Jacobsen senior was keen on finding out more about mashing in the UK and the composition of the worts it generated.
Kogsbølle, as often as he has time to spare, is busy with analyses of the ratio between sugar and gum in the wort. I would be very happy to carry out these analyses with wort of Scotch ale and Burton ale, in order to learn the result of the English mashing and malting in this respect. I suppose that the wort had to be allowed to come here with a suitable addition of alcohol to prevent spoilage along the way, but I will have to discuss that with Kogsbølle. Have I asked you whether you have tried the first wort that runs in the Younger kettle with iodine? Since the temperature is so low during the mashing, one might imagine that there was some unaltered starch in the wort at the beginning.
Kogsbølle, I assume, worked at Carlsberg. I guess you'd have to add quite a bit of alcohol to wort to preserve long enough to get from Edinburgh to Copenhagen. Otherwise, it would inevitably start to ferment, either with yeast or something else. Would it still be possible to analyse the wort ignoring the alcohol? Would the alcohol change the wort at all?
I find the comments about a low mashing temperature at William Younger a bit strange. The temperatures look totally normal to me. Looking at brews from August 1868, these are the temperatures.
Strike heat: 170º F
1st falling heat: 150º F
1st sparge: 190º F
2nd sparge: 185º F
2nd falling heat: 156º F
3rd falling heat: 166º F
The first falling heat is the temperature of the wort after mashing and standing for two hours. Meaning that the initial mashing heat was higher than 150º. Which seems totally normal to me. And I'm sure sufficiently high to convert all the starch after two hours. What sort of mashing temperature was Jacobsen senior expecting.
Let's take a look at what Jacobsen junior did when he returned to Copenhagen and had his own brewery. This was a brew in 1871.
Strike heat: 70º C (158º F)
1st sparge: 80º C (176º F)
That doesn't look any hotter than the mashing at Younger.
Not quite sure what he means here.
It is strange that in England so little or no importance is attached to letting the hop wort stand on the trays and clear itself, for although you get a complete clarification of the hot wort in the hop vat, you still get a not inconsiderable sediment when it cools, which the English run into the fermentation vat. - I do not like this.
By "tray" does he mean cooler? Because I thought that this is exactly why UK breweries kept their coolers even after installing baudelot coolers. On account of the "cooler sludge" that fell out.
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I suppose if you added enough alcohol to bring the mixture up to say 20%, then on arrival evaporated the alcohol again, it would be close enough to the original for certain lab analyses. No idea what they were actually doing.
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