Homebrew - Victorian Style

There is something delightfully pompous, perhaps a little insane, about book titles in the Victorian era that always reminds me of the "Connections" TV series presented by James Burke. In episode 2 there is a segment about Victorian weather science in the Highlands, that describes the effect of science on the people of Victorian Britain, in that it:

"made them all lunatic in the same way".

An example of a daft book title is this magnificent tome from 1852...

Can you get much more condescending than the head chef to the Royal Family should advise the working classes on how to cook? Admittedly I bought the book precisely for the title and out of curiosity about what the servants of the upper echelons though regular folks should, could, or even would be willing and able to cook. Francatelli even gives a list of equipment that said "working classes" require for the recipes and techniques in his book, which would cost £6 12s 4d in pre-decimal currency, that's about £700/$930/€800 today, and includes such things as a potato steamer for 2 Shillings, a 2 quart tin saucepan for 1s 6d, and a 12 gallon copper "for washing or brewing" to be had at the princely sum of £1 10s or £160/$213/€185 in today's money.

A 12 gallon copper for brewing you say, don't forget that in 1852 the Imperial gallon had been standardised for nearly 30 years as being 4.6(ish) litres, as opposed to the old gallons being 3.8 litres, and still in use in the USA. A 12 gallon copper would hold 54.5 litres. Also included in the list of essentials is a "mash-tub" for another 10 Shillings (£50/$66/€60) and two "cooling tubs" again for 10 Shillings, though Franctelli does allow the downtrodden masses to use "an old wine or beer cask, cut in halves" as this "would be cheaper, and answer the same purpose". Seemingly used casks were to be had for a mere 6 Shillings (£32/$42/€37).

All of this detail would suggest then that the book has a recipe for brewing your own beer, and thankfully it does not disappoint, as number 130 is handily titled "How to Brew Your Own Beer", though confusingly our chef friend recommends a 30 gallon copper and a we actually have a size for the mash tub, 54 gallons, which is 245.5 litres. The other equipment recommended is:

"another tub of smaller size, called an underback; a bucket or pail, a wooden hand-bowl, a large wooden funnel, a mash-stirrer, four scraped long stoutsticks, a good-sized loose-wrought wicker basket for straining the beer, and another small bowl-shaped wicker basket, called a tapwaist, to fasten inside the mash-tub".

A recipe though, a recipe? I hear you cry as you so dearly want to go and make some Victorian style homebrew. Hold your drays sunshine, first things first, water. In a world without universal in home plumbing, what is a homebrewer to do? Well, apparently not to use spring water for a start as "its hardness...is unfit for brewing", remember that at this time geology was very much in its infancy. Ok then, no spring water. Rain water perhaps? Sure, if it is collected in clean vessels, but Francatelli recommends "water fetched from a brook or river" being "free from all calcareous admixture", basically water lacking in calcium carbonate, because the "consequent softness gives them the greater power to extract all the goodness and strength from the malt and hops". Ok, soft water it is then, though if you are an industrial labourer in the cities of Britain leading the Industrial Revolution, I am not convinced you'd be dipping into the Thames, the Trent, or the Clyde for your brewing water.

Eventually, we do get to a recipe, of sorts.

"In order to ensure having good wholesome beer, it is necessary to calculate your brewing at the rate of two bushels of malt and two pounds of hops to fifty-four gallons of water".

More maths...an Imperial bushel is 36.4 litres, a litre is a kilogram, therefore an Imperial bushel is about 36.4kgs, or 80.2lbs, we need two of those for making 54 Imperial gallons, so 160.4lbs of malt and 2 pounds of hops, whole leaf of course, since T-90 pellets weren't a thing yet. After a lot of head scratching and double checking my work, I think this means we would be looking at a starting gravity of about 1.067, and potentially an ABV of 6.4% - assuming the use of pale malt.

What about the hopping? Well for a start, no named variety is mentioned in the book, and if I understand the process correctly, the Victorian homebrewer would have practiced "first wort hopping" as we call it today, viz:

"put your hops into the underback tub, and let the wort run out upon them".

The first mash lasted three hours, and while the runnings were in the underback with the hops, a second mash of 2 hours took place. Eventually giving the brewer sufficient wort to require 2 boils, with the hops split between them. The boil lasts for 90 minutes, and again assuming my numbers are correct we would end up with about 35 IBUs - making the assumption that something like Fuggles were used at about 4% alpha acids.

According to Francatelli, this will eventually "produce three kilderkins of good beer".

Now, I have yet to try and make a beer based on this text, but I do intend to try at some point, though sourcing period appropriate ingredients may be a stumbling block, especially as Francatelli doesn't say what kind of malt his working class readers should use - my hunch is that given diastatic brown malt was still a thing, it might have been that given that Francatelli doesn't mention starting gravities or alcohol content at all, but elsewhere is focused on price of ingredients, and brown malt was cheaper than pale from a monetary stand point.

If I ever figure this out, it would be fun to try and create a recipe and maybe brew it with one of my local breweries...all that is for another day though.

So...You Want to Be A Brewer?

No...don't worry, this isn't a post about being a homebrewer with vague fantasies of upscaling my 5 gallon batches of beer to something that could become a lifestyle business. Nope, I have, sometimes reluctantly, accepted that I will never own my own brewery, for various reasons. So, I will content myself with the occasional brewing project with professionals - if anyone in Virginia is interested, drop me a line, it's been a while since I had a recipe on tap somewhere.

However, there were 66 intrepid souls in 1906 setting out on their education to become brewers through the "Ersten öffentlich Braufachschule in Prag", or "First Public Brewing School of Prague". The earliest reference to the school in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer dates from 1893 and locates the school, according to this advert, at "Wenzelsplatz Nr 54"...

Today that would be known as Václavské náměstí 54, the present day location of a building called Palác Fénix, which was itself built in the late 1920s and thus replaced the buildings in which the brewing school operated. The 1830s building had likewise been built on top of buildings from the 14th century.

By 1906 the school had moved to Mariengasse Nr. 4, or just across the street on what is today Opletalova - ironically on the very street I lived on from 2006 until I left Prague in 2009, and given that the pub I watched Liverpool in for 10 years was on the street opposite Opletalova, I regularly walked past both locations.

It would be in that location then that our 66 friends studied brewing in Prague, and in that school year there were some changes to the curriculum...

It was in 1906 that the school broadened its study program to include lectures in trade law, given by one JUDr. Josef Bohuslav (JUDr is a doctor of both civil and criminal law). As well as studying commercial law, students discovered that their study load had been increased in other subjects - apparently it was felt that not enough time had been allotted to mechanical engineering, and so an hour extra for extra subject had been added.

In the course of the week, our students would study:

• 10 hours of brewing and raw material theory, with František Chodounský (interestingly the guy that claims Pilsner Urquell got their indirect heat kilns from "Brauers Sauer" - I will be digging more into him in the future). 
• 2 hours of administrative theory, again with František Chodounský
• 10 hours of chemistry and lab work, with Dr Heinrich Friedrich
• 4 hours of financial law with a Mr Brokeš
• 4 hours of commercial law with JUDr Bohuslav
• 8 hours of mechanical engineering and steam boiler maintencance with Ing. Josef Pokorný (fun fact, when I taught English in Prague I had a student called Josef Pokorný, he may even have been an engineer)
• 4 hours of exchange law and book-keeping with Dr Haasz

A total of 42 hours a week between the middle of November and the end of June 1907, about seven and a half months, with just shy of half of the hours being the production and fermentation of wort.

The need for mechanical engineering and steam boiler maintenance stirs memories of the first time I attended a brewday at Devils Backbone, when Jason brewed the very first batch of Trukker Ur-Pils, a triple decocted Czech style pilsner that was superb. At one point in the mash, the decoction kettle wasn't heating up as expected, so Jason got under the gantry with a big ass wrench and gave the pipes a smack or several, and hey presto the heating got going again.

Of the 66 students, most came from the lands of the Bohemian crown, but also several from further afield such as Bulgaria, Russia, Poland, Germany, Galicia, and Styria.

I'd be interested to hear how this course of study stacks up with what brewers pursuing professional training here in the US, as well as abroad, had to study in addition to the actual making beer part of brewing.

19th Century Bohemian Beer Brewer

It all started by reading Andreas Krennmair's book of homebrew recipes for historic German and Austrian beers. Andreas includes in the book a recipe from 1834 for "Prague Beer" which I am thinking about brewing in the near future. I wanted to get a more contemporaneous handle on "Prague Beer" and so I started digging around in various online archives, like you do. My digging led me once again to the newspaper archives of the Austrian National Library.

It is sometimes easy to forget that for a thousand years Bohemia was very much in the German sphere of influence, whether as part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1806, or as a kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian Empire up to the end of World War 1. In the mountains and marches of much of western Bohemia there was, for centuries, a large German majority. I don't want to get into the fraught, complicated politics of Bohemia, but rather to point out that it makes sense to go looking for information about the Bohemian brewing world in the Austrian National Library.

The first publication I stumbled upon was "Der Böhmische Bierbrauer", a brewing trade journal that was published in Prague from 1874 to 1916. At the height of World War 1 it was renamed "Der Österreiche Bierbrauer", having relocated to Vienna, after a year of just being "Der Bierbrauer" and being published jointly in Prague and Vienna. In the few issues that I browsed through, I didn't find any descriptions of "Prague Beer" but that is mainly because I starting delving into the ads section of the journal.

Adverts are fascinating pieces of social history and tell us more about the reality of what was going on in a society than lengthy technical treatises about brewing processes and the like. Take, for example, this advert from the January 1st 1891 issue.

A rough translation would be:

"Best clarifying agent! American isinglass, made from thornback ray (ray skin)

Imported directly, only prime quality, cheapest offered to brewers and dealers"

I find it fascinating that there was a business in 1891 selling Isinglass finings, imported from America, to breweries in Bohemia. The address of said business, "Tuchmachergasse 9", would show up time and time again in adverts from this journal, so naturally I looked up a period map to find out where it was...and it is just a few doors down from Pivovarská Nalévárna on modern day Soukenická.

Talking about brewing businesses on streets I know well, I discovered that on the same street as my last apartment in Prague was a malting company:

Leopold Schmied was a malt manufacturer at an address that is today the address of the Autoklub České Republiký. It is fun to think that less than a five minute walk from where I lived, malt was being made. A dark malt for Munich beer, a Bavarian style black malt to be used with the dark Patentmalz for Bock. The pale Patentmalz made for full bodied beers with good foam retention apparently, and there was roast malt for brown beer, porter, and so on and so forth. Hmm...malt being sold for specifically for porter brewing in late 19th century Bohemia? There's a whole world of intrigue right there, what was Bohemian Porter, bottom fermented like Baltic Porter or top fermented as U Fleků's legendary dark beer still was at this time? Schmied could also provide you with caramel malt to meet all your brewing colour and flavour needs. Being locating right opposite a major railway station, they had logistics right on their doorstep - fun fact, the railway station opposite Leopold Schmied Malzfabrik was not the hauptbahnhof of the day, that was the station known today as Masarykovo Nádraží. Today's Hlavní Nádraží was named Franz Josef Station until 1919.

Talking about railway stations, they are the natural place for a brewery to pick up the seed yeast they need to turn lovely sweet wort into even lovelier beer, but who would be selling seed yeast in 19th century Bohemia?

Bürgerliches Brauhaus in Pilsen obviously, though these days they are better known as Pilsner Urquell. For just a single Krone, you could purchase a kilogram (2.2lb), of "excellent and pure" seed yeast. What you didn't get for your money though was packaging and delivery from the railway station in Plzeň, which if I have the right station is this somewhat ornate pile.

I am sure that there will be far more to come as I trawl my way through the digitised newspapers available through the Austrian National Library. I am focusing on the adverts for the time being as they give a sense of the reality of the Bohemian brewing industry at the time, the products available, the names in the business, and where such brewing adjacent businesses were located.

The Other Burton Beer

Despite the fact that the making of beer has been part of the human experience for at least 6000 years, indeed one of the marks of being civilised in the Epic of Gilgamesh was to be a beer drinker (though I am sure ancient Sumerian 'beer' was a very different beast from the modern stuff), there are places which are renowned for their beer throughout the world, for various reasons. Whether it is Plzeň for its pale lager, which spawned endless imitations, Dublin and the stout porter that would define not just a beer style but an entire country in the minds of many, or Munich for its dunkels, there are some cities where beer is the very stuff of life.

One such city is Burton upon Trent in the English Midlands, an area rich in the history of the Industrial Revolution. At one point the city was home to more than a dozen breweries including such world famous names as Bass, Allsopp and Ind Coope. To put that into context, Burton is about the same size as Charlottesville and in the city proper there are currently 2 breweries. When people think about the Burton brewing industry they think of a style of beer which has come to embody in many way the modern brewing industry, India Pale Ale. However, when in 1948 The Brewer's Art listed the four main types of beer being brewed in Britain they were 'pale ale, mild ale, stout and Burton'.

Burton Ale is one of those beer styles which is almost extinct, I say almost because it would seem from my reading (mostly Martyn Cornell's 'Amber, Gold and Black', various of Martyn's blog posts and magazine articles, and naturally Ron Pattinson's blog) that the style lives on in the Winter Warmer genre of strong English ales. In common with many beers, Burton Ale evolved. Over the years it went from being a super strong nut brown ale shipped to the Baltic region to the Victorian era beer made to a recipe of pure pale malt and Kentish hops to create a beer which was about 6% abv and slightly less hopped than the IPAs being sent from Burton to India. Seemingly, and again most of this information is from Martyn, as the Victorian age gave way to the 20th Century Burton Ale became darker again and then in the decades immediately after the Second World War, the style practically died as the public turned away from dark, sweet beers in favour of pale, bitter ones.

According to Martyn's book though, there are still some beers out there which meet the description of a Burton Ale, whether the paler 19th century version or the darker 20th. Fuller's 1845 is apparently based on a Burton style recipe from the Griffin Brewery, Timothy Taylor Ram Tam is an example of a lower strength dark Burton, and Young's Winter Warmer is, according to Martyn, a 'classic of the Burton Ale type'.

Of those three, I have only had the pleasure of the Fullers 1845, and a mighty great pleasure it is, but I have it in mind to try creating some clone recipesof the various stages in the development of Burton Ale for my homebrewing this year. Brewing old beers is one of my favourite types of history (and history is probably one of my favourite things in general), the type you can drink.

International Homebrew Project Reminder

For those that took part in the brewing of the historic Scottish ale, remember to blog about it tomorrow, please remember to put a link to your post in the comments section after my post tomorrow.

If you brewed the recipe but don't blog, feel free to leave tasting notes and any comments about the beer in the comments after my post tomorrow.

I am really looking forward to this beer when I get home from work tonight...

Brew York, Brew York!

I am sure you have noticed that I have something of an interest in the history of beer. More broadly speaking I have an interest in history generally, though someone should point out to the History Channel that more has happened in the millennia of the evolution of man than their 3 Ns - the Nazarene, Nostradamus and the Nazis.

Returning to the theme of beer history, I love reading both Martyn's and Ron's blogs about various facets of beer and brewing history and have been known to dabble in writing about it myself (though I should point out that I know a mere smidge of our learned friends). Given that I am, to re-use my friend Eric's phrase, a "pubcentric" person it is no surprise that my particular interest is more in the role of beer in the history and development of society.

It was, therefore, with interest that I got an email yesterday announcing an upcoming exhibition at the New York Historical Society Museum and Library called "Beer Here: Brewing New York's History". The PR blurb says that the exhibition:

"traces 350 years of the production and consumption of beer in the city—from colonial New York, when beer was a vital source of nourishment and tax revenues, to the current artisanal revolution occurring in microbreweries throughout the state".

As part of the exhibition there is to be a small beer hall showcasing some of New York state's "artisanal brewers", which serves to remind visitors that beer is not just part of the history of New York but a vital part of the present and the future. The exhibition runs from May 25th to September 2nd. I wish I knew if I would be able to get up to New York between those dates because this sounds like just my kind of exhibition, but truth is I doubt I'll find the money and time.

However, what I can do is encourage all of you who will in the city during the exhibition to get along and see how beer has been involved in the shaping of this country.

* the pictures are from the exhibition website and the announcement email I got yesterday.