Bob
Well-Known Member
Try it first. Make a small batch and just try it.
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
I don't know, something survives. You ever leave the grains in the tun for a day or two after brewing?!
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!
You drank it!? Go buy a lottery ticket since you aren't dead!
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?
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.
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]
Regardless, it'll have been a good experiment, something I think we need more of in this community.
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.
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.
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:
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?
Good on ya, King Brian! I need to brew more myself.
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.
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.
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.
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