Thursday 13 January 2011

Brewing Whitbread Porter the old-fashioned way

After my recent posts about early-20th 19th century Whitbread Porter, Tim Connelly got in touch asking for more details. He wanted to brew one.

I'm always happy to promote the brewing of historic beers. Especially Porter. Tim wanted to do it the proper way. Replicating the original multi-mash scheme. Which is what he did, despite the massive amount of extra work compared to a single infusion and sparge.

You can read more about his brewday here.

10 comments:

Gary Gillman said...

Very interesting and I hope some taste notes will come when the brew is deemed ready to drink. In particular, can any conclusions be drawn re the mashing scheme? Does it make a difference to the palate, if so how?

Gary

Rob Sterowski said...

You've never actually posted a Let's Brew recipe for 19th century IPA. That would be quite handy to point people at who might otherwise get some supposedly "authentic" recipe off a homebrew site and make an 8% beer with Cascades. Is something like that in the works?

Ed said...

Very interesting to see the efficiency.

Tim said...

Ron, thanks for the link.

Gary, the effect of the mash is something Ron and I had discussed. The one conclusion so far is that the mash results in fantastic efficiency. Final tasting notes will come eventually. The wort was toast on the cusp of burnt and a bit of licorice.

Jeff Renner said...

Do you mean early 19th century (1808) rather than early 20th century?

Arctic Alchemy said...

Hey Barm,

I did the 1839 IPA on 19th century equipment here:
http://arcticalchemy.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/historic-brewday-424-1839-recipe/

IPA's in general from the 19th century tend to be a single malt and single hop variety [SMASH] in my experience,at least this is true here, and several 19th century Allsopp's recipe I have from that period.

This recipe was not featured by LBW and Kristen, but the mash routine was well laid out as well as the grist in the post here:
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2008/09/brewing-ipa-in-1839.html

Brewing on the open fire imparts flavors (peet-smoke)unlike a brewery in the time, but then again pretty authentic from what a re-creator could accomplish, and similar to what brewing at home might have been like. 1.057 and home grown EKG's where used , taste was fantastic , as many of these simple recipes flesh out.

Ron Pattinson said...

Jeff, er, yes.

Kristen England said...

Its nice to see people actually trying this stuff that we are doing. Some of these recipes really are helped by the gyle to get very specific different beers. Others, not so much.

Great work guys!

Anonymous said...

On cask now at the Albion brewing company, in Joliette, Québec: A modern Porter, gravity dispense, from a Quebec-oak cask (like Guinness used to have, it seems :) Very happy to have stumbled on this blog one day of 2009!

Gary Gillman said...

When I grew up in Montreal, you could still see grocery store signs reading Ale and Porter. (I think earlier I once said here that they read Beer and Porter but on further reflection, I think it was Ale and Porter when rendered in English. However, in French, the signs would have read Biere et Porter).

But there was very little Canadian porter in the stores, I recall Porter Champlain which had a sweet licorice taste and darkish head, and that was it. Finally, craft breweries arrived and you would see the odd stout or porter in Montreal again. It is good to hear that a cask porter is once again available in Quebec Province, and this revives a 19th century practice to be sure.

How did you approach the mash bill and hopping for your beer, Ealusceop?

Gary