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.

Western Australian Homebrew Recipe - 1834

A second colonial homebrew recipe. This time on the other side of the country but still using a fairly large percentage of sugar. Found in The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 11 January, 1834, less than 5 years after the colony on the Swan River was established.

DOMESTIC BREWING. 

The following is a very valuable recipe especially for farmers who have many house-servants, and for labourers who would have a cheap and nourishing beer. It may be done by boiling the water in a washing copper, or even a large tea kettle, and drawing out the virtue of the malt in any clean pans or tubs about the house. Either large or small quantities may be brewed, only observing the same proportions :-put one peck of barley or of oats into an oven just after baking, or a frying pan, just to steam off the moisture, and dry it well, but on no account to burn the grain; then grind or bruise it roughly. Boil 2 1/4 gallons of water, and when it has stood ten minutes (or so hot as to pain the finger sharply), put in the grain-mash it well, and let it stand three hours; then drain it off. Boil two gallons more water, which pour on the grains (rather hotter than before, but not boiling), and mash them well, let it stand two hours and drain it off: mash the grains again well with two gallons more water, and in one hour and a half draw it off. The three worts will be about five gallons. Then mix 7 lbs. of treacle in 5 gallons of water, and boil the whole ten gallons with 4 ounces of hops, for one hour and a half, taking care to stir it so long as the hops float on the top; let it cool, and when about milk warm take a good tea cupful of yeast, and stir it well together, beginning with about a gallon of wort at a time; let it ferment for l8 hours in a tub covered with a sack; put it into a nine gallon cask, and keep it well filled; bung it up in three days, and in 14 days it will be good sound fine beer, equal in strength to London Porter. If you cannot get treacle, take 5 lbs. of the cheapest and darkest sugar you can get.

This one is significantly different to the first recipe I found. It actually uses barley for a start (or oats). It also uses less hops but boils them for much longer, around 2.5g/L boiled for 90 minutes.

It also calls for an addition of yeast, the other one left that out so I'm assuming it was working on spontaneous fermentation. This one calls for a tea cup full of yeast, drastic underpitching in this day and age but probably good enough for then.

The way it goes about the mash is a little odd and I'm not actually sure that the barley or oats it describes were malted. The roasting in the oven could potentially destroy the enzymes and make conversion either slow or impossible. The mashing instructions also seem problematic. 10 minutes off the boil is way too hot for the probably non existent enzymes to function. I guess if the grain isn't malted but gets browned, it might just be contributing colour and flavour rather than a significant amount of fermentables. From what I can tell, we're talking about 4-5kg of grain in about 40 litres of beer.

Overall the instructions are for something more recognisably like beer than the last one but it's still not something I'd be in a rush to go out and brew. I guess what both these recipes are doing is showing what people were trying to do in response to the climate and with the limited ingredients at their disposal. Homebrew wasn't a luxury or a hobby like it is for us, it was about providing for yourself and your family or being thrifty in much the same way that growing veggies or having chooks would be.

All is not lost though! I've got a couple more colonial homebrew recipes up my sleeve and one of them actually seems like it'd be really good.

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.