The evils of tea

Hobart Town Gazette and Van Diemen's Land Advertiser,
3 September, 1824

Get the working classes off that miserable and expensive tea and get them brewing their own nourishing beer!

Brewing with wheat, colonial style

1827 brought an abundant wheat harvest in Van Diemen's Land. All these settlers had extra wheat that they couldn't sell for a decent price so suddenly there are lots of homebrewers. It makes sense that homebrewers would use what they had on hand, we've already seen them turn to bran and treacle or molasses when they had to but today we've got something pretty cool because it's tied to a colony-wide event rather than random household  shortages. What else would you do with it all? The savings for brewing beer instead of buying would amount to more than the low price they'd get for selling the wheat. True farmhouse ale.

George Frankland's 'Hobart Town', 1827. Pic pinched
from UTAS

There aren't any recipe details of course, there'd probably be as many recipes as brewers. I think a good place to start would be with something like a wheat version of the burton or strong pale ale style beers that were being brewed in the colonies at the time. 100% wheat malt to 1.070-1.100, the stronger is probably better given we're talking about dealing with surplus wheat. For hops we're ideally after Tasmanian Goldings or something similar with alpha acids in the low range. Probably shoot for 60-100+ IBUs. Chuck in an English ale yeast and you're all set. Really though, any combination of wheat & Tasmanian hops is likely just as authentic as what I've outlined. I wonder if any of the farmers roasted their wheat malt dark to make a wheat porter?

Hobart Town Gazette, 26 May, 1827

It'd probably require all the rice hulls in the land if you're brewing on a 3 vessel system but BIAB brewers can just go for it.

Colonial homebrew again - Hobart 1823

I keep posting homebrew recipes from the 1800s and this isn't the last one. I find it fascinating that there's so much written evidence of the recipes and methods people were using to brew their own beer from nearly 200 years ago. It gives insight into the ways people tried to deal with the climate and the shortage or high costs of normal beer ingredients. This one is the earliest colonial homebrew recipe I've been able to find; from Hobart this time. It's similar to the NSW one I posted the other day so I won't comment on it too much.

From the Hobart Town Gazette and Van Diemen's Land Journal,
March 1823

The climate wasn't so much a problem for brewing in Tasmania so I'm assuming that this recipe was born of a desire to minimise costs or deal with shortages of malt. The treacle or molasses would have made the brew very dark and also very dry. I'm not sure what the wheat bran would contribute if anything in terms of fermentables. Sounds like the kind of beer you brew and drink because it's got alcohol in it rather than for taste. Actually, it's probably not too far off a kit & kilo brew with all added sugar would be like.

Also, I'm glad we've moved past the technique of straining with a hair sieve.

Colonial Style Homebrew & James Squire

I've found some fun stuff as I've been working my way through references to beer and brewing in the early years of the colonies. Lately I've discovered a few home brew recipes which I'll post up here over the next week or two. This first recipe was published in The Australian in Sydney, 1832. From the description, it sounds like it would make something almost, but not quite entirely, unlike beer.

DOMESTIC BREWING.

[We give the following approved recipe, for the convenience of families residing in the country.] 

To make Ale and Porter for a Half-sum— Take ten pounds of small sifted bran, one pound and a quarter of hops, twenty-five pounds of brown sugar. Boil the bran in twenty-five gallons of water for two hours, then strain, dissolve the sugar in four or five gallons of the bran water, and skim it while any impurities arise, then add the hops, and boil, for five minutes more, not longer; then strain and press it well through the cloth; then put it into the cask, and fill it up with the hot bran water; then mash it for half an hour, letting it flow out at the bottom, and pouring it in at the top of the cask. — N. B. The addition of ten ounces of bruised liquorice, with half an ounce of sliced gentian root, and two tea spoonsful of salt of steel to the above, will make good porter. The cask should be placed on its end, with a cock about three inches from the bottom and a hole of about one inch in diameter in the centre of the top. 

The fermentation will commence almost immediately and continue briskly till all the sugar is decomposed. During this period the hole at the top of the cask should be left open, but at the expiration of this time, generally about a fortnight,the cask should be bunged up, but the bung re-moved for a minute or two every second day, for another fortnight, when the whites and shells often eggs should be added as in fining wine, after which it should be finally closed up for about three weeks, when it will be fit to bottle or drink.The sugar and bran afford a most excellent substitute for malt, six pounds of sugar being equal to a bushel of malt. The greater or lesser degree of strength of the liquor will depend on the quantity of sugar used; the above gives a tolerably strong, and pleasant beverage.— South African Advertiser.

4.5kg of bran, 11.5kg of brown sugar and 550g hops @ 5 minutes with a brew length of about 130 litres, how could that go wrong? It's hard to imagine that this recipe would produce beer that was even close to pleasant. Add some bruised liquorice, gentian root and salt of steel and I'm sure you've got some kind of incredible not-really-porter on your hands.

One of the problems for early settlers was that malt and hops had to be imported from the UK, were expensive and not always available and imported beer was relatively expensive. The other, for those in NSW where this recipe came from, was that the hot climate and lack of pure yeast cultures meant that all malt beers went sour super quickly.

To deal with these problems, lots of beer was brewed with most or all of the fermentables coming from sugar. The sugar was cheap and would ferment out nearly completely, robbing any bacteria present of the chance to sour the beer too much. The image below is part of an account of colonial beer and gives a picture of brewing practice and drinking habits as well as calling out James Squire who had died 10 years before it was written.

The Sydney Monitor, 29 Feb, 1832

(It's a bit unfortunate for the modern James Squire brand that they chose to name themselves after someone who was more about marketing than brewing good beer. Not that they let history get in the way of their stories.)

In Sydney at this stage, about 73 000 litres of this 'beer' was brewed each week, more in summer. It was brewed one day and began to be served in pubs the next, long before it had fully fermented. The sweetness of the unfermented sugar made it more palatable for consumers and the beer didn't have time to get sour.

So in that light I guess the homebrew recipe makes some sense, especially for those living outside of Sydney, even if it doesn't sounds like a great drink.