Brew Books - What's On Your Shelf??

Twostage said:

Just got this. A good read about how farmhouse beer was (and in some cases still is) made in the rural areas of europe. There's a good bit about how yeast was harvested from slurry by dipping a straw wreath into it then hanging it up to dry in the barn. Birds lived in the barn and inevitably cr@pped on the wreaths. To inoculate the next brew they knocked off the cr@p and shoved the wreath in the wort. I knew all this hygiene lark was overrated . Up to the chapter where it talks about malting which makes me wonder about doing some myself or at the least deliberately mix grains that I wouldn't normally do to see if I can get more complex flavours.

If I remember correctly I think @peebee is interested in historical brews and might be interested?

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About half way through now. Spoiler alert I'm going to talk about content...

I've always wondered how they brewed before thermometers, how did they know they'd reached strike temperature before putting in the grain and then keeping it in the 60s. Turns out they didn't use that process at all. Up until relatively recently they just mixed the grain and water and stuck red hot rocks in until it was nearly boiling and then left it to cool down. At some point during the heating by rocks the mash would have passed through the right temperatures. At least that's one method, there are others.

The one thing I'd like to try process-wise is doing something based on a keptinis which I assume rhymes with a gentleman part as opposed to ladies bathing wear. With a keptinis they mash and then pour the whole thing into a baking tray and put it in a very hot oven until it becomes a kind of caramel cake. This cake is then broken into bits, mixed with water and the yeast added. So it becomes a kind of brown ale. I'm thinking of making a kind of dough with pale malt and cooking it until it caramelises and adding this to the fermenter. I know its a kind of painful way to substitute a crystal malt (and probably not as effective) but I'm curious about the taste.

Twostage said:

I've always wondered how they brewed before thermometers, how did they know they'd reached strike temperature before putting in the grain and then keeping it in the 60s. Turns out they didn't use that process at all. Up until relatively recently they just mixed the grain and water and stuck red hot rocks in until it was nearly boiling and then left it to cool down. At some point during the heating by rocks the mash would have passed through the right temperatures. At least that's one method, there are others.

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On a similar theme....

https://dafteejit.com/2019/02/why-a-triple-decoction-mash-can-never-fail/

Sadfield said:

On a similar theme....

https://dafteejit.com/2019/02/why-a-triple-decoction-mash-can-never-fail/

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Like a kind of stepped version of hot rocks. You'd need a second vessel obviously but easily doable.

Further update on the farmhouse book.

Really good quote about not being too hung up on the numbers “if you don’t like the temperature of your mash move your thermometer “

Lars “first name terms with the author now” talks about how the farmhouse beers are not carbonated as in they don’t deliberately put sugar in to make them fizzy. The light carbonation comes from fermentation restarting when the beer warms up. This made me think that we go to great lengths to get the recipe right and then bung sugar in to carbonate it. It might be a small effect but it must introduce flavours we might not want. So what we should really be doing is holding back some wort and using that to prime.

Another thing is they don’t need to mature and can literally be drunk two or three days after pitching the yeast. Some say it tastes better young. So I think my next experiment will be to make one in a corny with a spunding valve or pressure barrel and see what it’s like on day three.

Twostage said:

Further update on the farmhouse book.

Really good quote about not being too hung up on the numbers “if you don’t like the temperature of your mash move your thermometer “

Lars “first name terms with the author now” talks about how the farmhouse beers are not carbonated as in they don’t deliberately put sugar in to make them fizzy. The light carbonation comes from fermentation restarting when the beer warms up. This made me think that we go to great lengths to get the recipe right and then bung sugar in to carbonate it. It might be a small effect but it must introduce flavours we might not want. So what we should really be doing is holding back some wort and using that to prime.

Another thing is they don’t need to mature and can literally be drunk two or three days after pitching the yeast. Some say it tastes better young. So I think my next experiment will be to make one in a corny with a spunding valve or pressure barrel and see what it’s like on day three.

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Adding potatoes to the mash helps with head retention. So you can add mash to the mash .

Some of the brewers add hop tea to taste i.e. they add some, taste it and if it’s not to their liking they add more. Like a chef with salt.

Twostage said:

Further update on the farmhouse book.

This made me think that we go to great lengths to get the recipe right and then bung sugar in to carbonate it. It might be a small effect but it must introduce flavours we might not want. So what we should really be doing is holding back some wort and using that to prime.

Another thing is they don’t need to mature and can literally be drunk two or three days after pitching the yeast. Some say it tastes better young. So I think my next experiment will be to make one in a corny with a spunding valve or pressure barrel and see what it’s like on day three.

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I think it's a practice in some German breweries to add newly fermenting wort, from a new batch, to fermented-out wort from an old batch.

As for tasting better young. we don't know how awful it tastes at best. I recall my student days when the cheapest one-can kit with sugar, brown sugar, treacle or whatever we could get our hands on was knocked up into an alcoholic beverage if it was drinkable, it was excellent! Any alcohol was better than no alcohol and I suspect there's an element of that in the Northern Scandinavian farmhouse tradition. We're not all invited to fill our drinking horns with mead in the halls of Valhalla!

Twostage said:

I knew all this hygiene lark was overrated .

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Even I have my limits

I have been tempted to plant juniper but for other reasons.

MashBag said:

Even I have my limits

I have been tempted to plant juniper but for other reasons.

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I have planted them and I think they're just about big enough to snip a few twigs off. They've come on in Leaps and bounds this year.
I'll have to read The Book again to get my bearings as it's been a few years.

Twostage said:

Adding potatoes to the mash helps with head retention. So you can add mash to the mash .

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So I read. So I tried it. The beer was fine after a complete baulzake of a sparge.
Didn't notice any difference in head retention though.
In future, if I did it again, I'd add powdered spud like Smash.

Taters... Tried that years ago. Never again.

An Ankoù said:

So I read. So I tried it. The beer was fine after a complete baulzake of a sparge.
Didn't notice any difference in head retention though.
In future, if I did it again, I'd add powdered spud like Smash.

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It maybe only helps if the rest of the mash doesn't contribute anything.

Finished the farmhouse book. Definitely one of the best brewing books I've read. It is sad to think that families have been brewing farmhouse beers since there were farmhouses and now it has nearly died out. They are broken threads that can't be mended.

Although he includes his attempts at recipes he says you can't actually make them as you would need the right ingredients and equipment (think huge wood burning ovens, mash tuns shaped like canoes etc. etc.). He doesn't like the fact that some commercial breweries are sticking a few juniper branches in the mash tun and calling it farmhouse beer. I get that but I think learning from the book and using some of the techniques would be fun if nothing else.

In the final chapter he says something along the lines of the pleasure of designing and brewing beer that reflects your personality and taste. Interesting thought, I tend to brew a style or follow a recipe, hadn't thought of brewing something that was Twostage.

@peebee if you want to borrow it PM me.

Just over halfway through reading modern lager beer. A lot of info and they take you through the history, talk to brewers, give you the science and then suggest what it might mean to the brewer. Its a bit repetitive, I don't know if this is so you can read chapters in isolation or a result of more than one author. Interesting that American and European pale malts are different (Americans tend to want higher diastatic power to help with adjunct brewing). One thing I'm definitely going to try is a decoction mash when I have my next go at a Staropramen. I was debating with myself what malt they used for the colour and the answer is they don't, they decoct and that gives the colour.

Twostage said:

Just over halfway through reading modern lager beer. A lot of info and they take you through the history, talk to brewers, give you the science and then suggest what it might mean to the brewer. Its a bit repetitive, I don't know if this is so you can read chapters in isolation or a result of more than one author. Interesting that American and European pale malts are different (Americans tend to want higher diastatic power to help with adjunct brewing). One thing I'm definitely going to try is a decoction mash when I have my next go at a Staropramen. I was debating with myself what malt they used for the colour and the answer is they don't, they decoct and that gives the colour.

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I'm about 2/3rds of the through. It's an excellent book. I think a lot of information in it could help improve ales as well as lagers.

RichardM said:

I'm about 2/3rds of the through. It's an excellent book. I think a lot of information in it could help improve ales as well as lagers.

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I'm about half way through and this is one of my takeaways too. It obviously leans more towards lager brewing, but there is a lot of very sound information that is applicable to any brew. I've found it quite an easy, yet engrossing and informative read.

RichardM said:

I'm about 2/3rds of the through. It's an excellent book. I think a lot of information in it could help improve ales as well as lagers.

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Yes. Or use it as inspiration to do something different. For instance the lager that was served from a cold barrel which had no secondary fermentation or carbonation because as it was fermented cold and already had about 1.5 vols of co2. They compared it to a British cask ale in that respect (low carbonation). So you could make a beer as normal but then second ferment it cold with lager yeast letting the excess co2 out and serve it like that.

My favourite quote is 'biological carbon dioxide will bond to the beer matrix'. I like the sound of bonding with the beer matrix.

Twostage said:

My favourite quote is 'biological carbon dioxide will bond to the beer matrix'. I like the sound of bonding with the beer matrix.

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Sounds like BBB to me.

Bullșhit Baffles Brains.

Stu's Brews said:

I'm about half way through and this is one of my takeaways too. It obviously leans more towards lager brewing, but there is a lot of very sound information that is applicable to any brew. I've found it quite an easy, yet engrossing and informative read.

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The equations sometimes look daunting but they are straight forward. I was a bit frustrated (you might not have read this bit yet) when they walked you through the equations to calculate the additional wort required to hit the desired co2 and then said 'now you just need to set the spunding valve to the correct pressure' without telling you how to calculate what correct is.

Definitely an informative read.

An Ankoù said:

Sounds like BBB to me.

Bullșhit Baffles Brains.

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Lol. It does sound like it. Try this from chromatology online...

In a recent paper, you and your team profiled a set of 120 diverse beer samples by rapid flow-injection analysis Fourier transform ion cyclotron mass spectrometry (1). Why is it important to uncover and assign compositional information to what your paper describes as “thousands of yet-unknown metabolites in the beer matrix?”

Twostage said:

The equations sometimes look daunting but they are straight forward. I was a bit frustrated (you might not have read this bit yet) when they walked you through the equations to calculate the additional wort required to hit the desired co2 and then said 'now you just need to set the spunding valve to the correct pressure' without telling you how to calculate what correct is.

Definitely an informative read.

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Yeah not reached that bit yet but will make sure I have a sabre to hand so I can suitably rattle it!