Recreating Medieval English Ales

(a recreation of late 13th - 14th c. unhopped English ales)

(designed and brewed by Tofi Kerthjalfadsson, Sept. 23rd -- Dec. 28th, 1998)

In medieval England, ale was an alcoholic drink made from grain, water, and fermented with yeast. The difference between medieval ale and beer was that beer also used hops as an ingredient. Virtually everyone drank ale. It provided significant nutrition as well as hydration (and inebriation). The aristocracy could afford to drink wine some of the time as well, and some times the poor could not even afford ale, but in general ale was the drink of choice in England throughout the medieval period.

These recipes are a modest attempt to recreate ales that are not only "period", i.e. pre-17th century, but is actually medieval. These ales are based on newly available evidence from the late 13th and early 14th centuries.

Not only was beer significantly different some three hundred years ago, in 1700, in comparison to today, ale was significantly different around 1300 than either ale or beer was in 1600. The primary reason for this difference in the product is a seemingly small difference in technique: for an ale, the wort, the liquid containing sugars and protein extracted from the grain, was not boiled prior to fermenting. For a beer, the wort had to be boiled with the hops. This seemingly small difference was in fact a change in technology that had long-reaching consequences for the preservation, as well as taste and nutritional value of the beer.

To make these ales I've tried to use only medieval techniques and appropriate equipment. I have not used the most egregiously modern tool, the thermometer. The first batch I did not even measured my results with a hydrometer (a tool used by modern brewers to measure the quantity of sugars dissolved in a liquid). The efficiency of a batch - the extent to which starches in the grains have been turned into sugars disolved in the liquid - can be measured with this tool. Also by comparing the hydrometer measurement from prior to fermentation with the post-fermentation measurement, the alcohol content of a brew can be deduced. Although I did measure the results of the second batch with a hydrometer, I did not adjust or an any other way alter this batch on the basis of these measurements.

First I will present the main sources for these recipes, then my actual recipes for these ales, and finally a discussion of the recipes. This discussion starts with a brief summary of ale and ale brewing in medieval England, and then discusses my choices of ingredients, the quantities and proportions involved, and finally the methods used to make the ales. This discussion section is critical to the appreciation of the recipe, since some of the methods differ substantially from modern, or even 16th--17th C. beer brewing methods.

Main Sources

These two recipes are primarily based on evidence in Judith Bennett's recent book Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England. This book has a wealth of information on brewing in medieval England, including many quotations from medieval records, and is well worth reading.

These two recipes are based on two pieces of information from Bennett's book:

Our most direct evidence of domestic brewing comes from elite households. In 1333--34, the household of Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare, brewed about 8 quarters of barley and dredge each week, each quarter yielding about 60 gallons of ale. Brewing varied by the season of the year, with vast amounts produced in December (when more than 3,500 gallons were brewed) and quite restricted production in February (only 810 gallons). The members of the Clare household drank strong ale throughout the year, imbibing with particular gusto during the celebrations of Christmas and the New Year.
[Bennett, p. 18]

... In 1282, when Robert Sibille the younger was presented at the court of Kibworth Harcourt for selling his ale at too high a price, the stipulated price left him little room for profit. Having paid 2s. for 4 bushels of malt and required to sell 5 gallons of ale for 2d., he would have had to draw 60 gallons from his malt just to recoup his investment. His ale, in other words, would have been very weak indeed and his profits very low.
[Bennett, p. 21]

These two recipes are based on these quotes (and other information). The first, Weak Ale, recipe is based on the Clare household grain mix, but at the cost-break-even strength of Robert Sibille the younger.

The second recipe is a recreation of the Clare household ale, at full strength, and correcting several minor details in the ingredients.

Many of the details of these recipes are different than a modern all-grain brewer might expect; I have endeavored to explain the evidence and reasoning behind all of the choices in ingredients and techniques in the discussion section below.

Recipe 1: Weak Ale

For 2 1/2 gallons of ale:

Ingredients:

• 4 2/3 lbs., Hugh Baird brand English Pale malt
• 1 1/2 lbs., oats (rolled)
• 13 qts., water
• 1 pkt, Danstar brand Nottingham ale yeast
• 1 pkt, Danstar brand Windsor ale yeast
  results as of batch 4 (Dec. 3 1998) indicate that this is the best yeast mix after all.
• 1/4 oz., Light Oak chips
  I would leave this out for future batches - see below about Oak

Sanitize an insulated tun (I used my 10-gal. Gott mash-lauter tun), and a fermentation vessel (a 4-gal. food-grade plastic bucket with lid). Also sanitize a strainer if needed to separate liquid from grain.

Boil water. Crush the malt, then mix it well, while still dry, with the oats.

Open up the insulated tun and place it on the floor near the stove (where the boiling water is). Pour 2 quarts of water into the tun from a reasonable height, moderately slowly. (The idea here is to let the water release some heat in water vapor while pouring -- see the techniques section below under mashing.)

Pour all the dry grain into the lauter tun.

Slowly pour 3 more quarts of boiling water over the grain. Don't stir. Put the cover on the tun and let it stand for 10 mins. Then add 1 more quart of boiling water. At this point, there should be a very small amount of visible liquid. Put the lid back on and wait 20 more mins.

Now take the lid off and stir it all up. It should be about the consistency of fairly thick porridge. Put the lid back on and do something else for a while -- at least an hour and a half. (I went out for a beer with some friends for 3 1/2 hours.)

Open up the tun and stir in 3 more quarts of boiling water, and stir. Close up again and wait 25 more mins.

Finally, add remaining boiling water (4 quarts -- don't worry about pouring it in from a height). Stir well.

Set up the sanitized fermenter. Open the mash tun valve (or otherwise start straining out the wort, that is the liquid part, from the grain. (Unlike modern methods, I did not recirculate the liquid in any way.) The first gallon should go quickly; straining the last gallon should be done somewhat more slowly in order to get most of the liquid out.

Close the fermenter and let the wort cool overnight.

Rehydrate both packages of yeast according to the package instructions (being careful to use water that has been boiled and cooled, and a glass that has been sanitized in some way). Pitch the yeast into the wort, and shake, stir, and otherwise agitate the wort in order to aerate it.

Let the ale ferment for a day; the yeast should have started, and activity should be well under way. Boil the oak chips in approx. 1 cup water. When the water is the color of a cup of tea, take off heat and allow to cool some. Pour off water, then add approx. 1/2 cup of water back into chips. Raise this to a boil again, then allow to cool; it should be just barely darker in color than normal water. Add this oak-water to the wort.

Let the ale ferment for a couple more days. Draw off and serve.

Observations on the product, Sep. 26, 1998

The ale was first served when still young (i.e. not done fermenting). Surprisingly, and counter to the conjectures of some historians, this ale was not sweet. Much of this lack of sweetness could be explained by the ale being (deliberately) weak.

It tasted somewhat like "liquid bread" -- much more so than more modern beer. It also had a fair amount of tannic taste; much more than could be explain by the addition of oak. I suspect this was mostly due to the final addition of boiling water just before straining out the liquor. This would tend to have the effect of extracting tannins from the hulls of the barley.

It was presented on a fairly hot day; several people commented on how refreshing such a drink could be in such conditions. It also seemed to have a fairly low alcohol content, though since I did not do a specific gravity measurement on it, I could not say what the true strength of the ale was.

Recipe 2: Clare household Strong Ale and Ordinary Ale

(batches 2 -- 5)

Two ales, one strong and one ordinary, of between 1 1/2 and 2 gallons each, can be made thus:

Ingredients:

• 8 lbs., Hugh Baird brand English Pale malt
• 1 1/3 lbs., (Baird) Pale malt, roasted.
  For darker ale, roast to amber: 30 mins. at 225 F. followed by 30 mins. at 300 F. For lighter, roast an hour at 225 F.
• around 3 lbs., oats (rolled)
• 14 to 16 qts., water (main batch)
  14 will produce 1 1/2 gallons of ale; 16 will produce 2 gallons
• 6 to 8 qts., water (second runnings)
• 1 pkt, Danstar brand Nottingham ale yeast
• 1 pkt, Danstar brand Windsor ale yeast

Pre-heat the oven to 225 degrees F. Measure out 1 1/3 lbs. of pale malt, and place it in an e.g. 9 x 13 inch baking pan. When the oven is hot, place the malt in the oven and bake for 30 mins. Then increase the heat and bake another 30 mins. Or, for a lighter colored ale, simply bake 60 mins. at 225 F. Remove and set out to cool.

Sanitize an insulated tun (again, my 10-gal. Gott mash-lauter tun), and two fermentation vessels (two 3-gal. food-grade plastic buckets with lids).

Boil water for first runnings (14 to 16 qts.). Crush the malt, mixing the amber (baked) malt with the pale malt. Then mix the oats with the crushed malt well.

If your tun has a false bottom or other similar device, pour in enough boiling water to cover it. Then pour in all of the grain. Finally, slowly ladle the remaining water over the grain, pouring from some height.

Cover the mash tun and let sit 30 mins. Open and stir well, then close and let sit another 3 1/2 to 4 hours. This is a hot mash, so it will need this long period of time to mash (convert the starches into sugars).

Put the water for the second running on to boil. Set up the first fermentation vessel under the drain valve or tube of the insulated tun, and slowly run the liquor from the first mash into the first vessel. Close and set aside to cool.

After the first liquor has been drained out, and when the water for the second running has reached a boil, pour it into the damp grain. Allow to sit for 30 mins, then set up the second fermentation vessel and run this liquor into it. Close the second fermenter, and allow both to cool overnight.

In the morning, sanitize a smaller pan or ladle, a Pyrex measuring cup, and a spoon. Also boil about a cup of water and cool it, covered. Rehydrate the packets of yeast into 3/4 cup of the boiled water. Pour this yeast mixture into the two fermenters, 2/3 into the strong main batch, 1/3 into the second runnings. Use the sanitized ladle to aerate each of the batches (by picking up liquor and pouring it back in turbulently).

Close the fermenters (filling the water locks, if any) and allow to ferment.

About the recipe

Unlike the first batch, this second batch was based on the proportions used in an aristocratic household. There was probably less concern for the materials cost of the resulting ale, since it would be consumed by the members of the household, rather than being sold at a profit. So, as in other things, the aristocracy had more, and thus could afford to emphasize quality to a greater extent.

This is reflected in the recipe. It used twice as much grain as the first, Weak Ale recipe for less quantity of ale. Unlike the first batch, I measured the specific gravity of both runnings of this batch in order to gauge how well this set of techniques work. The first runnings of batch 2 had an impressive starting gravity of 1.091, about the same starting gravity one would expect in a wine. The first runnings of batch 3 were 1.085, and batch 4 were 1.090. The second runnings of batch 2 had a starting gravity of 1.051, about the same as a reasonably strong modern beer. (I did not collect second runnings from batches 3 or 4.)

This technique is not very efficient. In modern brewing, using a thermometer to carefully control the mash and carefully sparging (rinsing out) the grain, I usually expect to get at least 25 points (thousandths) of specific gravity for every pound of grain per gallon of liquid. (So if I made 5 gallons of beer with 10 lbs of malt, I would expect to get a starting specific gravity of over 1.050: 1.000 for the water, plus 0.025 * 10 lbs / 5 gallons.)

For the first runnings of batch 2, I got an efficiency of 11 points per (lbs/gal). The second runnings gave an additional 6.2 points per (lbs/gal). This improves the total up to 17.2 -- still much worse than the 25+ I can get with modern techniques. The first Batch 3 worked out to about the same, and batch 4 worked out to 2 gallons at 1.090, or 15 points per (lbs/gal).

To the modern brewer, the quantities of grain described in these sources seem extraordinarily large. However, the process seems to be so inefficient that large quantities of grain are required to produce ale of adequate strength using these older techniques.

Observations on the second batch, Oct. 31, 1998

The second batch was made with a yeast mixture of:

• 1 pkt, Danstar brand Nottingham ale yeast
• 1 pkt, Danstar brand Windsor ale yeast
• 1 pkt, Fleischmann's brand bread yeast (plain, not quick-rise)
• Dregs from 1 bottle, Cantillon brand Gueuze Lambic

Something in the revised yeast mixture was a mistake. The ale fermented out quite quickly, with much less activity on the morning of day 4 than there was the previous evening. So it fermented.

There was, however, a nasty and strong under- and after-taste, that was reminiscent of a minor taste in Lambic. My current suspicions are that adding the bread yeast to the ale yeasts was not a problem, but that adding dregs from the Gueuze was the cause of this bad taste. Other brewers have suggested that this batch should be allowed to age for a year and tasted after that. I will be doing this, but such age is strictly counter to the evidence (below) that ale was served fresh.

Observations on the third batch, Nov. 21, 1998

The third batch yeast mixture omitted the lambic, but retained the Fleischmann's bread yeast:

• 1 pkt, Danstar brand Nottingham ale yeast
• 1 pkt, Danstar brand Windsor ale yeast
• 1 pkt, Fleischmann's brand bread yeast (plain, not quick-rise)

This batch did not have some of the more subtle nasty under-tones of the second batch (with the Lambic), but still had a really nasty smell and taste reminiscent of paint thinner.

Observations on the fourth batch, Dec. 3, 1998

For the third batch, I used only the Danstar Nottingham and Windsor ale yeasts, as indicated in the full recipe above.

The nasty paint-thinner taste is gone, and the bread yeast seems to be the culprit. In retrospect this isn't too surprising - bread yeast has been raised to produce a maximum amount of CO2 gas, and any higher-order alcohols that the yeast may produce will be burnt off when the bread is baked. In ale, however, these off flavors will stay in the batch, harming the taste. So, in the end, this bread yeast proved unsuitable for brewing (which is not exactly a big surprise).

The fourth batch is strongly alcoholic, but has a pleasant, apple-like taste. All in all, it tastes like a stronger and more pleasant version of the weak ale (above).

The yeast mixture probably can be improved upon, but I have not yet found a quick-and-dirty method of substantially improving the mixture over using these two ale yeasts.