Chapman boiling and fermentation in 1880

Moving on to processes.

Starting with boiling. Not that there’s anything very odd about it. For most beers, the first copper was boiled for 90 minutes and the second for 120 minutes. Times which aren’t anything out of the ordinary.

As none of the beers is super strong, it makes sense that there were no extremely long boils. The longest, for the second copper of Stout, was 160 minutes. I wonder if that was to try and darken the weaker wort a little. A dark colour being a bit of a requirement for a Stout.

Pitching times are a little on the low side. All of them, including for the weakest beers, are under 60º F.

The highest temperatures were generally 10º F to 12º F above the pitching temperature. So, generally a bit under 70º F. A pretty standard range of temperatures and pretty dull, really.

I can see from the brewing records that attemperators were used to control the temperature of the fermentation. The attemperators were generally switched on about two days into the fermentation and switched off about two days later.

Here’s a full fermentation record:

It’s interesting that the attemperators were switched off just before the wort hit its maximum temperature. 

Chapman boiling and fermentation in 1880
Beer	Style	boil time (hours)		Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
X	Mild	1.5	2	58.5º F	69.25º F	8
XX	Mild	1.5	2	57º F	67.75º F	8
XXX	Stock Ale	1.5	2	57º F	66.5º F	8
AK	Pale Ale	2.5		58º F	69.25º F
PA	Pale Ale	1.5	2	57º F	68.5º F	5
S	Stout	1.5	2.67	58.5º F	69.5º F	7
Source:
Chapman brewing record.

Chapman 5th Oct 1880 XX fermentation
time (hours)	gravity	temperature
0	1067.9	57º F
13		59.5º F
23.5	1063.7	61.5º F
25	attenuators on
37	1054.8	63.75º F
47.5	1046.0	64.75º F
61	1032.4	66º F
72	1025.2	67º F
76	attenuators off
100	1020.5	67.75º F
107.25	1019.1	67.75º F
157	1015.2
	racked
Source:
Chapman brewing record.