Time for ercipe number two from the handwritten notebook in the Courage archive. Today it's Brown Stout.
One thing is slightly odd about the recipe. It includes Spanish juice. Liquorice it's usually called today. But, in the period I think the book dates from, that would have been illegal. Certainly if it's after 1816. But the amount being brewed - 60 or 70 barrels - is way too much for a private brewer.
Brown Stout Brewing 20 Quarters
Malts
10 quarters of Pale
10 quarters of Brown
Hops
160 pounds of old Brown
Turn over three liquors devide into 2 worts
First wort to boil for 3 quarters a hour
Second wort to boil for 3 hours and a half
Use in the first wort in the copper 5 Spanish juice
First liquor turn over at 160 degrees 40 barrels of liquor over.
Second liquor turn over at 170 degrees 25 barrels of liquor over.
Third liquor turn over at 150 degrees 40 barrels of liquor over.
Lett the worts down into the square @ 66 degrees 4 scoopes yeast.
Rouse the head well in and cleanse at 78 degrees.
Start from the barrells into butts or puncheons 14 hours after cleansing.
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4 hours ago
5 comments:
So, I've been wondering for a while, what exactly is a quarter? Half a second of searching on the internet left me with nothing but what I already know about American currency, and these "quarter" things are making me feel inadequate.
A quarter is a unit of volume. British breweries probably still measure their malt in quarters.
Because it's a unit of volume, not every quarter of malt weighs the same. A quarter of pale malt is approximately 320 pounds, a quarter of brown malt 250.
If Rabbi is intending to homebrewicate the two currently posted recipes, it will probably not be possible to do easily.
Brown and amber malt in those days was diastatic; these days it isn't and we cannot use anywhere near those proportions and get away with it. The brown malt would have been a lot less brown than today's brown malt, less than 50 EBC to preserve the diastatic activity.
Furthermore, the brown is specified as Ware (a locality), therefore it would have been dried over hornbeam and would have acquired a hornbeam wood-smoked flavour as a result. Only hornbeam will do for a genuine porter.
The liquorice might not have been illegal at the time, possibly a matter of timing. The original George III act, permitted malt and hops only, but there was a hoo-haa about it, and it was quickly amended. It then applied only to "certain deleterious ingredients and substitutes for malt". There was a list of deleterious ingredients to which it applied. Liquorice is certainly not a malt substitute, and if it was not regarded as harmful or adulterative, it would not have been on the list, particularly if its usage was traditional. I haven't got the list.
Of course the Geo III act was repealed in 1880 and the "list" became the basis of the adulteration of beer acts, which succeeded it.
Liquorice was still used in beer in 1908 according to the Chancellor of the Exchequer when answering a question in Parliament.
Graham, as there is no exact date for the notebook, I wouldn't want to say exactly what the brown or amber malts were like.
I can't see how a date will help, but Ware says a lot. It says traditional, hornbeam-dried, best brown malt.
French & Jupp produced their last batch of "proper" brown malt in about 1955, and the kiln that it was dried on was built at least as early as 1750. Apparently the last batch went to Mackeson. I doubt very much if the batch produced in 1950 was substantially different to that specified in the recipes. Ware and surrounding area specialised in the stuff over a span of at least 300 years.
The note book is certainly a recipe book, not a log book, so the fact that Ware is actually specified for the malts in the porter recipe does show the importance that the author places on malt specification for authentic porter. Strange that there is not a similar specification for the brown stout which is just another (inferior according to Tizard) variation on the porter theme.
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