A nice Tudor beverage please

Some friends and I have taken to brewing beer. I gotta say, I'm hooked. I enjoy beer, and not in a "Whooo! Let's get ripped off of a couple cases of Milwaukee's Best Ice" way, but in a "I really like these flavors" way. Beer is good food, and really life is too short to not experience as much of it as possible. It really only seems natural given my love of history that I would try to combine history and beer.

Luckily for me there are plenty of folks doing just that. From wonderful programs like Kevin Cullen's Ale and Archeology sessions at Discovery World Museum to full production run brews by places like Dogfish Head Brewing, history is alive and well in the modern beer scene. Also luckily for me, the internet is filled with research and documentation on history and gastronomical culture. My two brewing partners, Scott and Rick, are also members of the Trayn'd Bande group I'm a part of and have an interest in this line of though too. All avenues began pointing to producing some historic ales.

The one we chose for our first group brewing session was our of William Harrison's Description of England. This is a 1577 recipe (based on the publication of the book) and covers a household ale brewed by Harrison's wife. Now the recipe itself makes enough beer for a household, as in a crap ton. We needed to scale it down to fit into our modern equipment levels of 5 gallon (US) batches. So using math from the help of Bob Davis's site on some historic brewing, we adjusted the grain and additive levels to the following:

11 lbs of Marris Otter Malt
1 lb of Wheat
1 lb of Oats
1 1/2 oz Cascade Hops
Pinch of Orris Root
Couple of Bay Laurel Berries
1 tsp Wheat Flour
Wyeast London Ale Yeast



Following the recipe recommendations we boiled off 3 gallon batches of water and added it to the mixture of grains. This was to steep while we set another three gallons to boil. The steep time varied a bit from cycle to cycle but ended up being about 50-60 minutes per steep. The first running didn't give us a whole lot of liquid. We really weren't expecting that though. Having all that grain, you expect a bunch of water to get sucked up.


The subsequent steeps and runnings gathered substantially more liquid as the grain was already saturated. The wort we ended up with had a nice cloudy golden color and smelled wonderful. We did a total of three runnings to get the 6 gallons we needed for the boil.


Once we had our 6 gallons we did a fourth run to gather any left over sugars the grains may have been hanging on to. The goal for this was to create a small ale. Small ales are low alcohol versions of regular ales that were consumed by all levels of society as a common drink during the 16th century. Our aim for this was to create a VERY low alcohol version that we could use at events. Here's a look at the super pale color the small ale had before boil.

We proceeded to do our hour long boils with both beers adding our additives as needed. We did use a bit of Irish moss to clarify the full version of the 1577 in the last 15 minutes of the boil. We then got the batches into the fermenters and pitched the yeast.

Ale through the Ages - Gratzer Ale Bottling Day

Last night was bottling night for the Gratzer Ale that was made at the Discovery World Museum's Ale through the Ages program. We headed up to the biology lab on the second floor to see the volunteers hard at work sanitizing equipment. The class participants were invited to bring Polish beers to sample, and we were able to try the same Berliner Weiss from the first class. Another 2 weeks in the keg did amazing things to it. This one was brewed outdoors during one of the Lakefront's many festivals and was inoculated with a wild strain of yeast if I'm not mistaken. The two weeks it spent in the keg between classes changed the beer significantly. It went from a slight thin and sour taste, with citrus notes to a full on sour. It had the horsey sourness of the wild yeast coupled with the citrus notes making it a totally different animal. The acid level tasted high to me, and I started craving some bread and oils to mellow out the flavors in my mouth.

We took a look at the two carboys that were used to ferment the beer and noticed some substantial differences. One carboy was done with a White Labs Kolsch yeast that Keven mentioned too a bit longer to get going. This one did not have any clarifying/fining agents added to it and had a soft amber color that had the distinct haze of a wheat beer. The second carboy was done with a Wyeast German Wheat strain and had Isinglass added as a fining agent. Isinglass is an agent taken from the air bladder of a sturgeon and was used as a clarifying agent historically. This carboy had a darker color to it, and you could see coagulated material in a low suspension. Once we had taken note of the different yeast strains we were instructed on how the bottling would proceed and we began in earnest.

The bottling session is a group affair. One person per carboy manned the bottling wand, filling bottles off the carboy for us. The bottles moved then to a capping table where members of the class vigorously capped the bottles using hand cappers. They then moved down to a labeling table where folks took labels that Kevin had designed and adhered them to the bottle. The process for adhering was interesting as we used a simple 20ld weight paper with laser printing, and milk. The back of the label was dipped into milk and then pressed firmly onto the bottle creating a bond. Excess milk was wiped off and the label was on nice and tight. Kevin said that he had learned the process from a professor of his who was a homebrewer herself. He has had bottles last years with the milk label, but it is susceptible to water, so no ice in the cooler with these. I was on a labeling station and had good conversation with folks around the table while working. It was also nice to sample a few of the smoked ales that people brought to share.

Overall the atmosphere was very relaxed, friendly and an all around good time. When done we were allotted one bottle of each type and if you wanted to stick around and converse a bit there would be left overs. I stuck around for a bit talking to some folks that do history oriented tasks and a few more seasoned brewers about how they do things (and getting tips on my cherry wheat I have going right now) and was able to leave with an extra bottle or two for some good friends that weren't able to make it to this session.

I had a blast and am hoping I'll be able to do more of these. There is a Colonial Porter class in December that sounded great, and Kevin announced three more classes after the first of the year begining with a Medieval Gruit, a traditional Milwaukee wheat, and a Scotch/Irish Heather Ale. I'm hoping some of my brewing compatriots will be able to join me, but even if they don't I know I'm going to try and make it down!

Kevin has put up information from this last session on his site which chronicles the archeology wing of the Discovery World Museum.

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