Medieval Ale- Discussion and Experiences

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flyangler18

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I was inspired by a conversation that emerged from this thread, and thought it would be better if we gave the topic its own thread.

NQ3X shared the following recipe from his files, and I'm going to brew this as an experiment soon:

70% Oat Malt
15% Wheat Malt
15% Barley Malt

I intend on mashing this between 150° and 152° as a one-gallon batch; what intrigues me is how this resultant ale is not cloyingly sweet as conventional wisdom suggests.

A quick Google search yielded this interesting article:

In England in the middle ages, particularly before the Plague (which first reached England in 1348), the most common drink of the day was ale. Ale, during this time, was a drink made from malted grains, water, and fermented with yeast. Malted grain would be crushed; boiling (or at least very hot) water would be added and the mixture allowed to work; finally the liquid was drained off, cooled and fermented. The ale might have been spiced, but it would not have had hops as an ingredient.

Beer, on the other hand, was made from malted grains, water, hops, and fermented with yeast. Hops added a measure of bitterness to the beer, and also helped preserve it. We will see below that the successful addition of hops required a change in the process that had a profound effect on the resulting product: after the liquid was drained off, it was boiled again with the hops.

Note that the runnings were not boiled- rather, just cooled and fermented; the ale was consumed 'young'.

Judith Bennett's Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Changing World seems to be the seminal text on the subject; I have several of her other books from my graduate school days. A Sip Through Time: A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes may also prove to be an interesting text, and I'll likely be adding this to my own library.

Jason
 
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So are you going to ferment the runnings without boiling? What yeast do you plan on using? It seems like some "bugs" present on the grain might survive the 150 degree mash. Looks to be an interesting experiment though. I'll be very interested in the outcome!
 
So are you going to ferment the runnings without boiling? What yeast do you plan on using? It seems like some "bugs" present on the grain might survive the 150 degree mash. Looks to be an interesting experiment though. I'll be very interested in the outcome!

I'm not fully committed to doing it one way or another yet; as this ale was consumed fresh right at the end of the ferment, I'm not concerning myself with the possibility of infection. However, I may do a short boil just to improve clarity.

As far as outcome, you'll need to ask NQ3X who I hope will chime in here as he's brewed this recipe before!
 
It seems like some "bugs" present on the grain might survive the 150 degree mash.

According to flyangler's historic quote, [near] boiling water was just dumped on top of crushed grain. So, without knowing how much grain, grain and tun temperature (assume cool (50s°F?) in England), thermal mass of tun, etc., it's tough to say what the mash temp would be.

But it could be a good thing... I'll bet these ales were somewhat sour anyway. I'm interested to see how this turns out.
 
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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Thanks for starting this thread buddy!
 
For a real authentic touch, develop a way to expose the grain to smoke from straw fire... like spread the grains out onto some metal screening and build a fire of straw under it. That should give it that straw-fired kilned flavor. Just a thought.:cross:
 
Iv heard someplace where they did a full boil with beer. Some of the water back then was full of infection so beer was healthier to drink. Its why most people including children drank it.

I'm thinking out loud but I bet they mixed everything together and slowly brought it up to a boil. This way the wort spent enough time in each temperature rest to make it work. Then eventually they realized that taking the grain out before it boiled resulted in less astringency...who knows.

I love this subject. I wish I could go back in time and watch.
 
They did boil beer back then, but this is about Ale which at that time was very different (no hops, sometimes no boil). I like the article that was posted in the other thread, but it seems difficult to get any good answers on exactly how it was brewed, plus the article's facts have been called in to question.

I may do one of these and if so I'll probably boil it for at least 10 minutes, I know that will give me hot break etc and not recreate very well what their ale was like (plus it won't sour as easily as thiers) but I don't want to make any sour beers as I've had issues with infection staying around and getting into other batches. Also the article mentioned that by the 1600's there are records of a university requireing all those making ale for them to boil the ale, so I'll at least be authentic to that era, if not back to the 1300's
 
Making an Ale without boiling makes alot of sense for those times. The hot water was necessary to convert the starches in the malt to sugars for the ferment but boiling would not be necessary unless you were adding hops. Since hops were not used in ancient times boiling the wort was not necessary. I imagine brewers found they could produce a better quality ale with boiling, but that would have added time and expense to the beer, so cheap stuff may have been made without boiling.

It might be an interesting experiment to see what the result is. I would not expect any thing like the flavor or quality we currently expect in beer. Cloudy, sour and unbalanced come to mind.

Craig
 
It might be an interesting experiment to see what the result is. I would not expect any thing like the flavor or quality we currently expect in beer. Cloudy, sour and unbalanced come to mind.

I'm an adventurous lad, both in my brewing and in my drinking. As far as taste, the only one I know who can speak with authority from first-hand experience is NQ3X; I believe he's out of town for the next several days so an answer may be delayed.

Jason
 
Update: Thanks to Ed's lightening fast packing job and prompt shipping (ordered yesterday, expected arrival tomorrow), looks like my little experiment will be underway on the weekend.


:rockin:
 
awesome. so are you going to boil for 30 minutes like the recipe you created states? and what are you mashing in? i'd imagine with such a large proportion of wheat and oats you'll have trouble sticking.
 
awesome. so are you going to boil for 30 minutes like the recipe you created states? and what are you mashing in? i'd imagine with such a large proportion of wheat and oats you'll have trouble sticking.

I do plan on boiling for thirty minutes, more for clarity than for fear of any buggies.

As far as the mash, I may just do BIAB on my stovetop to KISS.
 
when you bottle - don't add any sugar. I've read they didn't carbonate the stuff back then; and drink it at room temperature for an authentic (= gross) experience :mug:
 
I've been seriously thinking about doing a 2-3 gal, full decoction, no sparge beer. I'd mash like normal (maybe a little thin, and probably mash hop) and then, making sure the pH is good, just boil the whole thing for say 20 min. adding more hops to taste, then vorlauf, and drain to the fermenter.

If your experiment turns out well that'll help nudge me to do this. I've got a list of experimental beers I want to do that I need a little nudging on. The nice thing about this is the time savings.
 
Making an Ale without boiling makes alot of sense for those times. The hot water was necessary to convert the starches in the malt to sugars for the ferment but boiling would not be necessary unless you were adding hops. Since hops were not used in ancient times boiling the wort was not necessary. I imagine brewers found they could produce a better quality ale with boiling, but that would have added time and expense to the beer, so cheap stuff may have been made without boiling.

Craig

It is not just about the hops, however.

Drinking beer rather than water back then makes a ton of sense because it was boiled. Water in those times was usually contaminated and led to lots of sickness. People drank beer all day long (weak beer) because it was actually safer to consume than the water. Boiling killed those organisms that infected the water.
 
when you bottle - don't add any sugar. I've read they didn't carbonate the stuff back then; and drink it at room temperature for an authentic (= gross) experience :mug:

What do you have against warm uncarbonated beer? I always enjoy the last half pint in the bottling bucket or a taste when checking the hydrometer readings. Now I do prefer the beer slightly cooler than my 60F basement temp and with a little carbonation, but its quite good without it. Ofcourse I don't make Blonde ales or light lagers where ice cold and spritzy is expected. :D

I think a very low carbonation and warm serving temp would be very appropriate for this beer. Get your self some mini-kegs and serve this as a cask ale would probably be best.

Craig
 
when you bottle - don't add any sugar. I've read they didn't carbonate the stuff back then; and drink it at room temperature for an authentic (= gross) experience

This will be drunk 'young', straight from the fermenter at the tail end of the ferment as NQ3X had suggested in the previously mentioned thread. I prefer to drink all my beer at cellar temps- it really allows them to open up flavorwise. I'll probably rack this to two growlers.

Remember, this ale would have been consumed quickly; definitely not suitable for aging. If moved to packaging before terminal gravity is reached, I can expect a very gentle carbonation much akin to real ale.
 
This will be drunk 'young', straight from the fermenter at the tail end of the ferment as NQ3X had suggested in the previously mentioned thread. I prefer to drink all my beer at cellar temps- it really allows them to open up flavorwise. I'll probably rack this to two growlers.

Remember, this ale would have been consumed quickly; definitely not suitable for aging. If moved to packaging before terminal gravity is reached, I can expect a very gentle carbonation much akin to real ale.

cool. Let us know how it turns out obviously.
 
Just racked the medieval ale to two growlers, and I'm sampling it now:

Aroma: Very nutty with a slight yeastiness, not surprising with the high amount of oat malt in the grist.

Appearance: Golden-orange and surprisingly bright in the glass. Very slight carbonation, head is non-existent.

Flavor: Toasty and nutty, slightly sweet. Very pleasant and quite unique. A light sour note that is complementary and not at all distracting.

Mouthfeel: Medium-low.

Overall: I call this experiment a success! This ale is refreshing in both its historical relevance and as a unique quaffer.

Pic to follow.
 
Jason, let us know how this turns out, I did an open fermentation recently without hops, I have yet to muster up the courage to taste however, it looks and smells aweful, but I may after a few primer beers. :mug:

:off: I am going to be brewing a historic beer on a large scale in a few weeks, for an upcoming event ,about 15 bbls...more on that later
 
I am going to be brewing a historic beer on a large scale in a few weeks, for an upcoming event ,about 15 bbls...more on that later

Details please! If I can make it, I'd love to help and/or observe. :D

Fermentation looked pretty awful on this one too; US-04 behaved very strangely indeed!
 
Wow. Step away from the computer for a few days, and see what you miss! Day-um!

Good on yer, J, for trying this.

There are about a jillion different ways to brew ale - which term used in the medieval sense. You can boil, you can not boil, you can ferment each running separately, you can combine one, two or all runnings in one big batch...the list goes on.

The grist described came from the inventories in the 1286 Domesday, listing the brewing grain used in that year by the canons of St Paul's Cathedral in London. We don't know if they brewed strong/stock ale and small/table ale or if they brewed but one length from the grist. We do know they brewed 100 batches in that year, each of 678 gallons (Winchester measure), each using 10.5 bushels of wheat and barley malt and 56 bushels of oat malt.

Redaction is simple. A bushel of wheat/barley is approximately 24.4 lbs. A bushel of oat malt is approximately 21.4 pounds. Thus:

10.5 * 24.4 = 256.2 pounds each of wheat and barley malt
56 * 21.4 = 1198.4 pounds of oat malt

256.2/678 = 0.377 pounds of wheat or barley malt per gallon
1198.4/678 = 1.767 pounds of oat malt per gallon

For five gallons:

1.885 pounds each wheat and barley malt - I round this up to 2 pounds
8.835 pounds of oat malt - I round this up to 9 pounds

According to ProMash, that means an OG of ~1.065. Not bad!

As for mash temperature...Harrison's Description of England, 1577, calls for the liquor to be boiling and 'let down softly' into the grist in the tun. This means dropping the liquor from a height, cooling the liquor as it falls. Also, having an assistant stir the grist will assist cooling. In my own experience, even boiling liquor used in this way will get a resting mash temperature of between 148 and 155 degrees Fahrenheit.

Anyway, that's the grist analysis. As to whether or not it should be boiled is interesting. Note that all manner of microbial nasties can do horrible things to fresh wort. It is possible that contamination would outpace the primary yeast ferment.

Also, boiling improves flavor and appearance. In 1449, the brewers who supplied Oxford University with ale promised "quod aquam tamdiu conquerent super ignem quamdiu emitteret spumam, et quod mundarent spumam ab aqua".* Moreover, that the canons of St Paul's owned several coppers and furnaces - bricked-up supports for the coppers to focus the heat - supports the notion that the wort was boiled.

Packaging and carbonation is interesting, also. The vast majority of ale and beer was shipped in the wood. Though bottling was known quite early, scarcity of bottles meant that very little beer and ale was bottled. As above noted, ale was generally consumed quickly enough that bottling was unnecessary; beer, on the other hand, was sometimes bottled. Margery Kempe, the 15th-century English mystic, was recorded as carrying a bottle of beer(!) along the road. There is a story of a monk who carried a corked bottle of beer with him when he went to the river to fish. He inadvertently left the bottle sitting when he went home. Coming back the next day, he opened the bottle and BANG! The cork popped with a mighty noise. I think this story inidcates that malt beverages were mostly carbonated to a much lesser extent than today; that the story was recorded at all speaks to its remarkability. Light carbonation, like in modern UK cask ales, is perfectly acceptable to my tastes.

Good luck with your medieval ale!

* ""that they would boil their wort over a flame until it emitted a froth, and that they would skim the froth from the wort." Munimenta Academica, or Documents Illustrative of Academical Life and Studies at Oxford. ed. Henry Anstley, 2 vols. Rolls Series, 50. London, 1868. (vol. 2, p. 541).
 
Not as of yet but it is definitely on my to-do list. I am always interested in the history of things especially things I enjoy? And I often find myself wanting to be recreate with as much accuracy and precision as possible the ancient ways, I think it helps us gain an understanding of ourselves through our ancestors.

Though of course there are simply things we will never know and thus certain environmental conditions will never be available or unknowingly made available.

Again thanks much.
 
In England in the middle ages, particularly before the Plague (which first reached England in 1348), the most common drink of the day was ale. Ale, during this time, was a drink made from malted grains, water, and fermented with yeast. Malted grain would be crushed; boiling (or at least very hot) water would be added and the mixture allowed to work; finally the liquid was drained off, cooled and fermented. The ale might have been spiced, but it would not have had hops as an ingredient.

Beer, on the other hand, was made from malted grains, water, hops, and fermented with yeast. Hops added a measure of bitterness to the beer, and also helped preserve it. We will see below that the successful addition of hops required a change in the process that had a profound effect on the resulting product: after the liquid was drained off, it was boiled again with the hops.

They didn't know what yeast was back then, so including that in the list of ingredients is a bit odd. Not only that, but if they didn't boil the wort, it would surely be packed with lactobacillus, which would give them more of a sour ale.

This is interesting stuff. I may have to try a sour medieval ale.
 
Subscribed.
This is a subject near and dear to me. part of my "brewing archeology" fascination.

Technically wouldn't this be considered as beer anthropology??? I mean you're talking about the evolution of human culture and their lives, not physical relics. Ok....sorry 'bout the semantic argument.
 
Technically wouldn't this be considered as beer anthropology??? I mean you're talking about the evolution of human culture and their lives, not physical relics. Ok....sorry 'bout the semantic argument.
How bout we call it a little of both.
I need to get off my arse. Since I have no way currently of keeping my fermenters in the normal ale temperature range, it seems the best time to brew the Egyptian and Hohokam brews I've been wanting to brew.
 
They didn't know what yeast was back then, so including that in the list of ingredients is a bit odd. Not only that, but if they didn't boil the wort, it would surely be packed with lactobacillus, which would give them more of a sour ale.

This is interesting stuff. I may have to try a sour medieval ale.

They did know what yeast was 'back then'. They just didn't know it was a single-celled microfungus; that had to wait for Pasteur's Etudes sur la Biere. Yeast went by many names: yeast, barm, brack, Godesgood, etc. But names didn't really matter - brewers knew that if you added the foam from a strong ferment (or some of the tan sludge from the bottom of the fermenter) to your fresh wort, the same reaction would take place. It's a miracle! :)

It is also a mistake to think that all medieval ales were immediately sour because the unboiled wort is a microbiological playground. We think this because we're frightened to death about infection from the instant we start seriously reading brewing texts. But in fact, it can take quite a lot to sour ale.

In the first place, a proper inoculation/pitch will overwhelm any stray lactobaclli or other spoiling microbes. It won't kill them, but the Yeast Reproduction Factory's activity will far, far outstrip the others'. In the second, after the ferment the ale presents an inhospitable environment for spoilage microbes, due to pH and presence of alcohol.

That said, unhopped ale does spoil much more easily than hopped beer. That's one of the reasons beer caught on so strongly - it keeps longer.

Moreover, most table ale - weak ale consumed with meals - was consumed within days of brewing, so spoilage wasn't a huge concern.* The strong ales were laid down like wine and kept for quite a long time indeed; there are monastic accounts from throughout the medieval period specifying criteria for ales of differing strength, for the abbot and VIPs, other guests, and the brothers themselves. The same dividing lines were drawn in secular households, noble and non-noble, great and small.

I've personally brewed parti-gyle unbittered medieval ales to authentic receipts. The table ales didn't last beyond seven days without funk. But the first-running, strong ales - laid down in corked bottles - lasted six months or more. YMMV!

Cheers,

Bob

* It was enough a concern to warrant instructions in books of "housewifery" on how to deal with sour ale. But then again, so did wine, beer, and strong ale.
 
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.
 
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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