Beer & Wine

Spirits

2008/06/26 By Rob 8 Comments

Google Books has provided me endless hours of enjoyment. Sure, the collection seems to consist mainly of old, out of copyright books, but that makes it even more enticing. It is like a fine used-book store, without the musty smell.

Imagine. It is late at night, and the library is closed and Amazon cannot deliver fast enough. But you absolutely must have immediate access to Kramer and Sprenger’s witch-hunting manual, the Malleus Maleficarum, specifically the 1669 Lyon edition. What do you do?

A quick search of Google Books, and there you have it, in full text, with the ability to download it in PDF if you want.

What you do with the “Hammer of Witches” is your own business. But who wouldn’t have a little extra bounce in their step knowing they have a copy tucked away on their USB memory stick, “just in case”?

And so, I was browsing through “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore” when I came across a book with the imposing title The Moral Aspects of Medical Life, Consisting of the ‘Akesios’ of K.F.H. Marx, translated from the German with Biographical Notes and Illustrative Remarks by James Mackness, M.D., published in London in 1846. Note that this is by Karl Friedrich Heinrich Marx (1796-1877), the German physician, not to be confused with the founder of modern communism Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1893).

Within this text is printed a most remarkable diagram, “A Moral and Physical Thermometer”. A footnote ascribes it to another work,’Public Characters’, London, 1801, pg 499.

In any case here it is, a marvelous example of data presentation and visualization from 200 years ago. It shows, in parallel scales, the strength of various drinks as well as their effects.

Now, mind you that this diagram is coming from an advocate of water drinking, but it is an interesting view of the state of drink in 1801 London.

A few things stand out:

Cider (to American readers) is non-alcoholic. Here it apparently refers to hard cider. Perry is like hard cider, only made from pears. Don’t see much of that around here.

Why is wine listed as weaker than porter and great beer? Today porter is 5% ABV or so, while wine is 12% or so. And even strong beers today are 6-7% ABV. So were things so much different back in 1801? Or is the chart correlated with the social stigma attached to the drink, and not necessarily the potency of the drink?

Some of the drinks are obscure today, in particular toddy (any hot, spiced drink, like mulled cider), crank (unknown — not listed in the OED), flip (eggnog-like drinks) and shrub (lemon juice and rum)

Hysteric Water — we may forget that the root word here is from the Greek “hystera”, meaning uterus. It was thought that hysteria was predominately a disorder of women, and was treated by various means, including “Hysteric Water”, which according to one period recipe was brandy infused with medicinal herbs: valerian, pennyroyal, rue, mugwort, savin, orange peel, and lovage. It was taken in small doses: 1 ounce.

So why is Hysteric Water listed as the worst of the lot, the one where drinking it leads one to risk whipping or exile to the Australian penal colony of Botany Bay? Perhaps there was some additional social stigma attached.

One period commenter described the state of affairs like this:

Many a good woman, who would start at the very mention of strong waters, cannot conceive there can be any harm in a cordial. And as the fair sex are more particularly subject to a depression of spirits, it is no wonder that they should convert their apothecaries’ shops into rich cordial warehouses, and take drams by way of physic; as the common people make gin serve for meat, drink, and clothes. The ladies perhaps may not be aware, that every time they have recourse to their Hartshorn or Lavender Drops, to drive away the vapours, they in effect take a dram ; and they may be assured, that their Colic, Surfeit, and plague Waters, are to be ranked among spirituous liquors, as well as the common stuff at the gin-shop. The college of Physicians, in their last review of the London Dispensatory, for this very reason expelled the Strong Water, generally known by the soothing name of Hysteric Water; because it was a lure to the female sex to dram it by authority, and to get tipsy secundum artem.

If any of my fair readers have at all given into this pernicious practice of dram-drinking, I must intreat them to leave it off betimes, before it has taken such hold of them, as they can never shake off. For the desire of drams steals upon them, and grows to be habitual, by imperceptible degrees : as those who are accustomed to take opiates, are obliged to encrease the dose gradually, and at last cannot sleep without it.

But it is comforting to know that then, as today, a moderate beer is still good for “reputation, long life and happiness”.

The first harvest of the season

2007/04/05 By Rob

Spring is here. In the last two weeks I’ve seen the snowdrops and the crocuses bloom. Spring is here. But don’t look outside. Forgot the newly-fallen snow. This is New England. Late snow fall is unwelcome, though not unusual. But in no case will it stop the season’s first harvest.

Harvest?! What can one harvest in early April? Birch sap, my friends, Birch sap. The nectar of the gods. (Well, the sap of the gods at the very least). This is the only good reason to put one’s boots on and tromp around the woods this time of year. The goal, as you might imagine, is to make birch sap wine. Here is how it is done.

First, find yourself a birch tree. I used a white (paper) birch. The paper birch doesn’t have the highest sugar content, but will do. Black and yellow birches would be preferred, if you have them. You want a big birch tree, not some little twig of a tree. Bigger means more sap with less stress to the tree.

Second, plan to start collecting sap right around this time, earliest spring, when the sap rises from the roots. If you try too early you’ll get nothing, and if you wait for the warmer weather, the sap gets cloudy. So there is a 2-week window, right around early April here in Massachusetts, that is perfect.

Next you need some basic equipment:

A drill. I used a cordless electric drill.
A spile. This is the spigot you tap the tree with. You can make one yourself, or purchase online. Search EBay and you’ll find a variety. The ones used for maple syrup work just fine for birch.
A rubber mallet. This is used for tapping in the spile without breaking it.
Some food grade plastic tubing and a collection jug. I reused some brewing supplies for this, including a 5-gallon jug to collect the sap in.

Since my birch tree was 100-yards down a hill in the woods, by a stream, I packed the equipment into a sack and carried the jug down the hill. The rest is easy. Drill a hole with a 5/16″ bit, around 3-feet off the ground, angled slightly up. It doesn’t need to be deep, only an inch or so. Then tap in the stile with the mallet, connect the rubber tubing and so it drains into the jug. I ended up securing my jug to the tree with rope. I don’t know why. Just habit. I don’t think there is anything in those woods big enough to walk away with 5-gallons of birch sap, but too dumb to cut a rope.

The sap collects around a half-gallon a day. Since the temperatures were low, I didn’t worry too much about spontaneous fermentation from wild yeast, though I did add some campden tablets every day or so as insurance, to keep it sterile.

After around five days my jug was full. Time to return it home. This was the weakness of my plan. Bringing a 5-gallon jug full of birch sap 100-yards uphill through dense brush was a significantly greater task than bringing the empty jug down the hill. I’ll need to think this over more next time.

Once in the kitchen, I did some testing, confirming the sugar level with a hydrometer and refractometer. The sap was only around 1.5% sugar. This is about what I expected. Commercial birch syrup producers say it takes 80 gallons of birch sap to make 1 gallon of birch syrup. I don’t need something that concentrated, but I do need to get to 20% sugar content or so for fermentation.

So what was the character of my raw ingredients? I’d describe it as having a sweet, warming, earthy smell, with a hint of wintergreen. My wife simply said, “It smells like dirt”. De gustibus non disputandum, especially with one’s uxor. I’ll see what the winemaker’s art can do to this unusual liquid.

I transfer the sap into a 6-gallon brew pot and start it boiling for most of an afternoon. Evaporation concentrates the sugar and the flavor. Once I got it down to gallon, I added a few sprigs of fresh spearmint for a little accent flavor and to restore some of the aroma that was lost from the long boil.

At that point I cooled the sap, remeasured the sugar content and added cane sugar to bring it up to a specific gravity of 1.085. This should result in an alcohol percentage of around 11% if it ferments dry. I also added some citric acid to put the pH where I want it (I could have added orange juice instead if I wanted) and then added the yeast. I’m using Lavlin V1116 “Montpellier” yeast, a strain which I’ve used successfully with fruit wines before.

The birch sap wine is fermenting now. If a few days I’ll transfer to a carboy for clarification and in a few months I’ll bottle it and set it sit another 6 months or so for conditioning. I have never done a birch sap wine before so I have no idea how this will turn out.

A Barleywine

2007/02/04 By Rob 5 Comments

According to the BJCP style guidelines, an English Barleywine is:

The richest and strongest of the English Ales. A showcase of malty richness and complex, intense flavors. The character of these ales can change significantly over time; both young and old versions should be appreciated for what they are. The malt profile can vary widely; not all examples will have all possible flavors or aromas.

Usually the strongest ale offered by a brewery, and in recent years many commercial examples are now vintage-dated. Normally aged significantly prior to release. Often associated with the winter or holiday season.

I started this batch back in November, with Belgian toasted malts (Dingemans Special B and Biscuit) and Target, Cascade and Fuffgle hops. The starting specific gravity (O.G.) was 1.112, which is one seriously heavy wort.

The previous day I had made a yeast starter, building a Wyeast #1056 American Ale 125ml “smack pack” into a 600ml starter (650 ml water 3/4 cup DME boiled for 15 minutes). For high gravity beers this is essential in order to get the fermentation off to a fast start.

After 2 1/2 weeks, the fermentation slowed enough to rack into a carboy where it sat for another month. Today I finally had a chance to bottle this, yielding 11 liters of barleywine. Final gravity was 1.034 giving an estimated ABV of 10.3%, a potent brew indeed. By way of reference, Budweiser is 5%.

An initial taste indicated that it was nicely balanced and hid the high alcohol levels behind the maltiness with forward hints of licorice, vanilla and plum. I will let it bottle condition for another 6-months or so before trying again. This will be a beer to sip and enjoy for several years.

Note that no licorice, vanilla, or plum was ever added to this beer. It is pure beer, according to the German Reinheitsgebot — nothing but water, malted barley, hops and yeast. The rest is the magic of biochemistry, the enzymes released during the malting of the barley that convert the starches into sugar, the carmelization of these sugars during the roasting of the barley, the alcohols and esters produced by the fermenting of the yeast. Even after the yeast has done its work and settled out, the beer will continue to evolve and change over time. Compare the complexity of a serious, living beer like this to the mass-produced, always-the-same pale lagers that fill the store shelves, and you will never go back.