Medieval Northern European Style Ale

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jlangfo5

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Hey Guys! I have been inspired by a book series to make a bit of an adventurous brew! I need some help though locating a recipe that would really fit that I want to capture!

Some Background:
I have brewed 3 AG batches so far, a Belgian Whit, German Dark Ale, and a Dry Rye Ale. I have a 5 gallon mash tun, and several 4 gallon brew pots for the stove.

Some Info On my Inspiration:
I have been reading the book series by RR Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, otherwise known as a A Game of Thrones. I have been looking to brew a new batch that is inspired by the Book Series. Ale is mentioned commonly and consumed in many diverse regions in the book's lands. Although the taste of it is not explored deeply.

What I want to Capture:
What I am want to capture is an Ale that you could imagine being drank in a Norther European Castle at a feast or cold night. I would imagine something that wouldn't be dark like an RIS, but not pale like a whit either. Something that would have a rustic flavor probably a bit cloudy with a big thick head that could be served at cellar temp with oak notes from being stored in a barrel. Imagine a beer that would be made from the fall harvest before a hard winter hit.

Other Misc:
I am not willing to use wild yeast or to lager the ale.

Looking forward to peoples comments!
 
Have not read the books or seen the series... however, love the inspiration! I've tackled a few brews that are similarly inspired. Here are few thoughts to further your muses.

Do you want to a modern hopped ale? Or something with medieval gruit spices? (check out http://www.gruitale.com)

Do you have a base recipe in mind? (e.g. not RIS, not wit.. but what?) I find it helpful to start with a base recipe or style (e.g. Northern English Brown), then make some mods (e.g. remove hops, replace with Sweet Gale and add honey)

There are several recipes out there using juniper berries, spruce boughs, etc. for a very Viking style flavor. I've been using sweet gale (highly recommended), yarrow & wormwood on a historical brew or two.

To create a more rustic profile, perhaps replace some of the aroma hops with a little sage? rosemary? bog myrtle?

For a froath head & murkiness, add some rye or wheat.

Anyways, sounds like a fun brew! Please let us know where you go with this one!
:mug:
--LexusChris
 
I have done some more thinking about my inspiration. The book itself was inspired by the war of the roses (1455–1485), which gives me a sort of time and place. I just did a quick look up and in the early 1400's hops were used in beer in england, but so was gruit. I do wonder what the norm would have been far north though.

Another thing, this ale would not quite be the ale of the poor man, that is not what I am trying to replicate, I am thinking an ale that would be available to the well born.
 
What region of Europe are you talking about? Mainland Europe was pretty much ALL using hops by that time. England was still making ales (ale having a different meaning at that time), and would not really catch on to beer until the mid 1600's on a wide-scale. I don't know much about the Scandinavian countries.

By the 1400's, the Hanseatic League of Northern Germany had already been trading beer throughout Europe which would be fairly recognizeable by us today. In some parts of modern day Germany, they were most certainly producing lagers by that time.

Point being, in most of Europe, beer in the 1400's was pretty close to what we have now, sans filtering and temperature controlled fermentations. There are some great "ale" recipes out there if you want to go that route, and even mixed beer drinks that were popular at the time.

Check out this thread:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/beer-history-sites-58021/

I've been posting tons of stuff in that thread recently regarding beer history from the middle ages and rennaisance. I'm finishing up a beer history college course as we speak. Writing the research paper today.
 
I am pretty sure at this point I am wanting to brew something that would be consumed in Northern England. The book was inspired by the war of the roses, so it makes sense, and knowing that hops were not uber popular yet in England, I will probally be doing some kind of "Gruit" brew.
 
For A Song of Ice and Fire? We're talking fantasy here, so the recipes don't have to be exact historical ones. But they should definitely be informed by a sound knowledge of medieval brewing, so that all the ways they deviate from reality are deliberate.

So, to start with, throw out every idea you ever had about "base malt." Pale base plus specialty grains is a very modern development. Besides, the technology behind most of our modern base malts and our darkest specialty grains did not exist. Accounts from the early modern period of how to make malt don't dry the grains at low temperature prior to kilning, and would probably produce things we would today describe as high-kilned malts. (I know a man who has talked about building a sixteenth-century oast house per Gervase Markham to test this conjecture. Until it's been done - and to my knowledge it hasn't - I'm going with it; build your beers around something in the Munich family.)

All beer is rauchbier. Smoke wasn't being excluded from the malt making process; the darker the malt, the smokier. There are references to styles brewed with the palest kilned malts to reduce this, and Markham talks about reducing the smoke flavor and lightening the color of your malt by burning straw in the kiln instead of wood; a dry straw fire should have very little smoke taste, but not quite none.

That said, not all malts are kilned at all. I'm told unkilned malt has a distinct green flavor, like that incredibly subtle grassy note in pilsner but more noticeable. It's the palest malt there is.

Color can also come in part from long boils. A Dutch recipe for "koet" beer from about 1600 (the word means cooked, which may be a reference to this process) specifies a four-hour boil.

In Early Modern English and late Middle English, "beer" means it's got hops in it and is seen as a foreign drink; "ale" means it's made with gruit, and is the good English beverage. (Queen Elizabeth I is known to have been rather patriotic about English ales.) But northern Europe is much larger than just England, and the Dutch were using hops (and stereotyped as beer-drinkers) by the early modern period. Hops as a brewing ingredient are thought to be pre-millennial in some parts of Europe, though written documentation is exceedingly scant.

Lager yeast doesn't exist until the sixteenth century if that, so all beers are what we would now call ales. (Some beers are lagered, much like a modern Altbier or biere de garde, particularly in Germany; this does not mean they are lagers in the modern sense.)

Adjunct grains are the norm. Roggenbier? Totally. There were English and Dutch beers with more oats in them than anything else. Wheat was seen as a high-quality brewing grain; some historians say part of the motivation behind the Reinheitsgebot was to ration wheat during lean times and make sure enough of it was available for bread.

But that's real history.

Historically-inspired modern fantasy is allowed to be completely different, though Martin's fantasy is not something that deviates from reality in implausible ways by accident.

Let's craft some recipes.

From your description, we'll start with a beer for a feast at Winterfell. We'll base it loosely on the March beer of 16th-century England, even though that's clearly rather late to be equivalent to the society of Westeros at the time of the books.

Start with a base of Munich I malt (because we want this to be a copper-colored beer; any darker and we'll be too dark) or, for partial-mash, a blend of pale and Munich extracts. Add about five percent each of wheat and oats, or perhaps a little more, both unmalted. (These will need to be converted in a mini-mash even if you're mostly using extract.) A touch of smoked malt would also be a welcome addition, to mimic the subtle smokiness of the original. Shoot for an OG around 1.090; this is going to be a strong beer. Add hops or gruit early in the boil only. (For truly historical, this is a march beer, not a march ale, and would be hopped - but it's also significantly later than the Wars of the Roses, when beer in England was far from normal.) Then, age it for a year, on a little bit of oak if you like.

How about a Lannister beer? Seems to me this should be golden and expensive, where the latter implies a significant amount of wheat. Again, pale munich as the base, but let's go with a third or more unmalted wheat (because wheat is the pricy brewing grain), and a little on the strong side for a wheat beer - maybe an OG of 1.060 or a bit more. You can also boost the gravity by adding a little bit of honey. Hop with something floral (Strisselspalt, perhaps?) for bitterness and the same or gruit herbs for aroma, with a late addition of saffron for both its color and its price tag. I would probably go with a Belgian yeast such as Wyeast Belgian Abbey II. Use Irish moss or isinglass, cold crash when it's done fermenting, and filter if need be to produce a brilliantly clear and very golden beer, like a Kristalweizen crossed with a Tripel with a few extra ingredients found in neither. It's historically plausible except for the lack of smoke, but not based on anything historical.

And if we go a little further afield, how about a beer for the R'hllor worshippers? Obviously this has to be at least somewhat red, and flavored with exotic spices from across the Narrow Sea. I'm thinking 20 IBUs tops, from a small addition of a high-alpha hop early in a long boil, followed by the addition of cardamom in the primary. Smoked malt is a must here.
 
teucer and Airborneguy! Thanks for the insightful post! I crafted revision one of the "Lord of the North" Ale today. I am going with hops, but I selected a blend of two that are known to be very floral and pungent to give it a more herb flavor and have chosen a Bier De Garde yeast. I did go with malted oats and wheat, what would I be losing by using them instead of un-malted?

Recipe:

Weyermann Cara Munich I
9 lbs, 0 oz
Briess White Wheat
1 lbs, 8 oz
Weyermann Rye Malt
1 lbs, 8 oz
Thomas Fawcett Oat Malt
1 lbs, 0 oz
Simpsons Peated Malt
0 lbs, 8 oz
Columbus Pellets
.5 oz @ 60 mins
Nugget Pellets
.5 oz @ 60 mins
Oak Chips, Toasted 4 oz

Wyeast Labs Bier de Garde Yeast

So far, I plan on mashing at 150 for 90 minutes, and racking the beer to a secondary vessal as soon as it is done with the primary fermentation so that I can rack it onto the oak chips for about 3 weeks before bottling.

So what do you guys think about revision one? Lets keep churning these guys out so we can get this nailed down! :)
 
Im not positive, but caramunich might not convert. You're also going to have a ridiculously sweet beer with that being your base. Keep everything else the same and switch the Caramunich to regular Munich. That's what I would do. Otherwise, it looks good. This is the perfect chance to attempt a gruit though, ditch the hops and go for it! ;)
 
Were can I get the ingredients for the Gruit at? Some of the herbs have "narcotic properties" would there be concerns of it giving a false positive in a drug panel? I can switch to Munich 1, but wont that be a bit on the dark side?

Edit:

I switched to Munich II, and here are my current estimated vitals:

OG:1.070
FG: 1.016
IBU:37.3 (if hopped)
SRM:11.12
ABV:7.0
 
Looks good to me.

If I were designing a 15th century English ale it would be something like this

50% marris Otter
15% amber malt( think Simpsons makes some)
30% rauch malt
5% brown malt

20 IBUs of Northern Brewer all at 60 min
OG 1.080
Mash at 155

Fermented with any estery english yeast

Maybe bottled with some Brett


You got me thinking here. I might do something like this.
 
I seem to recall reading that a lot of middle age beer would have had poor conversion so there would be a lot of leftover starches, making good food for brett, wild yeast and bacteria. So in addition to more body you would probably have some funky flavors.

Since the beer was probably stored/fermented in less than perfectly clean barrels it would probably also go sour fairly quickly. As well as oxidize in a few days, like modern cask ale.
 
jlangfo5, Caramunich isn't a good choice for a base malt - it's a caramel malt with high-kilned-like melanoidins, around 40L. Don't use more of it than you would of ordinary C40; as a base malt, replace it with Munich (or, in the Weyerman line, Munich II - or for a little bit less intensity, Munich I, which is about halfway in between Vienna and Munich). Other than that small ingredient confusion, it looks delicious to me!

I seem to recall reading that a lot of middle age beer would have had poor conversion so there would be a lot of leftover starches, making good food for brett, wild yeast and bacteria. So in addition to more body you would probably have some funky flavors.

A lot of speculation about older beers you've heard from people who haven't looked at the primary sources is really wild guessing. For example, the source that inspired my outline of what to suggest for the Winterfell beer says:

Gervase Markham said:
Your malt being well ground and put in your mash vat, and your liquor in your lead ready to boil, you shall then by little and little with scoops or pails put the boiling liquor to the malt, and then stir it even to the bottom exceedingly well together [...] and so let it stand an hour and more in the mash vat

That sounds like a step infusion mash to me, with a nice long conversion rest to boot.

Granted, that's early modern beer (late 16th century) rather than medieval, but do you know of a precise account of the process from the middle ages that wouldn't result in good conversion? I don't, but would be very interested to see it.

(Getting brett and other wild microflora in your beer at least some of the time, however, does seem quite likely to me.)
 
I recently have done a Tart Cherry Braggot. Sans the Cherries a braggot or braggot/gruit hybrid may be just the thing you are looking for IMO.

The idea of malting your own grains and/or decoction brewing sounds like a PITA to me... but everyone has their own ideas when it comes to this sort of thing...

I would get some under modded pilsen malt, protein rest it for a little PITA & history. I would boil the wort "stein beer style", with fire heated rocks dropped in the BK. Bittering if desired, I would use dandelion root, burdock root or heather tips. (Pretty easy to locate locally in most regions.) '

Yeast... Something from an old brewery in Europe that you feel would go well.

For a twist age it on some sort of wood to simulate being brewed in a wooden barrel. ;)

FWIW my Tart Cherry Braggot was 10# each of honey, 2-row and tart cherries in secondary (5-ish gallon batch) and I estimate the ABV to be above 11% and it is YUMMY.

Take as much or as little as you like of these ideas... It will be fun to see how this turns out for you. :mug:
 
All beer is rauchbier. Smoke wasn't being excluded from the malt making process; the darker the malt, the smokier. There are references to styles brewed with the palest kilned malts to reduce this, and Markham talks about reducing the smoke flavor and lightening the color of your malt by burning straw in the kiln instead of wood; a dry straw fire should have very little smoke taste, but not quite none.

I've got to take exception to all but the last bit of this. I've got a couple of sources from the late 1500's, describing the beers of what is now Germany, Poland, Austria, and the NW Czech Republic. In all cases, smoke is considered an off-flavor. If "with smoke" is "bad beer," then "good beer" would have been as smoke-free as they could make it. (To be fair, for England, YMMV--but I believe the idea holds up.) And remember: just because they were doing their thing several hundred years ago doesn't mean they did it poorly--they were as ingenious as we are, and the maltsters had a vested interest in making good product.

Sorry, this is a hot-button item for me, and having just read Foster's article on the earliest English Tudor beer with the same type of statement (and inclusion of smoked malt in the recipe), I'm still a bit sensitive to it....:drunk:

--Misha
 
Slightly off topic, anyone know of any good sources for historic beer recipes and processes?
 
I like the idea of producing an entirely different ale for being served in Winterfell, than what might be served in say, King's Landing.

Imagine what the guys on "The Wall" are drinking. Probably pretty hardy and warming.
 
I've got to take exception to all but the last bit of this. I've got a couple of sources from the late 1500's, describing the beers of what is now Germany, Poland, Austria, and the NW Czech Republic. In all cases, smoke is considered an off-flavor. If "with smoke" is "bad beer," then "good beer" would have been as smoke-free as they could make it. (To be fair, for England, YMMV--but I believe the idea holds up.) And remember: just because they were doing their thing several hundred years ago doesn't mean they did it poorly--they were as ingenious as we are, and the maltsters had a vested interest in making good product.

Sorry, this is a hot-button item for me, and having just read Foster's article on the earliest English Tudor beer with the same type of statement (and inclusion of smoked malt in the recipe), I'm still a bit sensitive to it....:drunk:

--Misha

Oh, smoke is undeniably an off flavor they're doing their level best to exclude, throughout Europe. But read their descriptions of how to make malt - unlike modern maltings, the fire and the grain are not separated in any way that would keep the smoke out. It won't be nearly as smoky as a modern smoked malt, which put as much smoke into the grain as possible. After all, it's something with so little smoke flavor in the malt that they can use nothing else and still tell the difference between the more and less smoky versions.

If you want no smoke flavor at all, unkilned malt is the only way to do it. Broyhan, a style that originated in the 16th century, is sometimes described as having been made from wind malt, which would be smoke-free. This is an exception, not the norm. Eimbecker, which was for much of the late medieval period regarded as the world's best beer, is described as having been made from the palest of kilned malts, and when Munich brewers developed early Bock as an imitation of it, the result was criticized in part for being darker and too smoky as a result.

How smoky medieval beer was is a question I can't imagine giving a sane answer to without experimental archeology of malting techniques. Until somebody does the experiment and tells us all how it went, though, I favor an answer of only slightly smoky, because of a lot of what you mention, but I find the notion that it would have been smoke-free incompatible with the processing of the grains described in those sources that talk about how malt is made.
 
So, if I did decide to gruit the "Lord of the North" ale, what herbs and in what quantities would people recommend for that blend of grains? I have heard of gruiting going way to string way to quick before.
 
I would focus on earthy flavors...I would include wormwood, but stay away from rosemary and sage...I'm on the fence about heather. Maybe Yarrow for bittering? I picture the ale being very lightly bittered. Who knows how much you would need to balance malt sweetness.
 
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