tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5445569787371915337.post2194220649608184924..comments2024-03-28T06:20:10.699-07:00Comments on Shut up about Barclay Perkins: Malting in Scotland in the early 19th centuryRon Pattinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03095189986589865751noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5445569787371915337.post-19626660446242227862011-10-16T18:32:32.364-07:002011-10-16T18:32:32.364-07:00Right, but the question for me is, why are some tr...Right, but the question for me is, why are some traditional Scots brewers putting roast barley into (some of) their beers? <br /><br />It can't be for colour only, since there are ways to do that without imparting peat-like notes. <br /><br />They aren't making porter. <br /><br />And they weren't, in 1978 certainly when Jim Robertson was writing (or today IMO) being affected by U.S. craft brewery developments.<br /><br />And so...<br /><br />GaryGary Gillmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5445569787371915337.post-1402306841884176562011-10-13T14:24:09.925-07:002011-10-13T14:24:09.925-07:00We might actually be getting somewhere if the trut...We might actually be getting somewhere if the truth turns out to be that some people think roast barley tastes of peat.Rob Sterowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07870233673933087794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5445569787371915337.post-80986523692350385882011-10-12T19:34:41.863-07:002011-10-12T19:34:41.863-07:00Ron, I looked up Jackson. In the pocket guides (I...Ron, I looked up Jackson. In the pocket guides (I consulted two editions from the 80's) he never mentions smokiness or peaty quality except for Borve, a new-generation brewpub. But because it is not an old-established concern, Michael's opinion of a smoky taste is less relevant for the question under review, IMO.<br /><br />In Michael Jackson's Beer Companion (1993), ditto no reference to smokiness (but always maltiness, nutty quality and similar expressions) - except once. For McEwan, interestingly enough. He writes, "The flagship ales are characteristically Scottish, with some maltiness, and a hint of roasted barley that is reminiscent of peat...". <br /><br />As I read this, he is saying roasted (unmalted) barley was used in the mash and caused a roasty/peaty taste, the one I recall from its export beers from this period and earlier. <br /><br />I'd think Belhaven's smoky quality had (has?) a similar origin although I don't know for certain. Jackson doesn't mention smokiness in its regard though. Still, I feel it is in the same category.<br /><br />Even if this is down to one brewery, Jackson noticed what Jim Roberston had 15 years earlier.<br /><br />It's not much perhaps on which to trace vestige of a tradition, but I think it's something.<br /><br />GaryGary Gillmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5445569787371915337.post-27812306544048986602011-10-12T12:57:28.594-07:002011-10-12T12:57:28.594-07:00Yes, to be sure, but some tasters in the U.K. dete...Yes, to be sure, but some tasters in the U.K. detect peaty notes in some Scottish beer. Here, a gent from Sutton-on-Sea gives St. Andrews an A and notes its "malty, peaty smell".<br /><br />http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/148/1164/?view=beer&sort=latest&start=10<br /><br />I find his review dead on, it's just how I recall this beer. <br /><br />If you look at Caledonian 80 reviews on the same site, a Glasgow taster notes "some sort smoky taste". Numerous other reviewers, from all over, use similar terms. But many mentioned no smokiness.<br /><br />When it comes to palate, one has to agree to disagree since everyone has their way to look at it.<br /><br />GaryGary Gillmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5445569787371915337.post-31997943238615861072011-10-12T07:39:19.380-07:002011-10-12T07:39:19.380-07:00Gary, none of the British people I've spoken t...Gary, none of the British people I've spoken to or who have commented here have ever noticed a smoky taste in Scottish beer.<br /><br />The beer that made Scotland famous didn't come from tiny breweries in the countryside, but from Alloa and Edinburgh. They made their own malt well into the 20th century. And the majority of the barley had never even been in the Scottish countryside: it came either from England or abroad.<br /><br />It wasn't straight coal but coke - which produces minimal smoke - that was used in malt kilns. And if that did produce a smoky taste, why wasn't Burton Pale Ale smoky? They malted the same way.<br /><br />William Younger used the same malt in all their beers - Pale Ales, Mild Ales and Strong Ales. Either they would all be smoky or none would be.Ron Pattinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03095189986589865751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5445569787371915337.post-78126528179359479492011-10-12T05:47:58.890-07:002011-10-12T05:47:58.890-07:00My belief, at this stage (1830's) of the histo...My belief, at this stage (1830's) of the history of British malting, is that commercial malting operations - non-artisan scale - would generally have used some form of coal to dry the malt. This extract doesn't prove that since it refers to neither coal nor peat for malting operations, but taking all with all it's fair to conclude that I think. <br /><br />Even where breweries continued to malt their own grain, you would have to be a certain size to be noticed by government and called before committee to testify. Just as peat use died out in Ireland in connection with whiskey, it did so too in Scotland except amongst some distilleries in the Highlands. It was a long-term trend in other words.<br /><br />That peat was used and indeed prized in the later 1600's for preparing malt for Scotch ale is shown from the Royal Society publication I've mentioned earlier, but there is an historical arc and I think it pretty much died out by the 1800's.<br /><br />Did it survive here and there, amongst some brewers, or for some specialties in their line? I think it did, possibly, or an allied taste did. At least one mid-1800's observer found Scotch ale, bought in New York, to be "smoky" (I gave the link in a comment here in 2009, from Dickens Household Words). It's possible that small quantities of peated malt were used for some versions of Scotch ale, so small not to be noticed by maltsters manuals or mentioned to Parliamentary committees.<br /><br />We must remember too that coal in kilning took many forms, as William H. Ford noted in the 1860's in his history of malting and brewing. There was as he recounts, stone coal, coke, ring-coal, "peat-coal" (which he though the best, a processed form newly patented) and other forms which varied in their sulphur content and smoke-producing nature. <br /><br />I myself once had the good fortune to taste some blended Scotch from the 1930's in which there was an obvious "smoky" scent, the smell reminded me of the coal shed of my grandmother's house in Montreal in the 1950's. Coal can produce smoky tastes too, in other words, and I believe much 1800's beer was far smokier in taste than today's. <br /><br />That something of this old taste has survived in the lines of some Scottish brewers seems likely to me whether produced today by peat, coal or (probably) more modern kilning methods. <br /><br />However produced, a smokiness in one Scotch ale was a taste noticed as unusual - likened to bacon - by the American beer author Jim Robertson in the 1970's, a flavour I remember myself and one that is un-English in my experience just as the Belhaven's St. Andrews as I recall it 10 years ago was not an English taste in my experience again. Bacon is a term often used to describe German Rauch Bier...<br /><br />I'll have to dig out Michael Jackson's taste notes on Scotch ales from the 1980's. He had a fine palate and must have noticed something similar here and there: I'll check.<br /><br />GaryGary Gillmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5445569787371915337.post-19104322774559907422011-10-12T00:56:25.478-07:002011-10-12T00:56:25.478-07:00Ron, as you say, shipping was the cheapest and eas...Ron, as you say, shipping was the cheapest and easiest way of transporting goods and the "hops don't grow in Scotland" argument does look flimsy.Particularly as there was once a Scottish hop growing industry anyway!<br /> So much that's written about Scottish beer seems to have been the result of assumption.Such as the "cooler climate"-meteorological records show that Edinburgh and Burton have almost identical year round temperatures.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com