Eldridge Pope mashing scheme 1896

The fermenting room at Eldridge Pope in the 1890s.

I thought some of you might be interested in a typical Eldridge Pope mashing scheme to go along with all the recipes of theirs I've been publishing.

For the 19th century, it's not that complicated a procedure. It's a typical example of what I would call an underlet mash. A mashing system that was incredibly popular in England. Not so much in Scotland, where most brewers seem to have gone for a single infusion, followed by a couple of sparges.

In an underlet mash, there's an initial infusion, followed 15 to 20 minutes later by the addition of a relatively small amount of hotter water from the bottom of the tun. Using an entrance called an underlet. The internal rakes would then be spun a couple of times to mix the hotter water evenly through the mash. Raising the temperature of the mash by a few degrees. The mash was then left to stand for a couple of hours.

In essence it was a simple type of step mash. The only slight downside was that you needed to have internal rakes in your mash tun. Which most breweries, where Steel's mashers were installed, didn't really need otherwise.

Admittedly, the table below would be more useful for anyone trying to recreate it if the initial heats were given. Let me know if you give it a try.

Eldridge Pope XX and PA mashing scheme 15th April 1896
operation	barrels water	strike heat	tap heat	time stood (minutes)
mash	72	161º F		17
underlet	5	190º F	152º F	147
sparge 1	62	170º F	156º F
sparge 2	61	160º F
Source:
Eldridge Pope brewing record held at the Dorset History Centre.