hist-brewing: Old brown ales-

[OudBruin at aol.com]

Charley Aitchley is talking about really cranking down the mill to "flour" 
his malt- he is right to be dubious about the need to do that. Modern malts 
are genetically different from thier grandparents of the 1700's-the lintner 
ratings are higher in today's malts, and while you might have to work at 
toasting your malts, really pulverising the malt will release more husk 
tannins than you want, and also give more suspended solids in your boil 
resulting in greater chance of infection (from the small islands of 
carbohydrate floating in a sea of beer- these are excellant landing sites for 
opportunistic infections)- aside from that your sparge is going to take 
forever- if you can get a runoff at all...
and the yeild won't really be that much better than your normal brewery grind.
Happy Brewing-
Bruce