hist-brewing: English Ales Malt re:Paul

[bjm10 at cornell.edu]

That serves me right for composing mail so soon after having a new son born!

I meant to write, "Complete Housewife, and an 18th-century..." rather 
than "Complete Housewife, an 18th-century..."


Oh, the 18th-century manual is titled "The London and Country brewer".

The reason that I'm compiling notes on it is that it is not in reprint, 
so I figure I might as well publish a summary.

Does anybody out there have some solid information on what would 
constituted "pale", "amber", and "brown" malts in the 18th century?  One 
thing that was very interesting was the mashing method.  No sparging, of 
course--they used the English multiple-mashing system, but the author 
advocated alternating hot and cold water for mashes, and to do *four* 
mashes of a single grist, combining the first two for "keeping ale" and 
the last two for "small beer".

By "hot" this author had the following method:

Cover water surface with malt (just barely) and bring to boil.  Allow to 
cool until the steam no longer obscured your reflection.  At this point, 
the water was at strike heat.

By "cold" the author meant well or stream temperature.

Anyway, I'm in the process of assembling recipes for ale and pale ale 
from these methods and his recipes.


Oh, one other thing:  The guy was an *incredible* hops-use purist.  He 
was of the opinion that boiling hops for more than 30 minutes was 
detrimental to the final product.  He advocated using more hops, but 
several additions and removals.  I may very well do a parallel brewing to 
test the flavor results.

Oh, and English brewers in the 18th century dry-hopped with alacrity, at 
least if this book is anything to go by.


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