A couple of odd beer exports

One of the awesome things about sifting through old newspapers are the incidental details that pop up. From the same article with details about hopping rates that I found yesterday come two separate mentions of beer exports that surprised me and I thought were worth sharing.

The first is mention of the export of pale ale from the UK to Naples. From the description it sounds like this is from the 1830s or 40s. That isn't unusual in itself although I don't associate Naples with beer. The unusual thing is that these pale ales were brewed with wheat malt. I wonder if many breweries in the UK were using wheat malt at the time?

The Star (Ballarat), 31 December, 1863

The second snippet mentions the thriving trade that California was doing sending beer to China and India in the 1860s. Now this one raises heaps more questions but I always find references to pre-20th century America's engagement with the outside world interesting. What kinds of beers were they producing? How much were they exporting? Wasn't having impact on the London and Scottish breweries? And who was drinking the beer in China? Martyn Cornell recently wrote about the history of brewing in Hong Kong, I wonder if that's what's meant by China in this article?

The Star (Ballarat), 31 December, 1863

So there are lots more questions but these kinds of details help fill out the picture a little bit more.

Colonial-style Australian pale ale

I've been getting hints at what some of the colonial ales and beers looked like through homebrew recipes and comparisons made in newspapers but most of the time they were either nasty bran & molasses affairs or otherwise very similar to the Burton and pale ales being imported into the country. Our national inferiority complex was in full effect even then and meant that very often our colonial ales and beers were attempts to mimic British beers.

But I found an article which shows something else emerging in Victoria & South Australia in the mid-19th century, something uniquely Australian. It's agenda is to argue for prioritising the use of the abundant colonial wheat in brewing instead of spending money on imported British malt. In the process gives heaps of interesting details about the practice of breweries in the area. I think we're getting an early glimpse of the Australian pale ale, an ale more appropriate to our climate and available ingredients than most of the imported stuff.

The Star (Ballarat), 15 December, 1863

The first gem is an outline of the standard grist used by brewers in the region: the equivalent of 4 bushels of malt per hogshead made up of 3 bushels of malt and sugar equivalent to 1 bushel of malt. 3 bushels of malt/hogshead is, if Wikipedia can be trusted, around 190g/litre. In a 23L batch of homebrew that's 4.35 kilograms of malt. Exactly how much sugar they were able to extract from that malt is not clear up my hunch is that it would be more comparable to homebrew systems than the high efficiency of today's commercial breweries. Assuming 70% efficiency, we're talking about an original gravity of around 1.048 of which 1.036 is from the malt and 1.012 is from sugar.

Use of sugar deserves attention. As I mentioned above, the article suggests that around 25% of the fermentables came from sugar. There were plenty of reasons for colonial brewers to use sugar and I’ll probably have a post up about that soon. Even more than the presence of wheat, the use of sugar was a distinctive of early colonial brewing while the the use of sugar was illegal in Britain until 1847 and only seems to have become popular through the 1870-80s. The use of sugar in these Australian pale ales led to a lighter bodied, more refreshing ale than the majority of the imported ales that were available.

The Star (Ballarat), 15 December, 1863

It's worth noting that they were often using a large amount of wheat. I already posted about Tasmanian homebrewers using wheat in times of plenty but above we've got a report of a brewery in Bendigo relying on wheat malt and only turning to barley once there was no more wheat available. There's also mention of a brewery in Adelaide using wheat when there was a shortage of barley and several others in the Beechworth district and Melbourne were also using it. It doesn't seem like everyone was using it but it sounds as if it was common enough and hints at the beginnings of a unique style of beer – the Australian pale ale.

There's some more gold to be mined from the article as well as more about wheat malt and sugar in colonial brewing that needs to be pursued. Each post leads to way more questions. Well, for me at least.

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.

Tasting notes: Mr Darcy Hefeweizen

Mr Darcy is a hefeweizen I brewed for my friend Adam's wedding on December 7 and bottled on December 21. This tasting was on January 14. No photo for this one because I was too busy drinking it.

OG: 1.043
FG: 1.011
IBU: 13
ABV: 4.2%

Aroma: Banana city, y'all! Of course there's banana. There's also a hint of clove and some decent wheat notes. There's no mistaking what it is.
Appearance: A thick, creamy white head with a cloudy yellow body verging on gold where the glass is a bit thicker. Beautiful.
Flavour: The clove gets a bit more space in the flavour of the beer. Banana, wheat and pilsner malt all tied up in a delicious way. The bitterness is very light and strictly complementary.
Mouthfeel: A creamy mouthfeel that somehow exists despite a moderately high level of carbonation.

There's a divide among people who like hefeweizens. It's between those who are fans of banana and those who love the clove. This beer would make the banana fans happy but would leave the clove fanciers wanting a more. As far as I can tell, this beer has no off flavours from the fermentation, the banana is not subtle but it's not out of control and the malt flavours are delicious. Overall, it's a good version of the style without quite hitting the Platonic hefeweizen. I think I'd like a little less banana.

The thing I really like about this one is what it looks like. Some people get weak knees at the sight of a beer that's so crystal clear you can read a newspaper through it. That's fine I guess but I much prefer the texture and depth of colour of a cloudy hefeweizen. Top that with a large, dense head and that's just about perfect. Weird since hefeweizens aren't even in my top 10 favourite beer styles.

It's a little embarrassing but I have always had my temperature controller set at the temperature I wanted to ferment at. For this beer it was 17 celsius. My temperature probe is taped to the side of the fermenter and insulated with some wetsuit material. I didn't take into account the heat developed during active fermentation and I've since read that inside the fermenter is generally a 2-3C higher than outside. So I was really fermenting at 19-20C instead of 17. Clever. That's where the banana was coming from and probably meant that the extra clove I was after was suppressed. Next time, Gadget.

Next time: ferment a couple of degrees cooler to lower the banana a little and let the clove come out a bit more. I'd also like try one or two different strains since all of my wheat beers so far have been with WLP300/WY3068.

Little Beer Brewday: Leichtes Weizen & Ordinary Bitter

Yesterday I brewed my last two candidates for the competition, a Leichtes Weizen and an Ordinary Bitter. I left these till last because they'll both clock in at under 4% abv and I want them to be as fresh as possible when I send them off.

The Australian Amateur Brewing Championship guidelines borrow heavily from the American BJCP guidelines but differ at a few important points. The AABC categorises some styles differently so that instead of putting an Ordinary Bitter together with other English Pale Ales as in the BJCP, it gets put in Category 1: Low Alcohol (<4% ABV). That category also contains Leichtes Weizen, a low gravity German wheat beer (OG range of 1.025-1.035).

I've brewed a couple of hefeweizens, a dunkelweizen and a weizenbock but so far I haven't managed to brew a wheat beer that has exactly the combination of wheat, pils malt, clove and banana goodness that I'm after. Hopefully that's all changed now. The Leichtes Weizen was apparently an attempt of the major wheat beer brewers to compete with the 'Lite' beers of the big lager brewers. I don't know how successful this was but it makes for a tricky little beer to brew. It needs to have all the flavours of a Hefeweizen but in balance with each other and turned down a bit to fit in a lower gravity beer. Nothing should stick out, no aggressive cloves, no in your face banana, no hops, no malt dominance. It's a beer designed by removing parts of an existing style rather than built from the ground up.

So in the light of my earlier wheat beer failures, I've attempted to modify my process to hopefully hit the perfect combination. There's nowhere to hide if I've gotten it wrong, it'll be obvious and the judges will mark it down. I decided to try my first ferulic acid rest, probably something I probably should have tried earlier on a non-competition brew. It's a rest in the mashing process at 43C where, thanks to the work of some amazing enzymes, ferulic acid is released into the mash. Ferulic acid is a precursor to 4-vinyl guaiacol, a compound responsible for the clove flavour and aroma. So more ferulic acid = more clove flavour and aroma, something my wheat beers have lacked. It'll just be a short rest, probably 15 minutes because I don't want to go crazy with the clove phenols. I'll be fermenting at 17C as I've done in the past with WLP300 to keep the banana in check. I've also increased the percentage of wheat to 60% up from the 50% I've tended to stick with up until now.

Getting my ferulic acid rest on

Once again I've written so much about the first brew, I'll have to leave the Bitter writeup for another day.

He Ain't Heavy Leichtes Weizen (23L batch)
OG: 1.033 (measured)
FG: 1.008
IBU: 10
ABV: 3.3%
EBC: 4

60% Best Malz wheat malt
40% Best Malz pils malt

9g Aramis @ 90 min

750ml starter of WLP300 (shooting for a slight under-pitch of 0.625 million cells per ml per degree plato)