Starting with something about the weird way IPA was aged.
Monday Evening 22 March 1869
Dear Carl!
I still cannot get over my astonishment at your strange statement in your previous letter about the way in which the ale is stored in small casks in the open air, exposed to all changes of temperature. I had seen from your previous letters that Younger had no deep storage cellars, but I assumed that this was due to the fact that they were not equipped to brew ale of any importance for export. But that the world-famous and excellent Pale Ale and India Ale from Bass in Burton are treated so nonchalantly - I had no idea of that, and that such a thing can be done is beyond my understanding, for it contradicts everything I have experienced and read about the tendency of wine-like drinks to spoil. There must necessarily be something special that protects this miraculous ale; but what is it?
I'm with Jacobsen senior on this one. Bass Pale Ale was racked into hogsheads, which were then stcked in the brewery yard, open to the elements. I was reluctant to believe this at first, Thinking someone had just misinterpreted empty casks being store in the yard. It's only after I found multiple reputable sources that I believed it.
What was protecting IPA? I think it was Brettanomyces. Which was slowly eating up any remaining sugars. This is also what protected IPA during its long voyage to India. During the year spent in the brewery yard Brettanomyces would have consumed pretty much all remaining sugars. Leaving nothing for anything nasty to eat.
Jacobsen senior then asks some very relevant questions.
Has ale for export to the Indians always been treated in this way? And wasn't Export Ale formerly much stronger than now and, like the strong wines, Port and Madeira, somewhat protected? - Don't you think that at some stage sulphuric acid is added in a very different form? -I have recently read somewhere a note on the use of sulphuric lime as a preservative for beer and wine, but I have never had any confidence in the innumerable recipes for preservatives, etc. and therefore have hitherto neglected this last one.- But now I can't help but think about it and I have let Kogsbølle - who is just as astonished as I am - order a portion of sulphuric lime, with which we would make a few small experiments this spring and test its effect in the following months until next year.- - But all foreign additions are strictly prohibited in England and where beer production is so enormous, the smallest dose of additive would have to amount to a quantum, the acquisition and use of which could not possibly be concealed from the workers and therefore not be kept secret. Be careful, though! - Especially after the main fermentation is over; in the clarification tanks and by the bottling from there into the storage barrels, and by the addition of "dry hops" to these. How are the storage barrels treated to extract the taste of the oak? and how is the bottling of export ale into bottles and kegs? - Are you sure that it is all kinds of ale - also export ale - that in Burton is lying in the open air. By the way, I also do not understand why the ale is allowed to be stored in such small barrels; it is, however, extremely inconvenient and increases the influence of heat. How can carbon dioxide be kept in the beer? - Is not sugar added when bottling for sale to make the beer sparkling? etc, etc, etc.
I wish I knew the answers. When and why did they start ageing IPA in the brewery yard? It seems such a counterintuitive process. And did any other brewers in Burton do the same? It sounds as if it was a general process rather than something limited to just Bass.
I'm pretty well 100% sure than Bass wasn't adding any type of preservative. Heavy hopping and Brettanomyces were enough to protect the beer from infection.
Of course, the storage casks didn't need to be treated as they were made of Memel oak, which wouldn't have imparted any oak flavour.
Why was the beer aged in Hogsheads? Because that was what it was going to be shipped in. Either to UK bottlers or onto ships for export. CO2 wasn't kept in the beer. It was even deliberately flattened before being loaded onto ships. It was given conditioning by a secondary conditioning after bottling. For which, as Jacobsen guesses, sugar was added at bottling time. It would have to be as there was nothing feermentable left in the beer when it arrived in India.
And, yes, both domestic and export IPA was stored out in the yard.
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