Tuesday, 30 November 2010

Government Ale joke (8)

From Punch, June 1921

"The present draught in Switzerland is the worst for 90 years." Provincial Paper.
Worse than our Government Ale ?
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Government ale = less malt. Malt!? I have a question about that! :) Did you find anything concerning the evolution of brown malt? From the ancient smoked malt, that the brewer were able to use at 100% of the grist, to the modern one (Fawcett's style?)
When it's written brown malt in old recipe, is it possible to know which type was used? Also, the modern one is more coloured, more kilned, so the impact on the color is important.

30 November 2010 at 14:29
Ron Pattinson said...

ealusceop, there have been many types of brown malt over time. Sometimes simultaneously. It varied from maltster to maltster and some breweries had their own individual specs.

My guess is (and this is just a guess) that the method of manufacturing brown malt changed in the late 18th century. If they hadn't, surely they couldn't have got the right colour when they started using half pale malt. And, of course, the older brown malt was diastatic.

The best you can do is guess as to the exact nature of the brown malt in old recipes. It's probably even worse with amber malt, which seems to have filled tghe whole space between pale and brown.

1 December 2010 at 05:00

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