My "1849 Whitbread porter" recipe based on what Ron Pattinson had dug up (alternative to DPBC's 1850 recipe that I couldn't verify; did not like, and felt was suspiciously "mis-recorded") finally got casked/kegged yesterday. It's had a rocky journey getting this far (brewed a month ago).
I was using a Grainfather which failed to handle the hop quota (pump blocked). The GF had to be emptied with a jug! And alternative cooling organised before pitching (S-33 dried yeast, I can't be bothered with liquid yeasts for poky "GF" sized batches). Then fermentation "stuck" at 1.027 and seemingly didn't respond much to rousing and pitching with the more aggressive S-04 yeast. I discovered I'd only mashed for 45 minutes at 67C rather than the intended 75 minutes (Chevallier barley malt needs the more careful handling - this was obviously the reason for the "stuck" ferment). Then over a week later when I was getting ready to cask/keg, it did respond. It took another week to ferment down and went way past intended FG of 1.018-19 and finished up 1.011. The S-04 had obviously taken hold giving a very untypical (historically) 80% apparent attenuation.
At the moment smokiness seems a little high based on new information (for me) about smokiness in the 19th Century. And "caramel" flavours lower than my earlier Porter attempts (but perhaps more in line with the "new information").
I used the "brown malt" emulation from my modified Excel based grist calculator:
Which has more flexibility with "smokiness" and "caramel flavours" (Recipe 1 in the next):
The spreadsheet really needs updating so as to have the "curve" information and "bin size" judgements included (this information is currently manually transferred from my Visio drawings. The spreadsheet can be downloaded here: <
Historical Malt Emulations (Excel)> and I'll keep it up-to-date should I change the "curve" details.
The "new information" suggests smokiness was increased into the 19th Century, but must have decreased again as rotating cylinder kilns became more used (for other than Black Malt) by mid-19th Century. Whitbread would have most certainly been an early adopter of this practice.
Other brews with these emulations are in the pipeline (I've already got the "Cobb & Co Amber Small Beer" ready for drinking, one of
@Cwrw666 favourites, and "William Black's Brown Stout" to be brewed very soon, a choice inspired by
@An Ankoù activities, both are DPBC researched recipes. But they'll need a new thread to write up in … they're late Georgian!