SC - Rock Portraits

[Brian Songy]

> Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 23:10:26 EDT
> From: LrdRas at aol.com
> Subject: SC - Fermentation temperatures
> 
> In a message dated 6/9/98 1:06:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Njs at mccalla.com
> writes:
> 
> << Even wonder what they used for timing and
>  thermometers in the brewing; afterall, yeast is VERY temperature
>  sensitive.
>  
>  niccolo difrancesco
>   >>
> 
> As any lady with a child can tell you , you should use the inner wrist. Simply
> drop a few drops of the solution on this area and you will immediately know if
> it is too hot or cold. :-)
> 
> Ras

The brewing recipes in Markham's "The English Housewife" (c. 1615, but
republished earlier material) include fairly specific instructions for
an English-ale-style infusion mash. You add enough boiling water, in
small increments, like, say, a ladel-full at a time, to cover the amount
of malt you're using by an inch or two. Regardless of the actual volume
or mass measurements, the proportion you get of hot water to
room-temperature malt, gives you an aggregate temperature (known as a
strike temperature, IIRC) well within mashing range (usually somewhere
in the mid-to-high 150's Fahrenheit, not high enough to kill the malt
enzymes but plenty high enough to convert plenty of starch as it cools
for the next couple of hours). You cover your mash vat and wrap it in an
insulating blanket, opening it only for an occasional stir. For you
techno-brrewers out there, this also accounts for the fact that the type
of starch conversion to dextrins, which normally happens _after_ the
conversion to fermentables when using modern step-mash methods, is
called the aplha conversion, and not the beta conversion.

Assize records (court-enforced rules setting prices and ingredient
content) suggest brewing methods for ale didn't change too much
throughout period.

On the Continent, thermometer-less brewing tended to use a more complex
decoction method, which involves adding measured amounts of boling water
_or_ boiling mash to the main mash to regulate temperature.

The temperature of boiling water (or boiling anything) being pretty much
a constant at a given location, it seems as if both the infusion and
decoction methods would work fine (and they do!) provided that you have
some reasonably accurate way to measure time (which they did!)

As for the temperatures for pitching barm, the recipes usually just say
to let the wort get cold. I'm sure Ras's method would work, but the
recipes suggest an experienced brewer would know, well, from experience. 

Adamantius   
- -- 
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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