You may have noticed that my reading material this week is "Brewing Science & Practice" H. Lloyd Hind, published in 1940. It's a wonderful book. I'm learning so much. If you're paying attention, you should be, too. Learning lots, I mean.One of the things I'm most interested in doing in the course of my research is comparing theory with practice. Seeing how well what the brewing manuals say matches with what's in the brewing records. In some periods there's considerable divergence. Not so with Hind and the 1930's. Most of what he says I can find real practical examples of.
"Brewing Science & Practice" is a detailed work. Very detailed, in fact. Today I'm sharing some of those details with you. To be specific, the details about the grists for different types of beer.
Grists
Different types of beer required different malts. "Pale ales have to comply with higher standards of brilliance and stability than mild ales,
while they lack certain constituents of dark beers that hinder the formation of protein haze, and contains a greater proportion of the hop tannins which participate in its production." Which meant Pale Ales had to be made from malt of the best quality, whereas brewers could get away with lesser malt in Mild. No surprise there.To maintain a constant colour and flavour, a blend of pale malts was usually used in Pale Ale grists. Part of the blend was malt made from six-rowed barley, either Californian or Smyrna (Syrian). At one time up to 50% six-rowed had been used, but by the 1030's 20% was usually the maximum. Sugar and flaked rice or maize helped to prevent a protein haze, especially in filtered beers. Pale invert sugars, such as No. 1 or No. 2 were suitable. Adjuncts could make up 10-25% of the total extract.
These are the example Pale Ale grists given by Hind:
Malts for Mild and dark Ales were of slightly lower quality, did not need to be so well-modified and were slightly darker in colour than those used for Pale Ales. Crystal malt and amber malt were used for flavour. A greater proportion of sugar could be used than for Pale Ales, usualy in the form of a dark invert sugar such as No.3 or a proprietary mixed sugar containing caramel.
There were different types of Porter and Stout which all had their own distinct grists. Some Stouts used just malt and perhaps roasted barley, others, like Mild, has a percentage of sugar and maize. The majority of the grist was pale malt that was not too highly modified, usually a mix of English 2-row and foreign 6-row. No. 3 invert sugar and proprietary dark mixed sugars were added in the copper. Milk Stouts also contained unfermentable lactose which was added as primings.
That's the theory from Hind. How does it compare with reality? It just so happens that some of tghe Whitbread brewing records give the yield of each particular malt. That means I can put together similar tables to Hind's.
It's certainly true that the Milds (XX,X A) and the Stouts (P, CS, COS) used lower quality pale malt than the PA. There's a mix of foreign 6-row and English 2-row pale malt in all the grists, too. But when it comes to sugar, Whitbread's grists diverge significantly from Hind's. Rather than the Mild and Stout, it's the Pale Ale that had the greater proportion of sugar. As for brown malt in Mild, I've only seen that in low-gravity WW I Government Ale.
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9 comments:
Good stuff as always.
I think some brewers' manuals may not correlate to current practice, especially in prior eras, because theer were so many brewers compared to today. Differnet ways of doing things that is. Also, the time lag factor in publication...
Why I wonder though was stability less an issue for mild and dark ales than pale? I would have thought the reverse.
Gary
Gary
Gary,
I love to compare what brewing manuals say with actual brewing records.
There's less to hide behind in a PAle Ale. And they were expected to last longer than Mild.
It's really interesting to me that they used 6 row malt in the grist of so many of these. There's so little info like this out there and I'm one of the ignorant masses who figured that only American beers used 6 row. Another homebrew myth killed by facts and research. Great post. Thanks for the tables and the great info.
Bill,
you see middle-eastern or American 6-row in so many British beers, even in the late 19th century. OK, it was cheaper than British malt, but equally important seems to have been getting the nitrogen and protein balance right.
There's a strange degree of complexity in British 20th century grists. Most beers have 2 to 4 pale malts in the grist. There's always some 6-row in there.
Glad that a few people like this stuff. It fascinates me. My current project in the simplification of mashing schemes in WW II.
I look back and thing: a year ago I understood nothing about mashing.
Keep it up, Ron, it is important work. I too was struck by the use of some North American and other non-English malts. I had understood earlier that North American hops were used to a degree since the later 1800's, but not our malts.
Still, at least from the 1980's on when I started sampling English beers on their home turf and beyond, I've felt the real beers at any rate are quintessentially English. Something keeps them such, whether intentionally or not I cannot say.
Gary
Gary, it's not American malt, but American barley. It was malted in Britain.
I'd just like to know one thing: What does "old" mean? One of the tables lists "English 2-row pale, OLD". Is that just old stuff they had to get rid of? Or was it a really bad name for a company?
Based on reading various sources over the years from Combrune to Christine Clark's fine recent study of the history of the British malting industry (fuller details in relation to that book are stated in my answer to Ron's recent question about SA Malt), I think "old" stock means malt made longer ago than new malt. No doubt the industries had a rule of thumb for what was old and new but I don't know what it is.
Thanks, Ron, for your correction about barley being imported from e.g., California to make malt in England, not barley malt made from that barley. I wonder if English malting and kilning methods did (and do) contribute to the overall English character real ales had (and have) in the U.K., certainly as I observed it in the 1980's-2005period. Probably they did but I'd think the English barleys used and of course the hops lent the defining character to the beers - and the yeasts. (Those hops were not I know always English-grown but to me they seemed usually to be).
There is just something so English about real beer in England. I have had countless real ales in North America, some very good, but few really approached the English beers in character.
Gary
rabbi, there are a couple of things you see after a malt:
old
new
NOB
NXOB
I think I can work out the first two. Any guesses for the others?
Gary, I'm sure the English way of making malt has an influence. And, in the old days at least, a majority of the malt used was made from English 2-row barley.
I've had some British-style beers made in Denmark that definitely had a "British taste" to them. There's something very distinctive about British malt and I'm pretty sure that's what the Danish brewers had used.
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