraut pots – the ones that have that water-seal around the top. I am not looking for a high-quality beverage here! Something vaguely drinkable is fine. It's almost more a science experiment! (Sure sure, that's what we all tell the wives...)

So anyway my questions are:

– I've read a lot about ancient "unhopped" beers using things like thyme, mugwort or bog myrtle instead. Does the need for herbs stem from preserving i.e. as a bittering agent? Or mainly flavour, or both? I like the idea of using ground ivy (glechoma hederacea), tastes very hoppy!

– Do you think brewing in simple clay/stone jugs or pots is even possible? What about e.g. using a heavy weight on top instead of a plastic airlock? Apparently e.g. ancient Egyptians/Sumerians tried it that way.

– Oats! I know this sounds odd but... do oats give off sugars the way other brewing grains do? I have read something (I didn't quite understand) about oats being unable to be converted into fermentable sugars, so only used for flavour e.g. toasted? (Actually, I am trying to grow amaranth and apparently, same problem with that...)

– Do you know folks on this forum (or companies) who do not use ANY refined sugar but only get sugars from grains and/or added fruits/roots?

– I'd read about "viking beers" using a "magic" brew-stick. I like the idea of this, IF I can get one successful batch, to be able to use for the second. Any recommendations for making a simple brew-stick, what wood, etc?

Are you referring to a mash paddle?

– Would you say Spring is the best time to source wild yeast due to the pollination period, or can I do it in winter using e.g. juniper or rosemary branches (in theory)?

– Curveball! Sorry, I know I'm a total ignoramus, forgive me, but... I've seen a British company use recycled bread to make beer, 'Toast Ale'. I can't find their processes in detail. Are they using ONLY bread or is the bread really for flavour and not fermentable sugars?

– What I mean is... can I use toast to make beer???!!!!

THANK YOU LOVELY PEOPLE!

Luke aka 'Life's a Farm'
Sussex, UK

I can't answer all of your questions, as I am only familiar with some of what you are proposing. So, I'll comment on what I can, steer you to resources when I don't have direct knowledge. No doubt, others will join in with advice.

Unhopped beer is Gruit. I've never brewed it, but if you search the forum, you will find some discussion on the topic. Here's one thread.

Edit: Here is an article on gruit from a local brew magazine, with a recipe.

No reason you can't use crockery, brewers did it that way for centuries. Just be sure that the lid is not so tight that CO2 can't escape.

You can mash oats with some base malt, which will provide the necessary enzymes to convert the oats. A discussion on it here.

Brewing without refined sugar is what we do most of the time. Any brewer who uses all-grain or malt extract in brewing without adding sugar is doing just that.

Brew from bread is called Kvass. Here's one thread on the topic.

You're not being an ignoramus, you're just learning. Good luck with your brews!

 

[Miraculix]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/the-gruit-beer-thread.629637/

Here's another one.

 

[dmtaylor]

I appreciate very much your zeal for learning about old brewing techniques and recipes. I share this interest. I have brewed several unhopped gruit ales and spontaneously fermented beers.

To answer your specific questions:

I believe the reasons for adding herbs were mainly to add distinctive flavors, but could also have been for preservative effects. So, they were probably used for both reasons. Hops do provide the ultimate perfection in preservative value, preventing inevitable sourness that most other ales would have. Other herbs are not so great at preventing sourness. However, now that I think about it...

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.

The sky is the limit with respect to fermentation vessels and lids. Use whatever you want.

Oats can be malted, and the starches in raw unmalted oats can certainly be mashed with other malts to convert into sugars if desired. Oats are very similar to barley or wheat and can be used the same way as other grains whether malted or not. Amaranth should be the same way. There may be some complications in malting these grains, I am not sure, but where there is a will, there is a way, 9 times out of 10 anyway.

Addition of refined sugars is optional and never really necessary. As for brewing supply companies with zero-tolerance for refined sugars, I do not know of any offhand; to search for such a thing might be like trying to find an imaginary needle in a haystack.

Any stick should work, I’m sure! I would probably want to find something sturdy that will last a long time, and avoid anything like pine or soft wood that contains a lot of resin or odors. Any good clean hard wood should be fine to use.

I am not certain of the best time to harvest wild yeast, but I imagine winter would be not as great of timing as the rest of the year. Somewhere in an article about wild yeast harvesting, I heard that the best wild yeast came from raspberries or blackberries or some sort of berry, which might indicate the best timing as July-September; however, I’m also sure LUCK has much more to do with it than anything else.

I have heard about the toast ale but am not very familiar with it. However, I know a lot about kvass which is Eastern European / Russian in origin, and they do in fact use plain rye bread as the fermentable sugar source, sometimes adding fruit juices or honey but this is optional. I have made kvass before and my one recommendation for it is to avoid baker’s yeast, and use some other yeast source that will make it taste less like bread and more like beer!

Cheers!!

 

[Miraculix]

Agree on all of that. Just wanted to add that a lot of those herbs were also added because of the effect they had. A yarrow beer gets you drunk considerably quicker than a beer with the same amount of alcohol and hops instead of yarrow, for example (tried it, was fun ).

Very interesting thoughts regarding the vinegar. Never thought about it this way but sounds like it could make sense.

Apples and all sort of berries are very good sources of yeast. But sloughs are, to my knowledge, the only berries which should be available in the wild atm.

 

[Lefou]

Viking "magic" sticks?
I have seen wooden rings caked with yeast cultures the Nords use for farmhouse ales ....

 

[bernardsmith]

Hiya - just to make one or two very quick comments. Ale fermented without any bittering herbs (whether hops or gruit) will taste unpleasantly and cloyingly sweet (unless you drink sodas for refreshment). Most will cease fermenting with about 6 oz of unfermented /unfermentable sugar in every gallon. The hops and or gruit herbs balance that sweetness.

The stick covered in yeast may take you many months (or years) to create. It works because IF and as you stir your wort yeast cells will attach themselves to the wood (you could use a wooden spoon for this) but for enough yeast cells to be attached you would need to have produced who knows how much beer. A better approach might simply be to rack your beer off the lees when you bottle and add a fresh batch of wort to the yeast cake left behind. I imagine that after a half dozen or so batches the yeast may not be doing so well - especially if you stress the yeast by creating large gravity brews - but in principle there should be no reason why you cannot use this "cake" way into the future..

 

[bradleypariah]

I've had some supposed ancient beer clones, and one of them used heather instead of hops. I was told that heather was the staple for beer flavoring before hops became widespread.

I know a lot about kvass...

I really like that stuff. It's like a fruity-sweet kombucha. There is an authentic ma & pa Russian market not more than ten minutes from my house. They make their own and sell it by the growler.

Do you know folks on this forum (or companies) who do not use ANY refined sugar but only get sugars from grains and/or added fruits/roots?

Brewing without refined sugar is what we do most of the time. Any brewer who uses all-grain or malt extract in brewing without adding sugar is doing just that.

^^ This.

 

[dmtaylor]

Ale fermented without any bittering herbs (whether hops or gruit) will taste unpleasantly and cloyingly sweet (unless you drink sodas for refreshment).

For the record, I totally disagree with this... which doesn't make you wrong or make me right... it's just a statement from me based on my own real-world experience with unhopped beers and gruit ales. YMMV.

 

[bernardsmith]

No problem... some folk love sweet wines and meads. I like my drinks bone dry..

 

[Miraculix]

Regarding the viking yeast stick, afaik (read for example "how to make mead like a viking" for more information on this topic), they used a wood from trees with sweet sap, like maple or birch trees. They would also cut some cuts or marks into the wood, basically scratches in which the yeast can settle. The stick would then be used for stirring or sometimes also left in the fermentation vessel on purpose. The sweet juice inside the wood makes the yeast wanting to stick to it and then it gets air dried afterwards. Not much magic behind that.... but certainly a lot of room for contamination

 

[Miraculix]

For the record, I totally disagree with this... which doesn't make you wrong or make me right... it's just a statement from me based on my own real-world experience with unhopped beers and gruit ales. YMMV.

I strongly agree with dmtaylor. I never had a sweet gruit, and I brewed at least 10 different ones of them, some even including up to 10% crystal malt.

 

[bernardsmith]

I don't THINK I suggested that gruit ales are sweet. I THOUGHT I wrote that people added gruit herbs and /or hops to BALANCE the sweetness that would result from simply fermenting mashed grains... but hey, Queen's English is only my first language... PS - I routinely make gruit beers and meads... and they ain't sweet...

 

[Miraculix]

I don't THINK I suggested that gruit ales are sweet. I THOUGHT I wrote that people added gruit herbs and /or hops to BALANCE the sweetness that would result from simply fermenting mashed grains... but hey, Queen's English is only my first language... PS - I routinely make gruit beers and meads... and they ain't sweet...

Than don't get upset and take stuff personally, as this language is not my first language. There was no intention to make you sound stupid, sorry if it made the impression. Some minor language barriers I guess!

 

[bernardsmith]

It takes more than a post to get me upset... I can pretend to be upset but that is just an act.. PS - I don't need anyone's help to make me sound "stupid". I am quite good at doing that unaided...

 

[dmtaylor]

See my .sig.

 

[Miraculix]

Well, at least us three have got one more thing in common than the passion for brewing I guess

 

[ancientmariner52]

I've never tried wild fermentation, I'll be following this closely.

I've always been a bit suspicious about the magic stick tale. Sounds like the sort of thing I'd make up to keep people from noticing that I don't have a clue how it works either.

Have you ever tried to clean an unglazed clay pot? I had a supposed Mexican bean pot. No matter what I did, the beans always tasted like mud.

Based on that, I expect that a once-used fermentation pot is going be a permanent source of yeast unless you throw it in the fire after every brew.

Keep in mind I'm just speculating here. I reckon the herbs were first used in an attempt to make the product taste like anything besides primitive beer.

Last thought. How in the dickens did they discover malting and mashing? You'd have to do both to get a useful result. Leave wort laying around the camp, and it will ferment. But how do you accidentally make wort?

 

[Miraculix]

There are also fermentations which do not rely on sugar, but on unmalted grains (starch). Tibetan shang is such an example. The "yeast" they are using contains yeast, bacterias and specific molds that can convert the starches into sugar and then the yeast can digest those sugars. Never had the pleasure to try one of those... The Japanese use one of those molds to convert the starches from the sake rice into sugar.

The unglazed clay pot method you are mentioning has also been used since thousands of years. As you have guessed correctly, the yeast "settles" in the pores of the clay and infects then each filling again and again. I read that it was common practice in many native tribes, I think I read it connected to mexican native tribes, but my mind might make that up.

 

[ancientmariner52]

Thank you, that makes perfect sense. Beer without malting or mashing.

The pot thing. That would explain how one housewife would make great beer, and the lady in the hut next door makes a thin sour mess. Just luck of the draw as to what critters colonize the brew pot.

 

[dmtaylor]

Last thought. How in the dickens did they discover malting and mashing? You'd have to do both to get a useful result. Leave wort laying around the camp, and it will ferment. But how do you accidentally make wort?

 

[lifeisafarm]

Wow, so many incredible responses, and all so encouraging, thank you all so much! What a great forum. I was worried I'd be met with a few "what a silly idea" type comments, but this is really useful information.

Still, a lot to learn. I have a ton of questions – so let me write up some notes and post tomorrow morning, when I'm feeling fresh headed. Some great ideas to chew on (brew on?!) here.

 

[LBKsam]

https://www.homebrewersassociation....rewing-a-replica-of-an-ancient-egyptian-beer/

I read this article some time ago and think it may be of interest to you

 

[bernardsmith]

Last thought. How in the dickens did they discover malting and mashing? You'd have to do both to get a useful result. Leave wort laying around the camp, and it will ferment. But how do you accidentally make wort?

If the ancient Egyptians or the Sumerians made bread and soaked the bread in boiling water to make a soup then there's your wort - Think kvass. Bread may have been the bi-product of beer or beer the bi-product of bread, or beer and bread may simply have been two sides of one coin.

 

[Miraculix]

If the ancient Egyptians or the Sumerians made bread and soaked the bread in boiling water to make a soup then there's your wort - Think kvass. Bread may have been the bi-product of beer or beer the bi-product of bread, or beer and bread may simply have been two sides of one coin.

Sry, but dmtaylor's version sounds more realistic to me

 

[Lefou]

How do you accidentally make wort?
The same way you accidentally make tea. Instead of flavorful aromatic herbs, why not use grain? In Asian countries, barley tea has several recognized names and variations in preparation. I wouldn't be surprised if someone had some partially germinated grains lying about that didn't get thrown away after sprouting, then decided to use the grain anyway - and in the process, noticed the boiled grains yielded a sweeter tea.
After a few experiences with leaving the sweet grain tea to either accidental or intentional fermentation, you can guess the rest.

 

[Lefou]

Tea was more or less a staple drink for my family growing up - as was beer for the adults.
I will sometimes use Vienna or Munich malt to make a sweet grain tea that doesn't need table sugar. This unfiltered malt grain tea is loaded with nutrients, but doesn't have the fermentation and alcohol kick. Better for kids and less hard on your teeth because it doesn't have the extra sugar and acid in it. Better yet - zero caffeine. If you have kids, it reduces the "wig out" potential a sugary soft drink would induce.

 

[ancientmariner52]

Ok, that makes sense to me. I suppose if you consider the time span, maybe 6000 years from the beginning of cereal grain farming, back in the early mud age, to classical Egypt, beer was probably 'invented' or discovered many different ways, many different times, many different places. I try to remember that ancient people were just as smart as we are, probably more observant, and had time to just really think about things.

 

[dmtaylor]

All of the above. Beer and bread were always very closely related, for many thousands of years. Malt and beer-like beverages needn't have been "invented", but merely discovered, probably hundreds of different ways by all different peoples around the ancient world. Maybe even Neanterthals and other Homo genus species had some knowledge of these things, for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years. We may never know, but the knowledge is very old indeed.