Recreating Medieval English Ales

[anchorandoak]

As a history lover (B.A. History), I find researching older beer making methods and recipes very interesting. I wish I could find more on the subject. I'd LOVE to brew a beer based on an old recipe. On my search I found the following article and thought I'd share it.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pwp/tofi/medieval_english_ale.html

Question: Do any of you have information on older recipes?

 

[Airborneguy]

That is an awesome article, thanks for posting it! The author presents some great info for anyone trying to recreate the old style ales in their most basic forms. I might have to try this soon after reading that.

 

[ultravista]

subscribing .. holding-on for posted recipes.

 

[Airborneguy]

There's recipes in the article...

 

[dvdanny]

I would think medieval ales would use some type of spicing or gruit to substitute for the hops.

I just finished a recipe based on an old medieval recipe but I used hops, after tasting a carbed bottle, next time I am going to go traditional and use proper medieval spices (cinnamon, mugwort, licorice or star anise, juniper berries and dried nettles is what I have planned)

I used White labs begian trappist as it provided the fruity yeasty flavors I thought would make sense in a Medieval brew.

 

[anchorandoak]

I would think medieval ales would use some type of spicing or gruit to substitute for the hops.

I just finished a recipe based on an old medieval recipe but I used hops, after tasting a carbed bottle, next time I am going to go traditional and use proper medieval spices (cinnamon, mugwort, licorice or star anise, juniper berries and dried nettles is what I have planned)

I used White labs begian trappist as it provided the fruity yeasty flavors I thought would make sense in a Medieval brew.

where did you happen to find this recipe? post it!

 

[dmcoates]

thats great info, id love to try to brew something like that

 

[IceFisherChris]

I find it ironic that they tell you to sanitize.

 

[passedpawn]

As a history lover (B.A. History), I find researching older beer making methods and recipes very interesting. I wish I could find more on the subject. I'd LOVE to brew a beer based on an old recipe. On my search I found the following article and thought I'd share it.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pwp/tofi/medieval_english_ale.html

Question: Do any of you have information on older recipes?

Thank you. Very interesting article.

 

[ksbrain]

You should check out Ron Pattinson's blog. He is not quite as far back as Medieval, but quite the historian.

Also you might be interested in Sacred Herbal and Healing Beers (Amazon link). A lot of info about using stuff that's not hops in beer.

I think it's all so interesting but I never got up the guts to risk a whole brew day on any of them. I'd like to one day make one with yarrow or nightshade or some sick poisonous thing like that.

 

[anchorandoak]

well I can promise you this, I WILL spend at least one day brew day brewing an old recipe. I will take pictures to chronicle the experience. I live for this stuff.

 

[rockfish42]

The homebrewer's garden is a better book I've found for herb/spice addition info.

 

[Frodo]

Very cool article. Thanks! Definitely need to try a batch. We're so fortunate a gallon of ale doesn't cost us a day's labor!

 

[rico567]

I think what most people who brew today fail to understand is that beers brewed in Mediæval times had to be extremely inconsistent, due to lack of sanitization and variation in ingredients. Our age, particularly the last 150 years or so, has accustomed us to having completely standardized, predictable, off-the-rack products. Ray Kroc was the late 20th C. version of this type of innovator. Mc Donalds doesn't sell good food, they sell completely predictable food....and that concept changed the face of restaurants and resulted in a world-wide business worth billions.

Brewing an ale from the Middle Ages would require having one batch be something we might recognize, while the next batch might be (and no way of predicting) similar to sewer water.

 

[finley]

Going to be bottling up this weekend a split batch of a gruit ale and brown ale did with some friends. The gruit (herbs) recipe is from a renaissance recipe, but the base brown ale is a modern one. Split it into two batches, one with hops, one with gruit so we can tell the differences between the two. BTW Yarrow takes a long time to mellow.

 

[PanzerBanana]

I just finished a recipe based on an old medieval recipe but I used hops, after tasting a carbed bottle, next time I am going to go traditional and use proper medieval spices (cinnamon, mugwort, licorice or star anise, juniper berries and dried nettles is what I have planned)

You can't interchange licorice and anise. Actual licorice root doesn't really taste like "licorice". what people recognize as "licorice" flavor comes from anise and/or fennel. If you haven't used licorice root before, you can use it to add a lingering sweetness.

Add it to or make a tea with it so you can see. It's weird because it tends to be sweet after you swallow, unless you hold in your mouth for a few seconds. It's just not immediately sweet.

 

[PanzerBanana]

Also speaking of ancient brews. I would suggest trying Fraoch. Scottish ale brewed with heather. Heather also wasn't an uncommon addition to Irish brews.

 

[Stardust]

I'd like to one day make one with yarrow or nightshade or some sick poisonous thing like that.

Then brew your next batch with jalapenos. They are member of the nightshade family

 

[dvdanny]

You can't interchange licorice and anise. Actual licorice root doesn't really taste like "licorice". what people recognize as "licorice" flavor comes from anise and/or fennel. If you haven't used licorice root before, you can use it to add a lingering sweetness.

Add it to or make a tea with it so you can see. It's weird because it tends to be sweet after you swallow, unless you hold in your mouth for a few seconds. It's just not immediately sweet.

Yea I was planning on making some teas out of those ingredients and maybe a few more and see what flavor would go best with my ancient ale (with just hops it seemed a tad bland)

As for the recipe request, here it is:

5# Light DME
2# Clover Honey (I might down this to 1# next time, offered little to no flavor after it fermented out)
0.5# Victory Malts
0.5# Flaked Wheat
~0.5# of Rye Bread (double baked to dry it out)
1# Smoked Pale Malt (smoked over mesquite, will use applewood next time)
Added 1# of chopped dried dates to primary 1wk after pitching yeast.
Pitched Belgian Trappist Yeast as that made the most sense to me.

It's more an Ancient Hebrew beer as was the description but the time period seemed correct to be called "Medieval"

The original recipe was All-Grain, had a lot more Rye bread in the mash and used spontaneous fermentation from crushed fresh dates. No hops were called for in the original recipe but I used:
1oz of Kent Goldings @ 60mins
1oz of Saaz @ 30

Definitely tasted like no other beer i've tried (for sure not a beer for everyone) but I felt it was missing some type of herby or spicy flavor that the hops just weren't providing.

 

[Aoife3Sheets]

Going to be bottling up this weekend a split batch of a gruit ale and brown ale did with some friends. The gruit (herbs) recipe is from a renaissance recipe, but the base brown ale is a modern one.

Where did you find the old recipe for gruit? I've been looking everywhere without success!

 

[unionrdr]

Here's a site for all things gruit- http://www.gruitale.com/bot_wormwood.htm

 

[Zamial]

Wormwood is nasty unless you extract the tannins from it 1st. I do medieval reenactments/fighting game and may have some good info for you.

Check out Fraoch. It was a heather gruit years ago but they changed the recipe and now it has hops in it. Still a favorite brew of mine as it was my gateway beer to craft beer.

Next look into stien beer (using hot rocks) and full decoction mashing because that is almost assuredly how it was done!

I have some plans to try a stien beer/decoction heather gruit ale this summer. Unfortunately I have other needs before this so it is low on my priority list and may get pushed back another year or more.

If I have my way I will attempt to disprove that medeval people did not drink water and only drank beer at the week long event since I will be wearing period clothing and battling. I will not drink ANY water the entire week or until I start to suffer from dehydration. I will open my own thread when the time comes.

 

[gbx]

...If I have my way I will attempt to disprove that medeval people did not drink water and only drank beer at the week long event since I will be wearing period clothing and battling. I will not drink ANY water the entire week or until I start to suffer from dehydration. I will open my own thread when the time comes.

I had a friend who tried to go the entire long weekend drinking nothing but beer at a music fest at the gorge in washington (its essentially a desert there). On the way home he was getting intense stomach pains and ended up in the ER with an inflamed pancreas. ...mind you that was all ****ty bud light not homebrew.

In terms of medeival recipes, Ron posted some 14th, 15th, 16th century dutch grists here http://barclayperkins.blogspot.ca/2012/11/gruit-grists.html ....you'd need to convert them to your batch size and the spicing isn't specified but some of these might be fun to try. You'd need to find some malted oats for some of them and I'm sure you'd need a serious helping of rice hulls to lauter something more than 60% oats, wheat and rye.

 

[BrewerBear]

Revvy has posted some info on beer history,not sure if it goes far back to medieval times or not.

 

[Padalac]

Sounds cool but I don't think they had pale malt in the 14th century!

 

[unionrdr]

That site I posted has more than just wormwood for gruit ales in it. Recipes and more there.

 

[gbx]

Sounds cool but I don't think they had pale malt in the 14th century!

I think that all the time when i see "historical recipes" but are full of munich and crystal (I'm looking at you, meantime IPA). It is a problem with old recipes because the grains they used don't exist anymore and the malting has changed but you need a source of enzymes to convert everything and pale malt is a good way to get it. It doesn't mean the old recipes aren't worth a try, if you look at the grists I linked you know they are going to taste completely different than everything we have today (nobody uses 60% oats anymore). I think you would also need to infect every batch with brett and lacto to get a sense of what they were like as they definitely did not have pure yeast and modern sanitation back then.

 

[unionrdr]

But they did have fruit trees & grape fines. Certain wild yeasts cling to differet fruits. Like grapes & dates to name 2.

 

[WileECoyote]

Nice article.

Cheers

 

[jerryteague]

There was an article in BYO magazine last year with a recipe for an English Tudor style beer. Looks pretty interesting as well.