Old world contamination?

[Brew-Happy]

Ok so lately I have playing with Google's Book Search Engine and finding brewing books in English during the 1800's. They are very interesting reads plus some have old recipes that I want to try.

Now my curiosity: When reading how they cooled their wort, they would pour the entire batch into a shallow trough/basin like structure no deeper than 4 inches to cool it as quickly as possible. This seems like a great source for contamination, considering the modern advise is to limit the amount of exposure time to the atmosphere. Now this is when they had no clue about microbes and such. And, they would rack into open wooden casks as a secondary, where the bung was left out so the fermenting beer could blow out the hole for several days. They even had a worker that would periodically refill, with water, each barrel to keep it full.

So my question is to all who have read up on old world brewing: Was the obvious bacterial contamination a part of flavoring that is ascribed to the beers?? The author would comment on the lusciousness or greatness of a particular beer.

They had to be contaminated but if you grow up thinking it is good tasting you would have no idea what it would taste like "clean".

Thanks for the brain dump here

 

[Evan!]

Ok so lately I have playing with Google's Book Search Engine and finding brewing books in English during the 1800's. They are very interesting reads plus some have old recipes that I want to try.

Now my curiosity: When reading how they cooled their wort, they would pour the entire batch into a shallow trough/basin like structure no deeper than 4 inches to cool it as quickly as possible. This seems like a great source for contamination, considering the modern advise is to limit the amount of exposure time to the atmosphere. Now this is when they had no clue about microbes and such. And, they would rack into open wooden casks as a secondary, where the bung was left out so the fermenting beer could blow out the hole for several days. They even had a worker that would periodically refill, with water, each barrel to keep it full.

So my question is to all who have read up on old world brewing: Was the obvious bacterial contamination a part of flavoring that is ascribed to the beers?? The author would comment on the lusciousness or greatness of a particular beer.

They had to be contaminated but if you grow up thinking it is good tasting you would have no idea what it would taste like "clean".

Thanks for the brain dump here

A lot of the time, yes, it was part of the style. Traditional belgian witbier, for example, has a distinct acidic twang to it---when I brew it, I achieve it through either sauer malt or lactic acid, but the inclusion in the style probably means that the beers were infected with a bit of brett or lacto.

 

[Beerthoven]

Yes, most beer was "soured" in the old days. That's how it was, but people definately preferred non-sour or "mild" ales when they could get them, at least in England and America. Read the book "Mild Ale" by David Sutula, he talks about this at length.

 

[david_42]

Beers were rarely kept around for more than a few months and it was common to mix new beer and soured beer.