Brew Day: Nineteenth Century IPA v.2

The recipes inspired by De Ranke XX Bitter described in the last post weren't the only reason I had my eye out for some fresh whole-leaf hops this year.  The IPA in the photo opposite, based on a nineteenth century, is one of my favourite home-brews from the last few years, and I've been thinking about a re-brew since I opened my first bottle at the end of the summer.  Of course, in keeping with the tradition, I had to wait for the new season's hops, which seem to arrive in the US almost six months after they were picked!

I decided to use whole leaf hops this time, both because I presume that was what the Burton brewers used, and because I hoped they might have a freshness that would have been lost in the pelletizing process.  This is certainly what the brewers at De Ranke think: in the article I linked to in my last post, Nino says "By using only hop flowers, we ensure the hop oils are never oxidised so we never get any harsh bitterness in our beers".  I used pellets in the first version of the beer, which had a distinctive mouthfeel that I associate with large volumes of kettle hops, so I'm hoping I'll only improve things by switching to leaf rather than pellet hops.

Of course, using whole hops in the brewery presents a number of challenges, which are conveniently listed on the De Ranke website:

• When the quality of this expensive material drops, it can lead to off-flavours in the beer, which is why we work closely with a local hop farmer to ensure we always get hops that meet our high standards.
• The annual price fluctuates and depends on the harvest.
• The hops must be refrigerated to maintain quality all year long (which makes them even more expensive)
• Hops can only be bought once a year, just after harvest. It requires good planning for the entire brewing season to avoid hop shortage or surplus.
• Whole-leaf hops require lots of cleaning at the brewery. Hop cones tend to stick to everything during the boiling of the wort, which results in more work for the brewers because the hops must be manually removed, as opposed to breweries that use hop pellets or extracts, which requires far less work to remove.

This fits my experience: whole hops are messy, they take up a lot of space in the freezer, soak up a lot of beer, and make siphoning an absolute nightmare if you don't have some kind of filter or false bottom in place.  And as you can see below, these old IPA recipes use a lot of hops...

I brewed a series of beers with these hops (including the De Ranke-inspired beers from the last post, and some others that post about later), and I gradually learnt how to adjust my brew day to accommodate them.  The biggest problem is the sheer volume of hop matter in the kettle, especially when (as with these recipes) you're using an exorbitant amount of hops to begin with.  I deliberately brewed a whole gallon of extra beer, in anticipation of leaving a lot behind with the hops in the kettle.  (Even when I used pellet hops last year, I lost some volume in the IPA batch because I didn't make adjustments.)

The other problem is racking from the kettle.  If you have a fancy kettle, with a ball-valve, screen, or even false-bottom, it might not be an issue.  I rack with an auto-siphon, which quickly gets clogged by the whole hops, even if I cover the end with some kind of filter.  This meant that I had to pour the wort manually from the kettle, which is neither safe nor particularly sanitary (since I inevitably end up making a mess).  Frankly, its the kind of dumb s#@t I used to do when I first started brewing, and which I swore off entirely after having surgery to fix an inguinal hernia a few years ago.  Still, here I was again, precariously balanced with a heavy kettle as wort splashed off the whole hops over the kitchen floor.  No fun at all.

Since I get a lot of trub from my BIAB process, I generally like to whirlpool and leave a good amount of wort in the kettle.  Obviously, pouring the whole thing makes this impossible, so instead of doing a whirlpool I poured the wort into a keg as soon as it had cooled, then let this sit for a while until the trub and hop matter had dropped out of suspension.  At this point, I racked the much cleaner wort into the final fermentation vessel, oxygenated, and pitched the yeast.

Anyway, back to the beer itself.  Besides changing to whole hops, I didn't make any real modifications from the recipe I linked to above: 100% pilsner malt, elevated levels of sulphate (though not quite to the levels reported for historic Burton waters).  This time I pitched Wyeast 1318 for the primary fermentation, and the dregs from a beer fermented with Wyeast Brettanomyces Clausenii for the secondary. 

Last time the beer was all but undrinkable for the better part of eight months, so I'm not expecting to be drinking it any time soon.  I'm hoping the whole hops will soften the bitterness slightly, which might mean I'm drinking this one earlier than the previous version.  For now, its sitting in a carboy in my brew closet.

Bière de Coupage: Some Background and History

This is the first in a series of posts about bière de coupage (previous posts on the subject can be found here).  In this first post I'll be looking at some of the background and history behind the idea of bière de coupage, focusing in particular on some of what I've learnt from going through some old French brewing texts, particularly Auguste Laurent's 1871 monograph Livre de poche de l'appreteur de bieres en France et en Belgique: Coupages et Melanges, and Georges Lacambre's 1851 treatise on brewing and distilling.  My aim in working through these texts was to find out a bit more about the practice of blending lambic or other kinds of aged beer with younger beers such as saisons, a practice that is described by Yvan de Baets in his essay on the history of saison, and that survives today in beers like Birra Del Borgo's Duchessic, De Ranke's Cuvee De Ranke, or Jester King's Das Wunderkind.   The second post in this series will look at those beers, along with other contemporary examples of bière de coupage, and include information about the processes and practices employed by brewers making them.  The remaining posts in the series will be about my own experiences making bières de coupage at home.

Two quick notes before I begin this post.  First, my reading knowledge of French is shaky at best.  Knowing a bit about brewing helped, but there were times when I could not work out what was going on, even with the help of an online translator.  I've tried to only include information I was fairly certain about, but I may still have made mistakes.  Second, the texts I am relying on are among Yvan de Baets' sources for his essay, and when I contacted Yvan for help in locating these texts, and he warned me that Laurent's text in particular was often contradictory and unreliable.  Yvan himself put a great deal of research into that chapter of Farmhouse Ales, sifting through what scant and scattered evidence there is about French and Belgian farmhouse brewing to form a general picture that allowed him to assess the veracity of particular sources.  I haven't done a fraction of that work, so I am not in a position to make the same kind of judgements.  Again, I've tried to keep that in mind when repeating claims made by Laurent and others.

So what is bière de coupage?  When the name shows up in the historical literature, it works by a sort of metonymy, serving as the name for any beer that was made with a particular process (in this case, blending).  The same is true of bière de garde, which doesn't really refer to a distinct style of beer in the way we might think of it, but to any beer intended for long term storage.  Laurent will happily use the phrase bière de garde in comparing beers from Northern France and Bavaria, in a context where it is clear that the beers in question were very different. (Of course, bière de gardes from a particular regions might all bear certain stylistic similarities to each other.)  So just as a bière de garde is a beer that underwent some ageing before sale, we might think of bière de coupage as a name for beer that was blended at some point before it was sold.  In this sense, the name is appropriate for many diverse 'styles' of beer, including the lambics of the Pajottenland, the red and brown ales of Flanders, and the historic porters made in London.  Recently people (including me) have started using the phrase to refer to saisons made by blending aged sour beer with  younger beer, a characterization that can be stretched to fit most (though not all) of the commercial lambic/non-lambic blends listed here.  These certainly fit the broader category of bières de coupage, but (as with all things saison) there is very little information about such beers in the historical brewing literature.  Lacambre, Laurent, and the other authors I looked at are all concerned with industrial brewing.  As Yvan de Baets put it, "no-one among the scholars at that time cared for a beer made by farmers".

However, that doesn't mean that we can't learn anything interesting from looking at when and why historical brewers relied on blending.  There is at least some chance that the kinds of beer brewed at commercial breweries in Belgium and Northern France grew out of local farmhouse traditions, and modern brewers who blend lambic in with their non-lambic beers are following a tradition of industrial brewing that goes back to the beers described by Laurent and co.  When I asked Nino Bacelle from De Ranke about the historical background to their Cuvee De Ranke, he mentioned the practices of 18th century porter brewers, along with the blending traditions that survive in Belgium: lambics in the Pajottenland, and the red and brown ales like Rodenbach from Roeselare/Kortrijk, or Liefmans from Oudenaarde.

Coupage, then, refers to a process of blending.  In the best case, this is a matter of blending aged beer with younger beer, but historically at least the idea of 'blending' also covered the use of sugar syrups and acids such as tartaric or even vinegar to modify the flavour profile of a beer. Laurent covers all of this.  Again, in the best case the aged beer was intended for ageing and lacking any pronounced flaws, though the practice of cutting beers was disreputable in some circles, since brewers would use it as a way to get rid of bad stock or old beers returned by vendors.  Although Laurent emphasizes the fact that blending is uncontroversial and expected in many places, he still feels a need to spend a good portion of his book defending it.

Whatever the historical origins of this practice, it was perfected on a large scale by the porter brewers of London in the 18th and 19th centuries.  The quality of this beer came from long-term ageing in large oak vats, where it would undergo a secondary fermentation that we now know would have involved both brettanomyces and lactic-acid producing bacteria.  The result was a tart, vinous beer, often blended at serving with younger beer according to the customers' preferences.  Interestingly, while the practice died out in England towards the end of the nineteenth century, it seems to have persisted for some time in Ireland, to the point where English brewers were again considering ageing a portion of their beers to imitate the Irish taste.

I don't think anyone really knows the original connection between the porter brewers of England and the red and brown sour ales of Belgium.  Alexander Rodenbach certainly spent some time in English breweries, and the story of him taking the practice of 'vatting' ales back to Belgium with him is an enjoyable one, though I suspect the tradition of brewing such beers predated his innovations.  (One thing he might have learnt in England was the superior quality of beers aged in large vats as opposed to small casks, something English brewers understood to be one of the most important technical developments in brewing porter.)  Whatever the truth of that story, by the time Lacambre and Laurent were writing their treatises in the late 19th century, blending of old and young beer was a common (though occasionally disreputable) practice.  Describing barley beers from the regions around Antwerp, Lacambre states that they age well for several years, and are rarely consumed pure "because we are in the habit, as is the practice with so many beers in Belgium, of cutting them with beers of the same type that are younger and fresher". (p.305)  He says the same thing about double uytzet, a bière de garde brewed in the region around Flanders.

In his treatise on blending, Laurent tends to focus on lambic, bière de mars, and faro from the Pajottenland. This is unsurprising, since part of his purpose is  to recommend the practice of blending to brewers who are leery of it, and one way he does this is by showing is that it is uncontroversially part of certain brewing cultures.  He opens his book by describing the mix of brewers and blenders to be found around Brussels, and returns repeatedly to the production of faro from lambic and bière de mars as a good example of what can be achieved by blending.

One reason Laurent uses faro as his example is that there seem to have been different approaches to its production.  The beer itself was a blend of lambic and bière de mars, both typically products of the same mash, with the wort for lambic consisting of the first runnings, and the wort for biere de mars coming from the last.  Laurent describes various approaches to making faro: some brewers seem to have blended the worts prior to fermentation, while others let them ferment separately and then recombined them in a single tank.  Much more common was the practice employed by merchants who purchased lambic for resale: blending the two beers prior to serving, or in the glass, typically using younger bière de mars and sugar syrup as well.  Laurent describes how different establishments would each have their own distinct version of such beers, made using blending ratios that were a carefully guarded secret.

The picture that emerges from Laurent's descriptions of Lambic culture around Brussels involves a mix of both breweries and independent merchants who purchased lambic from the brewers.  Laurent suggests that the latter had various financial advantages over the lambic breweries, since they did not have to invest capital in a brewhouse system.  There is no explicit mention of these merchants blending lambic with other kinds of beer besides bière de mars, though Laurent does mention in passing an old practice of blending in some brown beer, or beer boiled with lime, to give colour to lambic (though he also suggests that the latter was considered bad practice by the time he was writing).  But at the very least we know that lambic was sold and purchased for the purpose of blending, so it is presumably at least possible that these merchants purchased and blended in other kinds of beer as well.

This brings us to the primary motivation behind blending: achieving a particular flavour profile that will be pleasing to the consumer.  This is the virtue Laurent stresses most frequently when describing the process.  In fact, for me, the most interesting parts of his book were where he described the distinctive taste desired by drinkers in northern France and Belgium: la vinosité.  This is partly a matter of the aromas of aged beer (particularly, I would suspect, those that are produced by brettanomyces), but Laurent also describes it as a certain kind of balance, with a bitterness that does not dominate the beer, and a slight tartness that does not undermine its overall quality.  In fact Laurent states more than once that a touch of acidity was both desirable and expected in both bières du Nord and faro.

Obviously if you're aiming for a delicate balance of bitterness and acidity, its going to be easier to produce a consistent product if you have various beers available for blending, and this is exactly how Laurent describes the brewers of bière du Nord vineuse.   A bière de garde that has become tart can be blended with a younger beer, the latter providing a mellowness that complements the aromas and acidity of its older counterpart, while also aiding in head retention and carbonation.  It is interesting to see Laurent also emphasize that while an acid beer can be an excellent component for coupage, one should not use beer that is too acetic or otherwise marked by poor fermentation.

Laurent points out other virtues of blending as well.  One thing that comes up repeatedly in most brewing books I've looked at from this period is the way in which the seasons affected what the brewer could produce.  Summer in particular seems to have been a difficult time to make good beer.  One practice that Laurent recommends, apparently common in brewers of 'ordinary brown beers' around France and Belgium, is blending some aged beer in with the newly fermenting wort in the summer.  English brewers did something along the same lines, calling it 'breaking in'.  This helped the beer along its way, presumably staving off less desirable organisms as the populations from the older beer took control.

In fact, the planned time between blending and consumption would sometimes dictate the proportions of the blend.  Laurent suggests that porter brewed in spring and intended for consumption that summer was blended differently from porter intended for longer ageing, though from what I can understand the proportions he describes in both cases are the same, one part old beer to three parts young, or 9 gallons of old in a 36 gallon barrel.

Laurent states a preference for beers blended and allowed to referment prior to consumption, since it allows the qualities of the various beers to meld with each other, but he also spends some time describing beers that were blended at serving.  As I mentioned above, this was common with porter and some versions of faro, but Laurent also mentions a drink he calls half-en-half, a blend of equal parts lambic and faro, or in England, porter and ale (apparently in 1930s America 'half and half' referred to a blend of stock ale and pilsner.).  Dave Janssen tells me that Jean van Roy served him a half-en-half of Rose de Gambrinus and Fou Foune at Cantillon, so clearly the practice survives today.

In general, then, coupage is just blending, but typically refers to a once common practice of blending old and young beers together, the aim of which was to combine the best characteristics of each beer, particularly the tartness and aromatic complexity of an aged ale, and the mellow smoothness and improved head retention of a younger beer.  Bière de coupage is a handy name for any beer made in this way, and would be particularly appropriate for any beer whose character depended on the combination of features of old and young beer.  Nothing I've written in this post pertains solely to the combination of saison and lambic/sour beer in particular, and none of the authors I looked at discuss anything in these terms.  However, it should be clear that if one's aim were to achieve a combination of the properties of lambic and young saison, the general considerations outlined by these authors would apply in this case too. Moreover, Laurent's description of the vinous profile associated with the beers of northern France and Belgium suggests that such a combination would have been desirable to brewers and consumers in this region, and his description of the culture around Brussels makes it clear that it was possible to purchase lambic for the purpose of such blending.

In the next post in this series, I'll be looking at contemporary beers made in this way, including some details of the brewing process employed by their producers.  The remaining posts in the series will focus on brewing bières de coupage as a homebrewer.

Tasting Notes: English Ales with Brettanomyces

Here are some short tasting notes about some of the British stock ales I made last year.  I've made links to the original posts, which included recipe details and historical background.  All three were aged with brettanomyces clausenii.

As you can see, I've decided to stop using the appearance/aroma/taste etc. breakdown for tasting notes, since I don't find it a very natural way to write or think about my beers.  In future I'll be writing down my own overall impressions, but also including any notes I get from friends/fellow homebrewers/competition judges.

IPA

Based loosely on recipes for nineteenth century IPAs.  For a long time (i.e. the better part of a year) this beer was almost undrinkable.  The combination of massive amounts of hops with elevated sulfate levels gave it a rough and soapy bitterness that was not at all pleasant.  I was worried it was never going to turn a corner, but I'm happy to say that its really come together in the past few months, to the point where I'd say it is probably one of my favourite homebrews I've made.  That's not to say its not still incredibly bitter, because it is, but the edges are much smoother and the soapiness has becoming a more subdued minerality.  Combine that with a soft, barnyard funk from the brettanomyces, and the overall impression is something like a cross between De Ranke XX Bitter and Orval.

I find the brettanomyces aromas quite pleasant, and I'm usually quite leery of beers that have a lot of brett-related phenolics. On sipping, the beer is sweet for a second but then bitterness and minerality wash over your tongue.  Its very dry, but with same slightly fuller mouthfeel as De Ranke, which I associate with the use of large volumes of hops.  I am excited about this beer, but I can imagine that it wouldn't be to a lot of people's tastes (which is fine by me, because I don't have many bottles and I don't plan on sharing them).  I will be making another batch for next year, and also trying similar hopping-rates and extended ageing in a beer fermented with saison yeast.

Stock Ale

This was based on an 1887 recipe for Fullers XXK in Ron Pattinson's book.  Its been in bottles for a while now, but I haven't been enjoying the beer very much at all, though I can't point to any glaring flaws.  The aroma is interesting: a mix of shoe leather, some plastic, cherries or maybe even a bit of strawberry.  I can see the whole thing becoming increasingly sherry-like as it ages, as it has that slightly sweet oxidative character.  The taste is very slightly tart, and a bit astringent, with some alcohol warmth as it goes down and around the sides of the tongue.  I think the biggest problem is that the mouthfeel is a little thin, which means that the mid-palate is really lacking.  I can see this beer being a great way to add a bit of complexity to a younger, more full-bodied beer, but by itself it is a little insipid.  I didn't finish my glass, which at least meant it was still around for me to take another photo next morning when the light gave a better indication of its colour.

Stale Porter

This beer was also based loosely on a recipe from Ron's book, this time for an 1831 Keeping Porter.  I wrote some earlier tasting notes here.  Since then, the beer has smoothed out quite a bit.  By itself it is slightly tart and vinous, with aromas of berries, bread, and chocolate.  Quite unique.  The body is thin, which again makes the beer by itself underwhelming, but where it really shines is in blending at serving with a younger, fuller beer.  I blended the last few centimetres in my glass with an imperial brown porter brewed by a fellow homebrewer, where it provided a light and tingling acidity that completely changed the finish of the bigger beer.  In a side by side comparison, it was also surprisingly noticeable in the aroma.  From now on I'll be drinking most of this in blends made at serving.  The small 187ml bottles are great for that purpose, I just need to find time to brew a Running Porter for the blending.

Tasting Notes: 1831 Truman Keeping Porter

Last year, as part of my ongoing efforts to make beers inspired by historical English stock ales, I brewed a Nineteenth Century Keeping Porter based on a recipe for an 1831 Truman beer taken from Ron Pattinson's excellent Home Brewer's Guide to Vintage Beer.  After undergoing an extended secondary fermentation by lactobacillus and brettanomyces clausenii, its been sitting in bottles for about a month. I haven't tried it since packaging because I don't have a Running Porter to blend it with.  I'll brew one as soon I start up again after the summer---essentially the same recipe, with a smaller amount of hops---but in the meantime I thought I might write some tasting notes with the help of a commercial beer.  Although there isn't much on the shelves that is likely to come close to the Nineteenth Century versions of these beers, a bottle of Samuel Smith's Famous Taddy Porter caught my eye.  No doubt well past its best at this point, but it was on sale and seemed like a good choice for blending.

I won't bother writing tasting notes for the Sam Smith's beer.  I tried each beer by itself, then blended approximately 1/3 'stale' beer with 2/3 'fresh' beer, in line with the descriptions in Ron's book.  I was pretty happy with the result, although the Keeping Porter is still a little rough around the edges.  Hopefully they'll smooth out as it continues to condition over the next few months.

Keeping Porter

Appearance: Dark brown colour, and fairly opaque.

Smell: Intriguing combination of toast, roast, and fruity sourness.  Very unique.  Powdered cocoa, dark fruity chocolate, toasted bread.  Suggestion of lactic sourness.

Taste: Very lightly tart.  Transitions to dry cocoa powder and then almost-burnt toast and bitter cold coffee.  Light fruitiness around the edges.  A bit rough still

Mouthfeel:  Low carbonation gives it a vinous character.  Slightly viscous.

Drinkability & Notes: Certainly interesting, though I don't think I'd care to drink more than a single glass at the moment.  The tartness is nice, and I enjoy the dark fruit and chocolate, but the burnt roast is a bit rough and astringent.  Hopefully it will continue to soften as the beer ages in the bottle.


~1/3 Keeping Porter & ~2/3 Taddy Porter 

Appearance: Dark brown with red highlights.  Good head that dissipates to about a quarter inch.

Smell: Similar to the Taddy Porter alone: dark fruits (raisins, prunes, figs), though less pronounced than in the original, along with a dusting of cocoa; but also a more pronounced breadiness.  Again the slightest suggestion of lactic sourness, which gives it an edge over the Taddy Porter.

Taste: The Taddy Porter is all dried fruit and chocolate with a slight tanginess and a hint of bitter coffee. This adds a tartness and lingering burnt roast that aren't there in the original, and transforms the overall impression.  Same elements but with a different emphasis.

Mouthfeel:  Not noticeably different from the Taddy Porter in terms of body, but there's added tang and astringent roast.  Dry and tart.  Very drinkable.

Drinkability & Notes:  The tartness really adds to the drinkability for me, since it clips the dark fruit from the original, and makes it transition to the burnt roastiness of the Keeping Porter.  Tangy up front, and then a lingering tartness and roast at the end, with dark fruit and cocoa in the middle.  Those transitions definitely add a complexity that is very satisfying.  The roughness of the Keeping Porter comes through as well though.  I hope it gets a bit softer with age.

Brew Day: 1860 Truman Double Stout (#IHP2015)

I've been brewing historical British recipes on and off ever since I made the switch to all-grain.  Most recently I've been focusing on stock ales that underwent a secondary fermentation by brettanomyces, but in the past I've made quite a few AKs, milds, and bitters as well.  So when the Fuggled International Homebrew Project came around this year, I knew I had to take part.  (In fact, I think following the project last year was part of what prompted me to start writing this blog).

The recipe chosen this year was for a Double Stout brewed at the Truman brewery in 1860 (I think I voted for the Stock Ale, though I can't actually remember).  You can find the original in Ron Pattinson's book (its very slightly different from the one Al posted), and there are also recipes and brewing notes for various similar Truman beers in the Let's Brew series over on his blog (1, 2, 3).

Reading all of this can be pretty helpful in planning a brew day, but I didn't have time to go through it all until the mash was on this morning.  Since we're all using very different malts (e.g. the Maris Otter I used would not have been available in the 1860s, and the brown malt probably had a very different character), I don't really think of what I'm doing here as accurately recreating a historical beer, but even with the leeway that gives me there's still the question of how to translate the information we have about the original recipe to a homebrew scale.

For instance, many of these beers went through quite complicated mashing regimes that I have no intention of imitating in my kitchen, and that leaves open the question of what temperature I should aim for in the infusion mash to get close to the listed racking gravity.  The racking gravity for this beer was 1.025, so I knew I had to create a fairly dextrinous wort  In his book Ron lists an infusion mash at 164, and Al suggested the same in his version of the recipe.  I was nervous about mashing so high (I thought perhaps it wouldn't translate very well to the kind of full volume BIAB mash I do, because the enzymes might denature before the mash was complete), but in the end I still went for a pretty high mash temp of 160.  It turns out I didn't need to worry about my efficiency (see below), though if I'd had time to do a bit of research I would probably have gone with something lower.  Kristen England's suggested mash temps for Truman Stouts in the Let's Brew Wednesday series are all a lot lower, and he also warns that the proportions of brown malt in these beers tends to leave a dextrinous wort, which makes me worry that the fermentation will stall at a higher gravity.  To mitigate this I pitched plenty of healthy top-cropped yeast, and gave the wort a good dose of oxygen.

I basically followed the recipe as written, though I had to substitute a small amount of Roasted Barley for some of the Black Patent, and I formulated the recipe for a slightly higher O.G. to take into account the dip in efficiency I usually see on these higher gravity beers.  I used EKG all the way through (I don't think the IBU numbers mean much in these recipes, so I based my additions on the proportions listed in Ron's book), and pitched a good amount of recently top-cropped Wyeast 1318.  Ron lists the Whitbread strains in his book, but I don't think this matters all that much, and I'd rather stick with the yeast I'm using anyway than go through the effort of growing up a fresh pitch.

The one other interesting process-related change I implemented was in my water profile.  The Truman brewery was located in East London, right on Brick Lane in fact, so I figured I see if I could find a water profile for the London Porter brewers.  Luckily Martin Brungard wrote a series of pieces on historical water profiles for Zymurgy last year, and the May/June issue has an article on London.  I won't go through all the information Brungard offers about the various possible water sources (read the article!), but the final water profile he lists for brewing dark beers is below:

Calcium: 80   Magnesium: 20   Sodium: 110   Sulfate: 80   Chloride: 190   Bicarbonate: 210   Residual Alkalinity: 105

As you can see, it has very high levels of sodium and chloride, much higher than you usually see in recommended water profiles, which will create a perception of sweetness and fullness in the beer (here hopefully balancing out all those hops!).    Brungard comments that based on research he did for John Palmer's water book, the sodium levels in this profile shouldn't be excessive, so the beer shouldn't taste salty.  I went with the following profile, aiming for a mash pH of 5.4:

Calcium: 65   Magnesium: 12   Sodium: 111   Sulfate: 78   Chloride: 193   

I'll be curious to see how the final beer turns out, though since I don't brew many strong dark beers I doubt its a profile I'll be using much.

As you can see from the photo at the start of this post, somehow the wort came in 10 points above the recipe's O.G.  I was already aiming a few points higher, because my efficiency usually takes a big dip in these high gravity beers, but it came in even higher than that.  I can think of two things that might have contributed to this.  First, I used a higher setting on my drill when crushing the grist, which might have led to a finer crush.  And second, after draining the bag with the mash over the kettle I let it drain further suspended over a bucket, and then added these runnings back to the kettle.  I don't usually bother with this, but I was worried about my gravity coming in low.  10 points is enough of a difference that I decided to dilute the final wort down to something closer to the recipe's gravity.  On the plus side, this means I might have a few extra litres that I can inoculate with some brettanomyces and keep on hand to marry with another stock ale.

Anyway, that's about it for the brew day.  Al lists his writing date as March 23rd: I don't know if that means tasting notes, but I doubt I'll have this bottled by then (I have a very hectic month coming up, and at six weeks the beer would probably be a bit young anyway).  I am planning on packaging this on the younger side and allowing it to condition in the bottle after that.  I'll post tasting notes when I think its ready for some.

 

Brew Day: Vatted Old Ale

Martyn Cornell's list of endangered British beers includes the following two styles in the "critically endangered" category:

Vatted old ale
About the only survivor of vatted old ale in Britain is Greene King 5X, which is, alas, almost never made available on its own, but generally blended with other beers to make, eg, Strong Suffolk. Up to the end of the Second World War, however, Old Beer, matured for a year or more in huge oak vats, was still popular in the West Country, particularly in Bristol. Few brewers, alas, have the time or space to make long-aged beers today.

Sour aged ale
A variety of vatted old ale is the sour aged ale represented now only by Gale’s Prize Old Ale, where a proportion of each brew is held back, solera-style, to add to the following year’s fresh ale. The complexity and depth available from such long-aged beers, particularly after several years in bottle, is stunning. Fuller’s rescued POA when Gale’s closed, but again, few brewers have the time or space to devote to such a minority beer.

As I've mentioned here before, I'm pretty interested in these almost extinct British beers, and already have several attempts to recreate them underway.  So far I have stock ales inoculated with lactobacillus and one or two strains of brettanomyces, but nothing with the full complement of LAB and wild yeasts found in other sour beers.  This week I decided to change that by a beer inspired by Gale's Prize Ale: something strong, intended for long ageing, and inoculated with a range of organisms.

My original plan was to brew this as another solera, and I may still implement that by making another batch in the next month and combining the two together into a six gallon carboy.  I would then pull off three to four gallons once a year, and top the carboy off with fresh wort.  This is similar to the way that Gale's is brewed at Fullers.  They no longer use the wood from the original brewery (this used to be the source of the inoculation), but instead hold back a portion of each batch to inoculate the next one.  But there is also historical precedent for brewing a strong beer in this style.  It seems to have been something that British manor brewers did with their strong ales, as recounted in this delightful description of "marrying ale" that I found on Ron Pattinson's blog:

The method called marrying ale, we have often seen tried upon a private person's stock with success. It seems to increase its strength, but especially its mellowness and the fulness of its flavour, and consists in tapping a pipe or hogshead of ale in the middle, and when it is drawn as low as the tap, to fill up the cask with another brewing of wort. The particulars to be observed are: to begin upon a sound stock, such as is approved as to colour and flavour; for if there be any approach to acidity it will not do. The next point is to tun the newly-fermented wort upon the old stock, when it has fermented about twelve hours. The third particular, of great importance, seems to be, not to marry your ale in winter, but in autumn (October), for if your cellar be not a vault,the old stock is too chill, and the fermentation may suddenly stop: if this should happen, as in cellars that are not vaults, the heat may increase considerably in spring, the fermentation may be renewed, and the ale may spoil, or mischief happen to the cask by bursting. Ale that is brewed in the usual way will sometimes ferment in summer, and throw up the bungs of the barrels; especially if the fermentation have been hastily conducted, and little or no cleansing have taken place in the barrels after tunning (which is likely to be the case when brewing is performed in frosty weather); where this happens, the danger is that acidity will follow, and therefore the beer should be speedily used. When ale is married, the fermentation will bring away all the old hops, and it is not to be overlooked that the cork will rise that had been driven in with the tap. It is, therefore, requisite to work it out at the bunghole, skimming away the hops, &c. till they and the cork are discharged; then fill up the cask, and take out the top cork for cleansing, as before. It may be filled up several times with fresh wort, as in other cases, until the fermentation stops, and then the cork and bung put in (the latter very lightly) and left so until it is necessary to hop it down. The writer has refilled a cask in this manner five years successively, and had the ale always superior, and always alike in colour and flavour; in continuing this practice for a long period it is necessary to remove the casks for fear of accidents. The excellence of this ale is, that you can never guess at its age; it drinks always soft and mild, without any resemblance to ale recently brewed, and is equally remote from hardness or acidity

Lars Garshol describes a similar process implemented by walloon ironsmiths who emigrated to Sweeden in the 17th century.  It seems these workers missed beers from home (perhaps something akin to Flanders Red or Oud Bruin):

To satisfy their craving for walloon beer, the walloons started brewing their own beer. Out of this brewing quickly developed what seems to be a Swedish variation: hundred-year beer (hundraårig öl). This was a beer primarily made for the aristocratic owners of iron works or major mansions. 

It was brewed the same way as the walloon beer, and then stored in big wooden tuns. After a few years, half the beer would be drained off and bottled, and a new batch would be used to fill up the barrel again. This would go on for, in quite a few cases, many decades. The barrel would never be emptied, so it could literally be said to be hundred-year beer, although obviously the beer from a century ago would be present only "in homeopathic concentration" as one source put it.

Lars' post was the immediate inspiration for brewing this beer, and on his recommendation I sought out a copy of Country House Brewing in England by Pamela Sambrook, which I still haven't got round to reading.

I didn't agonize too much over my recipe for my beer.  The old recipe for Gale's Prize Ale was pretty straightforward: Maris Otter and a touch of Black Patent, with around 10% invert sugar.  Apparently Fullers have changed it since taking over the brand, using Optic, crystal, and chocolate malts.  I would have liked to have used all English malt for the base, but I'm running low until the next group buy in a few months, so I made do with a blend of US 2-row and Golden Promise.  I added about 5% medium crystal, and then on brew day cooked up a batch of invert #3 (via the dilution method) to make up about 10% of the grist by weight (not by extract).  I knew I was going to have problems hitting the high original gravity I wanted (somewhere around 1.090), so at the last moment I also added about half a cup of homemade Belgian candi syrup that's been lying around for ages.  Altogether this produced a rich chestnut-coloured wort in the vicinity of 1.090.  I hopped the beer to around 50 IBUs (the reported bitterness for Gale's), using some old Northdown hops for bittering and a blend of EKG and Fuggles for a 20 minute flavour addition.

My plan was to ferment the beer with a large amount of freshly top-cropped Wyeast 1318, along with the final 10-15 mls of a jar of ECY20 that I purchased last year.  I pitched both together so that the bacteria and wild yeasts had a chance to get established, but given that the beer will have a very high alcohol content I'm not expecting it to get too sour---in fact, I'm hoping it won't, since I'm looking for something more vinous, with a soft acidity and some light leathery funk.  Something I can bottle by itself, but also use as an interesting component in blended beers.  I gave the wort a healthy dose of oxygen, and the beer is now fermenting in the low 60s, hopefully keeping higher alcohols etc. in check.

If things go to plan I'll probably brew up a second batch in the next month or so, this time fermented with Wyeast 1318 alone since it will be blended with the inoculated beer in a six gallon carboy (still waiting for another 2-for-1 offer!).  Then, following the Swedish brewers described in Lars' post, I'll take a pull and top it up again around Christmas each year until I move out of here (which may mean only once or twice).

Tasting Notes: Milk Stout

Here are some tasting notes for my version of the 1952 Mackeson's Milk Stout recipe posted at Shut Up About Barclay Perkins. The beer finished at 1.017, giving it an ABV of 3%.

Appearance: Dark brown colour, changes to a clear, red-tinged brown when held up to the light.  Lingering head right to the end makes for a pretty pint.

Smell: Toast, cocoa, and a bit of hop spiciness. Bit of tobacco as it warms up. Very pleasant.

Taste: More toast/breadcrust, with some chocolatey notes.  Light fruitiness as it gets warmer.  There's a lingering taste that reminds me of cheap cola-flavoured popsicles I used to buy when I was a kid.  Not at all sweet.

Mouthfeel: Although the beer isn't sweet, it does have a nice fullness to it, especially given its low ABV. Carbonation is a touch too high, which is somewhat biting and detracts from the smoothness.

Drinkability & Notes: I have to say, I'm surprised by how much I like this beer---much more than most milk stouts I've tried.  I think its because its not particularly sweet, despite being more full-bodied than most bitters or milds I make in this ABV range---the bitterness, toast, and chocolate notes all make it very moreish, and the flavours become more developed as it warms up.  With most milk stouts I can imagine drinking (and genuinely enjoying) about half a pint, but this is a beer I could easily drink for a few hours.  The slightly-too-high carbonation detracts from it a little (though its still very low compared to most beers)---I imagine it would be even better served via a hand-pump.

Brew Day: Stock Ale

Following on from the sour red ale I brewed last week, today I brewed a strong brown beer based loosely on nineteenth century recipes for stock ales.  The grist and hopping rates are based on the recipe for the 1887 Fuller's XXK in Ron Pattinson's book, but I decreased the amount of invert #3 slightly, and added a small percentage of dark crystal to imitate the effects of kettle caramelisation,  The beer will be fermented out with  a large pitch of Wyeast 1318, and I'm also planning to add the dregs from a bottle of my brett-fermented wit later this evening, which should consist of lactobacillus, brettanomyces trois and brettanomyces clausenii.  The high hopping rate probably means I won't see much contribution from the lactobacillus, but hopefully the two brett strains will be well enough established to ensure a long slow secondary fermentation.

When I was picking a recipe for this beer, one thing I kept wondering about was how far back I'd have to go to find a recipe for something that was likely to have had undergone a secondary fermentation of this sort.  In Principles & Practice of Brewing (Walter J. Sykes & Arthur R. Ling, 1907), there is a description of the long slow secondary fermentation that took place while stock ales were stored in vats or casks.  They state that during this fermentation "maltodextrins are gradually and slowly degraded by the hydrolytic action of the special yeasts" and "certain compound ethers or esters are also formed" that are "much concerned in the fine flavour characteristic of fully ripened and mature ales".  But having described this slow conditioning, the authors go on to complain that it is falling out of fashion:

"[T]he demand for beers of this class seems to be gradually passing away; the tendency nowadays is towards less ripe and mature ales, and consequently the period of storage is often reduced to weeks, or is even omitted altogether."

They were writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, but it seems that at least some aged beers survived this trend.  In Amber, Gold, and Black, Martyn Cornell mentions a beer called Colne Spring Ale which was deliberately infected with brettanomyces, and which seems to have survived with secondary conditioning well into the twentieth century (Cornell mentions that it survived the 1957 takeover of Benskin's by IndCoope, and states that it was pasteurized after this point rather than bottle conditioned).  These 1958 tasting notes from Andrew Campbell are worth quoting in full:

"[Colne Spring Ale] is probably the strongest of all the commercially available bottled beers available in Britain today.  Matured for seven years, it is dark, mellow, and pours like wine, very slightly carbonated.  It is rich and luscious in flavour, in no way edulcorated [sweenteened] ... beer that should be treated with the very greatest respect."

The beer I brewed today is part of an ongoing effort to try to recreate some of these older brettanomyces-influenced British beers.  So far I have the Keeping Porter, the Stingo, and this strong stock ale.  In the next few months I'm planning on brewing a nineteenth century IPA, and perhaps also an Imperial Stout, both again to be inoculated with brett (in fact, I'll probably keep using the dregs from the last remaining bottles of the wit beer to do this).  With any luck, in a year or so all of these beers will be tasting pretty good, and stable enough to bottle (though I'll probably bottle the darker ones flat, or with very low carbonation, so continued fermentation shouldn't be a problem).But even if they dry out too much or gett too funky, I'm sure they'll make a good basis for blending with each other, or with young beers in the glass.

Recipe:

Measured O.G: 1.076 (Aiming for 1.080)
Measured F.G:

Mash: 153.5°F:

Malt:

43.3%  Paul's Mild Malt

33.7%  TF Golden Promise
2.9%  Medium Crystal
1.9%  TF Dark Crystal II
18.2% Invert 3#

Hops:

Fuggles          60          45.7 IBUs
EKG              30          37.4 IBUs

Yeast:

Wyeast 1318

Brew Day: Mackeson Milk Stout

Milk Stout: not a style I've brewed before, nor one I'm particularly fond of, but curiosity got the better of me when I saw the recipes for 1936 and 1952 Mackeson Milk Stout on Ron Pattinson's website, and I decided to give it a go.  I was working with a pitch of Wyeast 1318 anyway, and it'll be a good beer to give to guests who don't like dry and bitter beers quite as much as I do.

I wanted to brew the 1952 version, if only because the gravity was lighter and the beer less alcoholic.  However Kristen England's recipe percentages don't quite add up, so I ended up with an amalgamation of the two recipes, aiming for an original gravity in line with the 1952 version but with grain ratios closer to the 1936 one.  According to Kristen's notes, the lactose sugar was added at bottling, but I went ahead and added it for the last five minutes of the boil---saves fussing about it (or even forgetting it) later.

The brew day was fairly straight-forward.  I haven't been brewing darker beers recently, so it was interesting to test how accurate Bru'N Water's mash pH predictions were---I ended up a bit lower than the software predicted, but at 5.3 I was firmly in the right pH range.  I'll try to keep track of this one as it ferments too, in an ongoing effort to see how pH affects the flavour of my beers.

Anyway, a pretty short post, but there you go.  These first two beers (Ordinary Bitter, Milk Stout) were to get the yeast nice and healthy for a couple of bigger ones I have planned for the next few weeks.  In the meantime, I'll probably have some tasting notes to post later this week.

Recipe:

Measured O.G: 1.040
Measured F.G:

Mash: 153°F:

Malt:

39.3%  US 2-Row

30.7%  Pearl
6.0%  Brown Malt
5.0%  Chocolate Malt
8.0%  Invert #3
3.0%  Cane Sugar
8.0%  Lactose

Hops:

EKG          60          23.2 IBUs
EKG          30          10.7 IBUs

Yeast:

Wyeast 1318

Tasting Notes: 1909 Lees Bitter

I've been waiting to post tasting notes for this beer because it was a bit rough around the edges for the first month or two.  I suppose that's unsurprising given the amount of hops used in it (70 calculated IBUs), especially since I also missed my O.G. by almost 10 points!  For the first month or so, it tasted like a poorly fermented kolsch: lots of honey and light fruitiness.  The bitterness wasn't too rough, but the whole thing didn't really come together.  Its started to come into its own in the last few weeks, and may well continue improving.

Appearance: Golden colour. Has a chill-haze if poured straight from the fridge, but crystal clear if you let it warm up a bit.  Head retention is terrible.

Smell: It had a strong honeyish aroma when it was young, but this has faded quite a bit.  Very slight fruitiness, but hard to tell if its the sugars, the yeast, or even residual aroma from the hops.

Taste: Honeyed malts, light fruitiness (apples, pears, maybe apricot), tea-like tannins in the finish.

Mouthfeel: Low carbonation.  Not too thin.  Bitterness is not at all rough, but builds gradually as you drink a pint to become almost numbing.  I like it, others might not.

Drinkability & Notes: It all comes together quite nicely at this point, drinking smoothly where before all the edges stuck out.  I'm surprised that the bitterness isn't harsher.  It definitely builds up as you drink, but I don't find it at all unpleasant.  Probably won't make this again, if only because of the quantity of hops involved, but J and I have both been drinking it fairly regularly.

Brew Day: Stingo

I continue to be fascinated by the role wild yeasts and other bacteria would have played in older English beers, and the ways in which British brewing traditions might have overlapped with those surviving on the continent.  The July/August issue of Zymurgy had a short article on a beer called "Stingo", which it described as an English strong ale associated with Yorkshire.  Since I was reading everything I could find about these aged stock ales, I decided to do a little bit of internet research about "Stingo", and marked the recipe down as one I might try this summer.

Digging around online I discovered that Pretty Things and Boulevard had joined up to brew a beer inspired by Yorkshire Stingo.  In interviews connected with the collaboration, Dan and Martha from Pretty Things engage in some intriguing speculation about the connections between British stock ales and the acid ales of the Flanders region:

“In the mid-1800s Eugene Rodenbach, who was maybe the third generation of the brewery was sent to do an internship in the north of England and when he came back to the brewery he brought with him the beer we know today, this blended, aged, brown, malty beer. So obviously Rodenbach in almost no way resembles anything that’s presently brewed in the north of England.” 

“But it did back then,” Martha continued. “So the roots were borrowed from Yorkshire. Which really isn’t what people want to think so nobody really talks about it. But it’s true.”

There is more in this vein in the write up accompanying the beer posted by brewer Dan Paquette on the brewery's blog:

"Is Stingo the original Flanders Red? I’ve been all around the Rodenbach brewery and I’ve seen photos of plenty of wooden fermenters in old English breweries. There are a lot of similarities between breweries in this period anyway. De Dolle Brouwerij in Esen, Belgium is like a close cousin to the T & R Theakston brewery in Masham, Yorkshire. Green King still uses “rounds”, wooden vessels similar to the classic Belgian “foeder” to make its Olde Suffolk ale. I don’t claim to be making an academic study, just observations. But I’d love for someone to look into it further."

I remembered that the name "Stingo" showed up in the "Barley Wine and Old Ale" chapter of Amber, Gold, and Black, but on rereading the chapter I could find no particular mention of any acidity:

"Other regional varieties of strong ale included Yorkshire Stingo, which Alfred Barnard in 1890 found being brewed by John Metcalfe & Son at the Nidderdale brewery in Pately Bridge, and Joshua Tetley in Leeds, where he found it `very luscious, full of body and well flavoured without being heady'."

Later in the chapter there is this:

"Hammonds also brewed a stronger XXXXX Stingo, using 82 per cent pale malt and 18 per cent glucose, with the wort boiled for three hours to concentrate it and give it more colour, an OF of around 1100 and an abv of 9.5.  The quite high final gravity of 1027, suggesting a sweet beer, would have been balanced by the massive amount of hops used, which may have given a bitterness level as high as 119.  This, Dr Thomas suggests, was a classic barley wine, with an aftertaste that was likely to be richly hoppy and bitter, and an ester and alcoholic  background from the high gravity fermentation.  As he says: 'One can only speculate on its complexity'." 

I suspect the idea that a beer called "Stingo" was the missing link between Flanders and English ales is probably wishful thinking. But regardless of any such particular link, there are definite ties between the two traditions.  Here is what Jeff Sparrow has to say in Wild Brews on the related topic of blending old and young beers:

"It is difficult to determine exactly on which side of the English Channel this tradition began.  The people at the classic West Flanders brewery Rodenbach cite the similarity with the practice of blending in the United Kingdom, and ancestor Eugene Rodenbach was known to have studied brewing in England.  Some people credit Rodenbach with bringing the method of tall wooden cask construction and accompanying fermentation process to Belgium around 1860. Says Michael Jackson, "Some people believe that Rodenbach's techniques of aging and blending were taken from the porter and stout brewers of England and Ireland.  I think it was initially the Flemish who taught the islanders about such matters, although knowledge did begin to flow the other way after the Industrial Revolution." Wherever the tradition began, the English and Flemish traditions are inexorably linked."

What is clear is that English stock ales were often prized for their tart, vinous character, something they share to some extent with Flanders beers, and something that was almost certainly the product of a secondary fermentation by brettanomyces and other organisms.  You can read some interesting speculation about exactly how tart the beers were in the comments from this post at Shut Up About Berkeley Perkins.  Reading through some of the historical material that Ron and others have posted you find plenty of references to acidity and "hardness" being undesirable, so perhaps these weren't beers that were soured to the same extent as modern Flanders reds etc.  Then again, with no way of trying the beers in question, its difficult to know exactly how these brewers applied such terms.  Perhaps what they sought to avoid was the vinegary acidity that is produced by acetobacter, rather than the softer acidity from lactic fermentation?

Sadly there aren't many surviving British beers in this tradition. Samuel Smiths still makes a Yorkshire Stingo, but as far as I know it does not undergo secondary brettanomyces fermentation.  The closest thing I know is Gale's Prize Old Ale.  When it was brewed by Gale's of Horndean, it underwent secondary fermentation in wooden hogsheads inhabited by various wild yeasts and lactic acid producing bacteria.  After Fuller's took over the beer, they preserved its resident microflora by brewing in a solera-style system, preserving a portion of each batch to inoculate future ones (kind of like I've been doing with my beers).  (Another example is Greene King Old XXXXX, which makes up a portion of their Olde Suffolk Ale.)

The Zymurgy recipe makes no claims to historical accuracy, but I decided to follow it anyway.  Besides the anachronous use of crystal and huskless black malt, the hopping rates seem very low compared to the recipes for keeping beers that you can find on Ron's website.  Still, it looked like it would make a good beer, so last weekend I went ahead and brewed something based on it.

I made a couple of changes to the recipe written in the magazine.  The first was to replace their single base malt (Maris Otter) with a blend of the malts I have on hand: I went with Mild malt, Pearl, and US 2-row.  The Zymurgy recipe called for adding a finely ground huskless black malt just before mash-out to darken the colour without adding too much roast; since I didn't have any on hand, I cold-steeped some roasted barley overnight, and added the resulting liquid for the last ten minutes of the boil.  The recipe also calls for a dark invert sugar.  Since it takes a while to make this from scratch on the stove, I tried the method of blending a white invert with dark blackstrap molasses (described here).  It gave a nice licorice characters to the final sugar, and was much easier than trying to hold the sugar at the right temperature for a few hours to darken it.  I think I'll be using this method from now on.

Brew day went fairly smoothly.  I've noticed that my efficiency takes a real dip when I go above 1.060, and even after lowering predicted efficiency a bit in BeerSmith for this recipe I still came ten points short, ending with a beer at 1.080 rather than 1.090.  I pitched a large amount of Wyeast 1469 cropped from the two beers I brewed last weekend, and set my fermentation chamber in the low 60s.  The recipe calls for starting higher to encourage ester formation, but I stuck with my usual practice, which involves gradually ramping up the temperature over the next week.  I haven't decided exactly how I'm going to inoculate this beer yet.  It will certainly get a pitch of White Labs Brettanomyces Clausenii, as will the Keeping Porter I brewed last week.  I also reserved some of the Oud Bruin I brewed recently, which has lactobacillus brevis in it, and I'm thinking about adding this to both beers.  With the alcohol levels and hopping rates as high as they are, I'd be suprised if the lactobacillus manages to make any real contribution, but I figured I might as well try.  The real question is whether to add cultures that I know contain pediococcus, or whether to stick with brettanomyces and lactobacillus.  The latter will certainly result in a less sour beer, which in this case may be what I want.

Recipe:

   

Estimated O.G.	1.090
Measured O.G.	1.080
Measured F.G.
ABV.
Mash:
	152°F	90 minutes
Malt:
40.8% Mild Malt
25.4% 2-Row
16.9% Pearl 10.3% Invert #3 2.6% Dark Crystal I 2.6% Dark Crystal II 1.7% Roasted Barley	(Cold Steeped)
Hops:
EKG	60	24.6 IBUs	(20g @ 6.5%)
EKG	20	3.5 IBUs	(20g @ 6.0%)
Yeast:
Wyeast 1469

A Quick Question: Dry Hops and Diastatic Enzymes

I've been following up on some of the research on Ron Pattinson's blog Shut Up About Berkeley Perkins, trying to get a better understanding of the processes used in brewing older British beers, and in particular of the role played by secondary fermentation.

One thing I've been wondering about, with respect to IPAs, was whether or not they were aged on dry hops.  From what I can piece together from Mitch Steele's book, dry hops were added as the beer was racked into casks, after which it was aged for many months before shipping.  That would mean that the beer spent a considerable time on these hops.

I thought that was pretty interesting in its own right, but today I stumbled upon something related that was even more intriguing.  Following up a reference from Ron's blog, I found the following in Principles & Practice of Brewing (Walter J. Sykes & Arthur R. Ling, 1907):

"During secondary fermentation the more resistant maltodextrins are gradually and slowly degraded by the hydrolytic actions of the special yeasts concerned, assisted by that of the diastase of the dry hops when these are added at the time of racking, and perhaps also to some extent by the carbonic acid existing under pressure." (p.539)

If I understand this correctly, it says that hops added at racking contributed diastatic enzymes that eventually facilitated the breakdown of dextrins in the aging beer; and that the resulting sugars were fermented by brettanomyces and perhaps any remaining saccharomyces as well.  What I'm wondering is whether anyone can confirm that long aging on dry hops could have this effect?

Update: Based on the experiment described here (p.107-8), the answer seem to be yes.  Now I'm wondering whether aging on dry hops contributed anything to secondary fermentation that wouldn't have been achieved by the action of brettanomyces alone.  It might have kept LAB at bay, for instance; but I'm thinking in particular of the fermentation and its by-products.

Update II:  Further confirmation here.

Brew Day: Nineteenth Century Keeping Porter

For the most part I’ll be back to brewing English beers for the next few months, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be playing around with brettanomyces and lactic-acid producing bacteria.  These days beer drinkers who know what brettanomyces is probably associate it with Belgian style beer, but there was a time when many of the best English beers would have undergone a secondary fermentation by brettanomyces and perhaps other organisms.  Consider, for instance, the following quote from N. Hjelte Claussen (which I got from Mitch Steele’s book on India Pale Ale):

“In English breweries as well as anywhere else, the primary fermentation is carried on only by Saccharomyces, whereas the secondary fermentation of the typical English beers, as being due to Brettanomyces, essentially differs from those secondary fermentations on the Continent.  In other words, the action of Brettanomyces is absolutely necessary to bring English stock beers into proper cask and bottle condition, and to impart to them the peculiar and remarkably fine flavour which in a great measure determines their value…. Hence it is evident that the secondary fermentation effected by Brettanomyces is indispensable for the production of the real type of English beers.”

If you dig around in Ron Pattinson’s posts at Shut Up About Barclay Perkins, you can find lots more interesting tidbits.  For instance, it seems that British brewers resisted the introduction of pure yeast cultures (i.e. the single strains we’re used to using today) for much longer than the majority of brewers in mainland Europe, in part because they found beers brewed in this way lacked the character they expected from secondary conditioning.  In my earlier post about Yvan de Baets’ essay on saisons, I quoted one of his sources (Van Laer) questioning whether the introduction of single strain fermentation should be seen as a mark of progress.  It seems that, for a while at least, British brewers would have agreed with him!
I’ve found some more interesting material, but I’ll save that for another post.  My plan, as of now, is to brew a series of beers based on historical recipes from Ron and other sources (plus a couple of amalgamations of my own), and then age them all with brettanomyces and possibly lactic-acid bacteria.  The first, which this post is about, was a recipe for an nineteenth century keeping porter (i.e. a porter that was vatted at the brewery for many months before being sent out for sale).  In the next month, I’ll probably brew an India Pale Ale, along with a couple of stock ales as well.
I’m not in any position to give a summary history of porter brewing (though its a fascinating topic, and worth reading about).  Vatted porters were aged at the brewery where they underwent a secondary fermentation, most likely induced by organisms resident in the casks and vats they were stored in.  Martyn Cornell gives the following account in Amber, Gold, & Black:

“Long storage in wooden vats, with the inevitable infection by wild Brettanomyces yeasts and lactobacillus bacteria, would have produced a ‘stale’ porter that was vinous, tart, and almost still.  For drinkers who wanted something livelier with a good head on it, the porter brewers sent out fresher, milder, newer-brewed, more carbon-dioxide-impregnated beer alongside the matured, flat, stale porter.  The mild and stale porters were then mixed at serving, or drawing, in the pub to the customer’s taste…”

To mimic this I will brew another beer in 9-12 months, and blend both together at serving. The recipe I used as my starting point today was for an 1831 Keeping Porter from the Truman brewery (you can find it in Ron’s book).  Ron’s notes mention that there were two types of porter brewed, a keeping and a running version.  The recipes were the same, except that the keeping version was much more heavily hopped.  The two beers were blended back together at a ratio of 1:2 keeping to running before sale.  So that provides me with an idea of what to aim for.

I had to take some liberties with the recipe, which make this more of an “inspired by” brew than a real attempt at a historical recreation.  The biggest difference, which scuppers any attempt at historical accuracy, is the character of the brown malt I have available to me.  I used Thomas Fawcett brown, which is a nice malt, but very different from what would have been used in this recipe (you can read a bit about history of brown malt here).  Other home brewers have had some success making their own, but it requires an open flame, which rules out attempting to make it in the only outdoor space I have: my wooden fire escape. 

The other slight modifications (besides a single-infusion mash) were in the malt and hopping.  Rather than use the single base malt listed, I went with a blend of 2-row and mild malt.  It was what I had on hand.  The hopping rates for the old beers are insanely high, even when you consider the fact that its all English hops that had around 4-5% AA (in fact I suspect that this one used older hops whose alpha acid levels were lower still).  The EKG I have on hand have 5.9% alpha-acids.  Hopping at close to the rate listed in the recipe puts me way above the 116 IBUs, so I decided to just shoot for this IBU number instead.  I suspect that the sheer volume of hop matter in the kettle affected the flavours of the final beer, so to increase the amount used I made the 90 minute addition smaller so that I could increase the volume of hops for the 60 minute addition.

Primary fermentation will be completed by some recently cropped Wyeast 1469.  I’m also fermenting the beer in one of my old saison/brett buckets, so it might pick up something from the scratches there. For secondary conditioning I’ll pitch some White Labs Brett C.; I’m also considering blending in a small portion of an Oud Bruin I brewed with Wyeast’s seasonal blend.  This contains Lactobacillus Brevis, which is supposedly more hop-tolerant.  Frankly, with the hopping levels what they are, I doubt that this will have much of an effect; but I want to avoid pediococcus in this beer, because I’ve heard speculation that it encourages super-attenuation by brettanomyces, and I’d like to prevent that if possible (Brett C. seems to be, at least sometimes, less attenuative than other strains in secondary).

Tasting notes: #1, #2.

Recipe:

Measured O.G.	1.060
Measured F.G.
ABV.
Mash:	154°F
Malt:
44.6% 2-Row
29.0% Mild Malt
24.6% Brown Malt
1.9% Black Malt
Hops:
EKG	85min	47.0 IBUs	(40g@ 5.9%)
EKG	60 min	70.0 IBUs	(60g@ 5.9%)
Yeast:
WY1469