Ancient and Obscure Beers

Ancient and Obscure Beers Geoff Groff Mark Pangle [email protected] [email protected] Juniper Ales What is juniper ale? Sahti and gotlandsdrika are traditional ales brewed in the Scandinavian countries of Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Currently it is not as common as it historically was, due to large industrialized breweries and changes in ale/beer temperance. Juniper has a major role in the brewing of these particular ales as do other trees and herbs. It is still being brewed, even commercially. Brewing Juniper Ales Juniper plays a major role in the making of both sahti and gotlandsdrika, and has been a traditional herb used in ale making in Norway and the Scandinavian countries for centuries. A few other trees are used as well; alder is used frequently, along with birch, spruce, hazel, oak, and willow. Notable characteristics of brewing sahti; lots of juniper, small amounts of hops, rarely a boil after the mash, traditionally uncarbonated, a strong ale (>1.075) and a quick turnaround from mash to glass. Brewing Juniper Ales The mash process would be familiar to homebrewers, the malt is soaked in hot water, or somewhat more commonly, a juniper extract. The mash can last anywhere from an hour or several days. As the ancient brewers really no idea what mash temperatures they were hitting, there were typically multiple hot water additions to raise the temperature. If hops are used, they are more commonly added in the mash to add aroma, or added in a boil if one is done. Brewing Juniper Ales After the mash is done, the wort is drained and saved, and the wet malt is removed from the vessel. A separate vessel, called the kuurna in Finland, which would be a wooden trough or barrel with a spigot at one end, would be lined with a crosshatch pattern of boiled straw and juniper branches. Brewing Juniper Ales Then the wet malt is ladled onto the straw and branches. Finally, the fresh wort is slowly poured over the wet grains, and through the juniper branches, functioning as an efficient strainer and leaving all particulate matter behind. Then the wort is transferred to a fermenter, allowed to cool, after which yeast is pitched and allowed to ferment. Brewing Juniper Ales • Boiled mash and wort • Boiled mash and wort with repeated pourings • Boiled wort but not the mash • Mash and some wort boiled • Mash boiled but not the wort • Some wort boiled but not the mash • Neither mash or wort boiled (called raw ale) Brewing Juniper Ales Ingredients Typically the grain bill is malted barley alone, kilned perhaps between 10L and 20L, or has some dark malted rye. Munich malt appears often in modern recipes. Crystal malts are often used as well, and in smaller amounts, other grains such as flaked oats or unmalted wheat. Occasionally other adjuncts such as honey or brown sugar are used. Brewing Juniper Ales A typical grain bill would be: • 70% to 100% malted barley or pilsner malt • 10% to 20% munich malt • 5% to 15% malted rye • Up to about 10% crystal malts Smoked malt is sometimes used, including juniper smoked malt. Brewing Juniper Ales Traditionally, the yeast used was Finnish baker’s yeast, but as having a source of this outside of Finland might be difficult, using a German weizen yeast is often suggested as the Finnish baker’s yeast produced hefty phenolic and estery notes. Hops are typically those with lower alpha acid content, often a noble hop, and the types used can include Williamette, Hallertau, or Perle. Brewing Juniper Ales Today’s Sahti Juniper extract: A little over 35 lbs of grain. 1.75 oz juniper berries Several juniper branches 59% 2-row barley Boiled for 15 minutes 27% dark munich malt 0.5 oz juniper berries and 11% rye malt 2 oz Northern Brewer hop 3% flaked oats pellets in the mash. Mash for 90 minutes. OG was 1.085 Brewing Gose What is Gose? Before we get into where you can find it today, we must look to the town of Goslar, Germany to find its roots. The name itself comes from the river Gose that runs through the town, and rightfully so considering the large contribution that the local water has on the beer’s flavor. Not surprisingly, some of this salt dissolved into the local groundwater which was used during the brewing of their local beer. Since they didn’t have water softeners or bottled water, they just used what they had and made it work. Brewing Gose The aroma of the style should be clean, with a detectable level of floral/spicy notes from the use of coriander during brewing. Esters and fusel alcohols should be very low. The unmistakable noble hop character found in most other German beers should not be present in the least bit. Generally speaking, the flavor of a gose is moderately sour, crisp, with a slight hint of salt and spiciness from the coriander in the background. Brewing Gose The traditional base malts for a Gose are wheat and Pilsner malt, used in a 60:40 ratio. The Pilsner malt gives us that very familiar crisp, clean flavor that many pale German beers are well known for. Extract brewers will want to use dry or liquid wheat and Pilsner malt extracts in the same ratio mentioned earlier. When calculating the amount of grain or extract necessary to brew a successful Gose, you are looking for a beer that weighs in at about 3.9–4.9% ABV. Brewing Gose One of the trickier parts of brewing this style of beer is how you decide to bring lactic acid to the party. Traditionally, the brewers used to spontaneously ferment the beer. A mix of yeast and Lactobacillus would float into the open fermenters and provide them with the flavor profile and attenuation they were looking for. Another method is to simply add lactic acid to the beer after fermentation is complete prior to kegging or bottling. The third way to accomplish this is to add acidulated malt to the mash. Brewing Gose Since the beer we are trying to create needs to be on the drier side, a mash conversion temperature of 148–150 °F (64– 66 °C) is recommended. The base malts should be allowed to rest for a minimum of 60 minutes. If you use acidulated malt in the mash, there is a specific way you need to do it. Brewing Gose A 60-minute boil time will be sufficient for this beer, as we aren’t striving for much color pickup or extensive wort concentration. Hop additions should be minimal and done very early in the boil. A single addition of a noble German hop like Hallertauer, Tettnanger or any American equivalent hop variety will be sufficient to provide the limited amount of bitterness required (8–15 IBU). Brewing Gose Another area where personal preference can be exercised is the amount of salt and coriander you decide to use. In the case of salt, you have the added bonus of deciding what type of salt you want to put in your beer. Just be sure to stay away from iodized salt, for flavor reasons. The coriander seed you add should be fresh and freshly ground. You may even want to toast the seeds in a dry pan for 5–10 minutes like the chefs do to bring out the essential oils. Brewing Gose As for the yeast that is appropriate to the style, you’ll want to pitch a strain that is very clean and not too flocculent. Attenuation should be at around the 74–78% range to help achieve the dryness this style requires. A couple of commercially available strains that fit these parameters are White Labs WLP029 (German Ale/Kölsch) or Wyeast 1007 (German Ale). Fermentation should be conducted in a temperature range of 66–68 °F (19–20 °C). Other Ancient Ales and Beers Steinbier In the early days of brewing, brewers were much more concerned with method than style. Heating the water and boiling the wort were probably the greatest obstacle to making a decent beer. Brewing vessels were typically made from wood and as such could not be placed over a wood fire to boil the contents. Other Ancient Ales and Beers Steinbier derives its name from German, and this method was common in the German and Scandinavian regions up to the early 20th century. In German, “stein” means “stone” and “bier” means “beer”. Chunks of granite stone were heated in a wood fire, and once hot enough, were added into the vessel with the wort and/or mash. Hot granite would be added until a boil was sustained. Granite is the preferred stone for this method as it can withstand the high temperatures. Other Ancient Ales and Beers Due to the wort being in direct contact with the hot stones, the sugar would often caramelized on its surface. As the stone was then also heated directly in a fire, this method imparts a notably ashy or sooty flavor with some caramel taste. Steinbeir is more about a method of brewing than it is about a particular style, as any style could be made using hot granite, so long as you are looking for the sooty and burnt caramel profile. Other Ancient Ales and Beers Gruit An older ale that uses various herbs or spices to flavor it, and was popular prior to the extensive usage of hops to bitter the ale. Common herbs used were sweet gale, mugwort, yarrow, lemon grass, ginger, nutmeg, and heather. While other unhopped ales have survived the increased usage of hops, gruit did not.

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