Brewing IPA in 1839

More half-written stuff from my book. I hope I'm noting boring you too much with it.

I want to run through the mashing scheme of an IPA brewed by Reid in 1839. The brewing log is easier to understand than many, so it's a good one to look at more closely.

The ingredients were about as simple as you can get: 100 quarters of Hertfordshire white malt and 2660 pounds of 1838 East Kent hops. The hopping rate was 5.88 pounds per barrel and the OG 1057º.

Here's the mashing details:


The first column shows the number of barrels of water, the second their temperature. The third column is the temperature of the wort when drawn off. Time is pretty self-explanatory - the number of minutes the operation took. The Final column ids headed "How worked" in the original. I'm pretty sure M stands for mash and S for sparge.

To summarise, there were two mashes of 90 and 60 minutes, the first with a striking heat of 172º F, the seconds at 190º F. Then were two sparges which were left to rest in the grains for 40 and 15 minutes at tempertures of 186º F and 175º F. The next sparge was with the taps open, using water at 150º F. There was a final sparge, again with the taps open, using cold water.

Is that a strange way to mash? It certainly sounds quite fiddly.

Next are the boiling details:


The first column shows the gravity of the worts collected from the mash tun, in pounds per barrel. In SG, they are 1094.18, 1047.09, 1018.01. Column 2 has the wort volume in barrels. Columns 3 and 4 I think show the details at the end of the boil. Time boiled is pretty obvious. You'll note that the weaker worts were boiled much longer, presumably to boost their gravity.

The final 3 columns are the details of the worts in the fermenter (square). There the three worts a re blended to produce a combined wort of 20.5 pounds per barrel, or 1057º.

Below is a scan of the original log.