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.
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.
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