Medieval Ale- Discussion and Experiences

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DeathBrewer said:
I figured they would just dump on old cakes and repitch sludge, but they didn't know what it was or why it worked...like you said, A MIRACLE!

Isn't malted barley always crawling with lactobacillus? Even if you had a good pitching rate of yeast, I'd think it would finish the beer and then the lacto would take over and start souring. That's what makes me think that, traditionally, many of these ales were sour, although if they were enjoyed young I understand why they wouldn't be sour yet.

I'm sure there were a very wide variety of ales. I want to try something like this...maybe a wheat wine type ale with a lacto culture pitched after the yeast do their job. sort of a medieval berliner-weisse.
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Malted barley does contain a significant amount of lacto, but I would imagine that the 150F + mash temp would make a serious dent in their viable population. Pasteurization can be done at 145F for 30 min so the mash could be considered pasteurized.

Craig
 
The one, AND ONLY!, time I ever did it, the lid had been placed back on the cooler right after sparging. So I don't think it had any more exposure than the wort would have after sparge, probably less.
 
Joos said:
Didn't add yeast to the purity law till the 1800's.Good experiment ,but it sounds pretty nasty and unsanitary to me.I'll stick with beer:mug:
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Brewers prior to Pasteur's 'discovery' of yeast in the 1800s certainly knew that something was responsible for fermentation, although that had the details wrong. It was understood at the time just before the publication to be a purely chemical process rather a biological one.

Still - as you've seen, I've brewed this recipe and found it to be quite good. I suggest you try one gallon recipe as I have. You'll be surprised with the results, I know I was.

Jason
 
KingBrianI said:
I don't know, something survives. You ever leave the grains in the tun for a day or two after brewing?!
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Did this last week for a couple days, man was it rank, sparged it just to see what came out and, it tasted kinda like sourdour biscuits, mmmm, mmmm, good!:p
 
So there is another thread about overanalyzing beer practices based on supposed simple methods of ancient brewers and it got me thinking. Then FlyAngler pops in and shows me this thread. So I decided I would like to give this a go.

Here is my idea. I want to do a no chill brew and let it ferment outside, where there is no temperature control. I will essentially be doing a normal brew process though, except I will just be doing my best guess at temps for mash and whatnot. I think I will smoke the grains in my grill first as well, this idea was mentioned earlier and I thought it was interesting. Anyone have any other ideas that I could add to this?
 
TheMan said:
So there is another thread about overanalyzing beer practices based on supposed simple methods of ancient brewers and it got me thinking. Then FlyAngler pops in and shows me this thread. So I decided I would like to give this a go.

Here is my idea. I want to do a no chill brew and let it ferment outside, where there is no temperature control. I will essentially be doing a normal brew process though, except I will just be doing my best guess at temps for mash and whatnot. I think I will smoke the grains in my grill first as well, this idea was mentioned earlier and I thought it was interesting. Anyone have any other ideas that I could add to this?
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Have you thought about what kind of base malt or hops (if any) you might use? Are you trying for a plausibly historic recipe?
 
No, I'm not particularly going for a historic recipe. Mostly I would just like to make a batch that doesn't use a lot of technology...sort of how I assume they must have done it. The beer will stay on my porch until it is bottled. My Porch is blocked off well from the wind, it's kind of cave-ish. My main intentions:

Ferment outdoors, at the will of the weather.
No Chill, outdoors, they likely didn't have wort chillers back then.
I won't measure anything temperature wise...just kind of go by my own judgement.

I have been having trouble coming up with a recipe. If anyone can help me design a batch that would be somewhat time appropriate that would be cool as well. I was thinking a noble hop would be perfect, no American hops. I can't do All-Grain at my place, so it will have to be extract. I liked your oaty/wheaty/barley thought. I think I'd like to just use steeping grains however. And due to a massive 20 gallon infection last weekend I may push this recipe back behind others since that 20 gallons was supposed to cure the pipeline lag...If i can sneak it in I will, but an experimental batch isn't as important as filling the pipeline for football season.
 
TheMan said:
No, I'm not particularly going for a historic recipe. Mostly I would just like to make a batch that doesn't use a lot of technology...sort of how I assume they must have done it. The beer will stay on my porch until it is bottled. My Porch is blocked off well from the wind, it's kind of cave-ish. My main intentions:

Ferment outdoors, at the will of the weather.
No Chill, outdoors, they likely didn't have wort chillers back then.
I won't measure anything temperature wise...just kind of go by my own judgement.

I have been having trouble coming up with a recipe. If anyone can help me design a batch that would be somewhat time appropriate that would be cool as well. I was thinking a noble hop would be perfect, no American hops. I can't do All-Grain at my place, so it will have to be extract. I liked your oaty/wheaty/barley thought. I think I'd like to just use steeping grains however. And due to a massive 20 gallon infection last weekend I may push this recipe back behind others since that 20 gallons was supposed to cure the pipeline lag...If i can sneak it in I will, but an experimental batch isn't as important as filling the pipeline for football season.
Click to expand...

I like what you're after here. It ought to prove an interesting experiment.

Please permit me to correct a couple of errors, however.

First, they very well did have wort chillers "back then", just not chillers like we know them.

Until the advent of the Baudelot cooler, the most common method of cooling, even in the home, was the coolship. The coolship was simply a large, flat, shallow vessel into which the bitter wort was run. Left overnight, the extremely large surface to volume ratio encouraged more rapid cooling than could be expected in the copper or the fermenting tun. Also, pitching usually took place in the coolship before the wort was dropped to fermenting tuns.

Second, you will not be able to take advantage of the historical ingredients - wheat and oats - without performing at least a partial mash. DeathBrewer's tutorial on stovetop mashing is excellent; I can't think of a better place to start.

Recipes are going to depend on whether or not you choose to be really historical. A good basic recipe is as follows:

2 lbs pale malt
1 lb wheat malt
1 lb oat malt

Partial-mash the above; sparge to yield a pre-boil volume of three gallons or so.

Hops: I'd avoid noble varieties. Because I have yet to find an historical recipe from the pre-thermometer era which calls for flavor/aroma hops, why waste them? Do avoid strongly-flavored American hops. Choose an earthy, funky Fuggles derivative like Willamette, Styrian Goldings or, er, Fuggles. One addition - bittering. Historical recipes don't talk about IBUs, they talk about weight. I'd use around 2 ounces in five gallons. Use whole-flower hops, not pellets, for a true historical experience.

At the end of the boil, add sufficient pale extract to get an OG of ~1.050 in five gallons. Strain to cold water in the fermenter and do your back-porch thing.

Cheers,

Bob
 
NQ3X - Thanks for all your input on this, I have learned a lot and it is good reading. It always helps to have a good handle on the history just to shoot the sh.. with people talking about home brewing.
Anyone have some ancient Egyptian or Sumerian recipes?
 
Another batch going now.

IMG_0271.jpg
 
flyangler18 said:
Here's my scaled-down recipe, assuming a 30 minute boil. This gets me close to the percentages indicated in my first post; I just need to get the oat malt. Northern Brewer and Brewer's Warehouse both stock it.

[size=+2]Medieval Ale (Experimental)[/size]
[size=+1]23-A Specialty Beer[/size]
Author: Jason Konopinski
Date: 2/4/09



Size: 1.0 gal
Efficiency: 80%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 193.77 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.058 (1.026 - 1.120)
|=============#==================|
Terminal Gravity: 1.015 (0.995 - 1.035)
|===============#================|
Color: 4.76 (1.0 - 50.0)
|=========#======================|
Alcohol: 5.73% (2.5% - 14.5%)
|============#===================|
Bitterness: 0.0 (0.0 - 100.0)
|=======#========================|

[size=+1]Ingredients:[/size]
6 oz Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt
1.5 lb Oat Malt
6 oz Wheat Malt
.5 ea Fermentis S-04 Safale S-04

[size=+1]Schedule:[/size]

00:03:00 Mash-In - Liquor: 0.7 gal; Strike: 164.59 °F; Target: 152 °F
00:30:00 Sacc Rest - Rest: 30 min; Final: 150.0 °F
00:33:00 Sparge - Sparge: 1.0 gal sparge @ 180 °F, 0.0 min; Total Runoff: 1.47 gal

[size=-1]Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.2[/size]
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I just decided on a whim to brew this up today. Actually, it wasn't so much a whim as I went to a Renaissance Faire this morning. It was....interesting. :) Anyway, that made me come look for this thread, and since I've nothing better to do, I'm making up a gallon of the stuff. I'm pretty much using the recipe above, though I'm not aiming for a specific mash temp. I'm BIABing this one, so I'm just going to heat the water until it looks nice and steamy, then drop the bag in and let it sit for a while. Maybe an hour and a half or two hours. Then I'm going to remove the grains, let it cool (no boil) and pitch a little washed thames valley II I have. I added just a sprinkle of chocolate malt to get the color up just slightly and perhaps get a bit of slight roastiness to better approximate the malt from way back then. I wanted to use brown malt, but sadly I'm out. I think my water is just about heated now, I'm gonna go make this thing now.:mug:
 
Alright, bag is in the water. I let the water heat until tiny bubbles formed on the bottom of the pot and steam was billowing out wildly. I hope the temp doesn't settle too high and denature the enzymes! I heated one gallon of water, and since I'm not going to sparge or boil, I figure with whatever the grains absorb, I'll end up with a little less than a gallon so my fermenter doesn't blow off too bad. This is kind of a neat little experiment. And the best part is, there's barely going to be anything to clean up! My plan is to either drink it straight from the fermenter after 5-7 days, or once it looks like fermentation is winding down, transfer it to some swing-top bottles or something and let it sit in there a day or two before chilling to cellar temp and drinking. I'm leaning towards option 2 at this point since it will probably taste better to me and I don't think it would be that far off from what would have happened several hundred years ago. I've read many accounts of brewing that say to stop up the bung of the cask tightly before fermentation is over. Doing something similar in bottles is nearly the same. I wonder if I should sit the fermenter in the crawl space under my house to ferment?! :) Nah, I want to watch it.
 
It's in the fermenter! It's a beautiful dirty, murky, mud-puddle brown. <---the beautiful part is sarcasm! I'm glad someone figured out along the way that boiling was good. Anyway, the yeast is pitched and it's on it's own now. Can't wait to try it. Although, if it smells nasty, I may need some liquid encouragement before the first sip. Regardless, it'll have been a good experiment, something I think we need more of in this community.

DSC_3511NEF.jpg


DSC_3513NEF.jpg
 
KingBrianI said:
Regardless, it'll have been a good experiment, something I think we need more of in this community.
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+1 for more experimentation!

I have tried a number of historical beers over the past couple of years; my best one was a gruit ale (80% home malted barley, 20% oats, coriander, grains of paradise, and lavender) that I fermented with "yeast" I cultured from an apple tree in my backyard. The resulting liquid had a tart sourness and a very fruity taste that was a lot like pineapple. My friend liked it enough to ask for a second batch. Maybe this fall... :)
 
KingBrianI said:
It's in the fermenter! It's a beautiful dirty, murky, mud-puddle brown. <---the beautiful part is sarcasm! I'm glad someone figured out along the way that boiling was good. Anyway, the yeast is pitched and it's on it's own now. Can't wait to try it. Although, if it smells nasty, I may need some liquid encouragement before the first sip. Regardless, it'll have been a good experiment, something I think we need more of in this community.

DSC_3511NEF.jpg


DSC_3513NEF.jpg
Click to expand...

looks tasty to me. But then, I kinda like the idea of stuff in suspension, partly because I grew up with an orchard and the fresh cider that has stuff in suspension always tasted way better than when we let it settle out. Formative memories like that can have a lot of effect on someone's tastes.
 
Babylon said:
looks tasty to me. But then, I kinda like the idea of stuff in suspension, partly because I grew up with an orchard and the fresh cider that has stuff in suspension always tasted way better than when we let it settle out. Formative memories like that can have a lot of effect on someone's tastes.
Click to expand...

Looks pretty darn good to me too. I have been reading this thread on and off, but I'm going to try a 2 gallon batch after seeing that pic Babylon.
 
sorry if somebody already said this but I didnt have time to read the whole thread but I thought yeast wasn't discovered until 1850ish by that Pasteur the Chemist guy? Wouldn't it have been fermented with wild yeast way back then meaning that the boil may have taken away some of the characteristics of the ale, if so the sanitary conditions and S-04 would have? Still an interesting thread that I am looking forward to following, I would be willing to give that a taste :cross:
 
Pommy said:
sorry if somebody already said this but I didnt have time to read the whole thread but I thought yeast wasn't discovered until 1850ish by that Pasteur the Chemist guy? Wouldn't it have been fermented with wild yeast way back then meaning that the boil may have taken away some of the characteristics of the ale, if so the sanitary conditions and S-04 would have? Still an interesting thread that I am looking forward to following, I would be willing to give that a taste :cross:
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Depends on how you define wild. They had yeast in their stir sticks, they used the krausen, and they reused yeast cakes. They just didn't know specifically what was causing the ferment.
 
I just meant that they wouldn't use specialist or controlled yeast would they? Where did the yeast come from originally or does it refine itself over time? I don't know anything about how yeast works really so I am just interested as to how it would have been done back in the old days and what sort of yeasts would have been used. Would it be like the yeast of a lambic?
 
Pommy said:
I just meant that they wouldn't use specialist or controlled yeast would they? Where did the yeast come from originally or does it refine itself over time? I don't know anything about how yeast works really so I am just interested as to how it would have been done back in the old days and what sort of yeasts would have been used. Would it be like the yeast of a lambic?
Click to expand...

I always figured that many of the 'specialized' yeasts came from the practice of using some krausen and yeast cake, over and over for 10s to 100s of years.
A brewery making multiple batches per week could end up with 100s of generations in just a year, factor in combining krausen and cakes, and this number would be even higher. That is a lot of refining of characteristics in a brewery that has been around since 1400 or so. Once yeast were understood to be biological, I'm sure this refining was done more purposefully as well.
 
In regards to the book Ale, Beer and Brewsters mentioned earlier in the thread, I own this book and actually wrote an essay on it back in college. Despite its enticing title, its a terribly dry read with less than a chapter on actual brewing; the rest of the book is simply the publication of collated data from the alesters and other governmental regulatory bodies. Seeing it mentioned made me pick it up again to see if there was any useful information, will report back in a few hours as my wort boils. Lets see if I still have my book scanning skills from being a history major...

If anyone was actually interested in this book I would suggest hitting a local library and reading most of the second chapter, while it does consist mainly of statistics on production and who produced what using what, it does have some interesting tidbits like "From the mash tun was drawn off the wort, to which yeast and herbs were added. Within a day (or less), the ale would be ready for drinking." p. 17
 
DevilsCreekBrewing said:
I always figured that many of the 'specialized' yeasts came from the practice of using some krausen and yeast cake, over and over for 10s to 100s of years.
A brewery making multiple batches per week could end up with 100s of generations in just a year, factor in combining krausen and cakes, and this number would be even higher. That is a lot of refining of characteristics in a brewery that has been around since 1400 or so. Once yeast were understood to be biological, I'm sure this refining was done more purposefully as well.
Click to expand...

Yeah that would make sense, I suppose its just one of those things that is lost to time. I'm sure along the way obviously they would have found things that worked and kept doing them. This would mean that even though they might not have actually known why things happened they were able to find out what worked and what didn't. Sounds just like some of my brews :ban:
 
Fermentation is slowing way down so I decided to give it a taste.

Well.... it wasn't horrible. It has a strong sulfurous smell that is severely off-putting. The flavor wasn't bad, but it wasn't really good either. It was still a bit sweet, with a strong yeasty flavor, and just a hint of sourness. The mouthfeel was thick and greasy. You could also taste the oats pretty strongly. It actually tasted like a thin slightly sour, slightly alcoholic gruel. With a rotten egg lying around somewhere in close proximity. I think I'll bottle it tomorrow, and in the mean time, I hope the yeast cleans it up a bit. I can see how if you were used to it, you could drink it fairly easily. But it's different enough from what our modern tastes are used to to become slightly revolting. Maybe it will be better in a couple days when it's very slightly carbed, chilled to cellar temp, and cleaned up a little. Oh, it still looks like a mud puddle.
 
KingBrianI said:
It actually tasted like a thin slightly sour, slightly alcoholic gruel. With a rotten egg lying around somewhere in close proximity. I think I'll bottle it tomorrow.
Click to expand...

I can see this ending up in the memorable quotes thread:). Seriously,
I've been following this thread for awhile. Very interested in how this turns out.
 
Well, I had planned on bottling today, fermentation is still occuring but it's fairly slow. But I gave it a sniff and whew! Still reeks of satan's anus or dead hooker ass or some kind of ass the origin of which is unclear. I'm gonna give it another day to try to clean that hydrogen sulfide up. I figure slightly less-carbed ale that doesn't smell like a fermented fetal duck adrift in a third-world sewer below a town particularly well known for eating some diarrhea-inducing cuisine is better than a well-carbed ale with the aforementioned stench. But maybe that's just me?..
 

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