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| Historic Brewing http://www.sabresjunkie.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5119 |
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| Author: | Displaced Fan [ Mon Dec 13, 2010 6:29 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Historic Brewing |
I know there are some like minded beer buffs here and I was wondering if you guys know anyone on the interwebs that brews and sells historic brews. Wanting to get some beer brewed with ancient recipes like those Dogfish Head has done in the past with Edgyptian and Chinese recipes taken from chemical testing and the like. Drinking a 90 minute IPA from Dogfish and thought I'd ask. |
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| Author: | Crosscheck [ Mon Dec 13, 2010 8:47 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Historic Brewing |
Dogfish are the main purveyors of that sort of thing based on their success with Midas' touch. I think their various historic beers are an interesting novelty but I've never felt the urge to buy them more than once. Port Brewing (Pizza port and Lost Abbey) make a "hot rock" lager. The process involves heating up rocks (oddly enough) and putting them in the wort to create the boil. This goes back to times before brewers had metal brew kettles so direct firing wasn't an option. But even with Dogfish, they're guessing based on chemical analysis, I really doubt they're making a clone of something ancient. Some small breweries play with old ingredients like using spruce tips instead of hops...but that's more experimental than historic. Historically, a brewer would brew with whatever was available locally. If you had sweet potatoes you brew sweet potato beer, if you had apples you brewed cider, if you had honey you brewed mead or braggot. If you want truly historic beers, there are several German and Belgian brands that have been in continuous production for over 800 years...same with some English breweries. If you want the "drink what our forefather's drank and tasted", those would be what I would seek out. |
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| Author: | Stuuuuuuu [ Mon Dec 13, 2010 11:26 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Historic Brewing |
1554 from New Belgium is based on a found recipe from a monastery in the late Middle Ages. Or is that Abbey ale? |
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| Author: | Crosscheck [ Tue Dec 14, 2010 12:41 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Historic Brewing |
The problem with old recipes is we don't have a true understanding of the ingredients they had or any way to replicate them. What they called barley has since been selectively bred out of existence. The malted barley brewers use now, and for the last 100 years or so, is highly modified, meaning it can produce enough enzymes of its own (and then some) to complete the starch to sugar transformation in the mash. Not so back then. Their hops were the great great ancestors of the specifically grown high alpha acid, mildew and insect resistant ones we have now. They didn't know what the hell yeast was, much less select for pure strains like we do now. It's a very difficult thing to reverse engineer. |
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