As this comes from one of the detailed pilot brewery records, I’ve exact details about the process. Which is always nice. But let’s kick off with the grist.
Many of the elements are the same as in their dark Lagers: caramel mout, kleur mout and “donker”, which I assume means dark Munich malt. Though there’s quite a bit more roasted malt than you’d find in the Lagers. There’s also a bit of sugar which was added in the copper. I’ve no idea what it specifically was. But I do know that they had played around with CDM (caramelised malto-dextrose) so I’ve plumped for something dark, in the form of No. 3 invert.
There was just a single type of hops: Saaz from the 1953 harvest. Quite a lot of them. And, unlike with their Lagers, more were added at the start of the boil rather than at the end.
The beer was lagered for three weeks. In the tank there was a bag with half a kilo of hops per hectolitre. Which is an awful lot. More than I can recall ever seeing in a British Stout.
I’m pretty sure this was marketed as van Vollenhoven’s Stout. A beer originally produced by one of Heineken’s Amsterdam rivals which they took over and closed in the 1940s.
| 1956 Heineken Stout | ||
| Munich malt 20 L | 6.50 lb | 40.00% |
| pilsner malt | 3.50 lb | 21.54% |
| crystal malt 60 L | 3.75 lb | 23.08% |
| carafa III | 1.00 lb | 6.15% |
| No. 3 invert sugar | 1.50 lb | 9.23% |
| Saaz 150 mins | 2.50 oz | |
| Saaz 90 mins | 1.75 oz | |
| Saaz 30 mins | 1.50 oz | |
| Saaz dry hops | 4.00 oz | |
| OG | 1073 | |
| FG | 1018 | |
| ABV | 7.28 | |
| Apparent attenuation | 75.34% | |
| IBU | 56 | |
| SRM | 45 | |
| Mash at | 122º F | |
| Raise to | 154º F | |
| Sparge at | 167º F | |
| Boil time | 150 minutes | |
| pitching temp | 54º F | |
| Yeast | Wyeast 1099 Whitbread ale | |
Van Vollenhoven's stout was one of the big export beers, starting from at least 1870: it was sent to the Dutch East Indies and Suriname, and also to South Africa during the Boer War. It was Amstel that continued to brew the stout after the 1941 take-over. Accrding to Nell Westerlaken ("De opmars van Van Vollenhoven's Extra Stout" (The advance of Van Vollenhoven's Extra Stout), De Volkskrant, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Tuesday May 16 2017) Heineken brewed it at its ’s-Hertogenbosch plant as a 6 or 6.5 per cent abv bottom-fermented beer. Heineken dropped it in 2003, but as I don't need to tell you, Ron, Van Vollenhoven's Extra Stout is now being brewed by the Poesiat & Kater brewery in Amsterdam, which opened in 2017, as a 7.1 per cent abv top-fermented beer
ReplyDeleteThis sounds very interesting. Do you have any more specifics on the dry hopping -- when they went in, how long they were there?
ReplyDeleteI am amazed they achieved 75% apparent attenuation using a grist that is 23% medium crystal malt.
ReplyDelete