Monday 19 April 2021

Heineken grists in 1928 - 1929

As promised, here are the Heineken grists. Not that they are particularly exciting.

Lots of pilsner malt, a bit of caramel malt and a touch of kleur mout (coloured malt). I assume that the last is something similar to black malt. I'm quite surprised to see that there was none in the Bok, just a fairly heavy dose of caramel malt.

I'll be honest, the sugar bit is a total guess. I'm not even sure that it's sugar. In the brewing record it's described as "R. s.". From the context, I'm pretty sure that it isn't a malt. The first thought was that it was some sort of unmalted adjunct. But I couldn't think of any grain type that starts with the letter S. I'm assuming that the R stands for "rauw", the Dutch word for raw. I could be totally wrong. If you have any better ideas, let me know.

Not much else to say, really. So I'll just fuck off.

Heineken grists in 1928 - 1929
Year Beer Style pilsner malt kleur mout caramel malt raw sugar
1928 Li Licht Lagerbier 80.00%     20.00%
1928 Do Donker Lagerbier 78.00% 1.00% 1.00% 20.00%
1929 P Pils 82.76%     17.24%
1928 Bayerische Münchener 92.31% 4.81% 2.88%  
1928 Bok Bok 90.00%   10.00%  
Source:
Heineken brewing record held at the Amsterdamse Stadsarchief, document number 834-1753.

 


4 comments:

Ross said...

RS = Rice Syrup or Rice Solids, perhaps? Not sure what the Dutch word(s) would be.

Mark said...

Looks like Rice Syrup is Rijst siroop in Dutch.

Mike in NSW said...

I see that some modern Dutch Beers such as the Hollandia we get in Australia list "maltose syrup" on the ingredients on the bottles.

"glucose" was well known to brewers at the time and I wonder if it could be a maltose made from some reliable starch such as wheat, or rice? Thinking of Dutch imports from their Far Eastern colonies at the time.

qq said...

Rye/rogge is another brewing ingredient that begins with R, albeit one that wouldn't make much sense in this context.

Ron - is there anything in the Heineken records about yeast? They seem to be the source of the Frohberg family of lager yeasts that dominate modern lager production, including most notably 34/70 - AIUI they sold tonnes of their yeast into Germany, which is why the Frohberg family came to dominate over the (genetically quite different) Saaz family most closely associated with Carlsberg.