EK-4: Wágner's text and my translation

Prev: Things I've tried.

To translate this I went through several steps.

• Scan the pages.
• Perform character recognition with tesseract.
• Try to detect and fix tesseract's errors.
• Paste sentences or phrases into Google translate. It sometimes did a nice job of translating to idiomatic American English, sometimes not. In fact occasionally it produced unintelligible strings of words.
• I tried to detect and fix Google's errors. I also used a regular German-English dictionary and a German-English technical dictionary. Of course neither was specific to brewing, and so had some gaps, though I was surprised to find terms related to pitch in the regular dictionary.
• As mentioned above, Andreas Krennmair kindly reviewed my translation, answered my questions about it, and fixed some of my mistakes. Remaining mistakes are, of course, my responsibility.

Wágner gives grain quantities in both Scheffel and hectoliters (Hl, 100 liters), which is good since a Scheffel varies by location and time. (I was going to translate Scheffel as bushel, but Krennmair told me this is incorrect. I suppose it's like translating “liter” as “quart,” except Scheffel and bushel are even more different. A Scheffel is roughly half a hectoliter, while a bushel is roughly a third of a hectoliter. Both vary with location and time.) In his book Krennmair says before 1818 the “old” Scheffel was 54.728 liters. This seems to be quite close to Wágner's value. For example, he gives the quantity of barley malt as 21 Scheffel and 11.54 Hl. Krennmair says a Scheffel of barley malt has a weight beteen 19.2 and 24.7 kg, which is 42.2 to 54.3 lb. So a Hl of barley malt is between 77.2 and 99.3 lb.

Wágner also uses the Eimer, a unit of volume. In Radical Brewing Mosher wrote that this is a European unit “which varied widely.” Again Wágner also gives quantities in Hectoliters (Hl). Wágner's Eimer seems to be about 68.7 liters, and this is close to the Biereimer that Krennmair mentions, which is 68.52 liters. Wágner's recipe seems to be for 26 Eimers or 17.86 Hl (472 gallons) of English beer and 40 Eimers or 27.5 Hl (726 gallons) of the ordinary beer.

For temperature Wágner uses both degrees R and degrees Centigrade. Degrees R seems to be the Réaumur scale, with 0°R at the freezing point of water and the boiling point at 80°R.

Wágner uses the word Pfanne for the vessel in which the liquids are boiled. Google translate says this is “pan.” There is one place where Wágner says Pfanne oder Kessel, which can translate to “pan or kettle.” I'll use “kettle” much of the time, but this is often for the word Pfanne.

The following contains an odd mixture of literal translation of Wágner's German idiom (he was a professor in Budapest), some of my American English idiom, and, of course, my mistakes. My comments are interjected in square brackets. I break the translation with the pages. I begin with the first paragraph that mentions Englisch-Köstritzer.

A popular type of beer in Northern Germany is English-Köstritzer² Beer, whose preparation we present, following Muntz.

21 Scheffel (11.54 Hl) of pale yellow de-germed barley malt and 5 Scheffel (2¾ Hl) of wheat malt are coarsely crushed, the barley malt by itself and also the Wheat malt. The grist of both types of malt is then mixed well. Shortly before the malt comes out of the mill 34 Eimer (23⅓ Hl) of boiling water is moved from the pan into the mash tun so that it cools to 60 to 62½°C. (48 to 50°R). This is then mashed in the following way:

Pour the grist sack by sack into the mash tun, and — in case you have no agitator available — immediately have 4 to 5 men vigorously mash it with rakes or paddles, taking care that no part of the grist remains unmoistened, so that everything is properly permeated with water and the dissolution of the sugar is completely achieved. The tub is then covered.

Meanwhile, the pan or kettle is filled with water again and the latter is brought to a boil. When this is done 44 Eimer (30¼ Hl) of boiling water is added to the mash tun while constantly stirring. The rest of the water is drained from the pan, in order to empty it, into a small tub, then the mash is added to the pan and boiled. All of the mash can not be boiled at once, because the pan cannot hold it all, so it is boiled in two batches, with two men constantly stirring it with rakes. The first cooked mash is transferred to the rest- or lauter tun, and the remainder, when it is cooked, is added to it. [Regarding what I called a rest- or lauter tun, Krennmair commented “What exact kind of tuns are meant here is not 100% clear, but Seihbottich could either refer to a lauter tun or possibly something similar to a hop-back. Stellbottich on the other hand was a dedicated vessel just for adding yeast and waiting until fermentation starts before the beer gets transferred to the actual fermenters.”]

Now one starts the fire [? Krennmair commented that this wording, “spannt man das Feuer” is odd.] under the pan, adds some water and when it is warmed, use it to clean the pan, the mash tun and the equipment [Geschirr].

Footnotes:
² Köstritz is located in Reuß-Schleiz on the Elster. For decades this area has been famous for its highly developed brewing industry.)

During this time the spent grain separates from the wort, which one thus removes. All of the water is removed from the pan, in order to put 4 to 5 Eimer (2 3/4 to 3 1/3 HL) of wort in it. One now makes a small but fleeting fire, so that only the bottom of the pan is touched but not burned. [The wording is not clear to me. Krennmair suggested that brewers were very careful about applying heat to a kettle with little or no wort in it, to avoid damaging it.] Put into this wort 50 pounds (25 Kg) of pure, good hops, preferrably Falkenauer, and cook this to extract it, with mild fire under constant stirring with paddles until the wort, which in the beginning because of the extraction of the hops is a bit cloudy, is again bright and clear. The extraction of the hops requires about 1 1/2 hours. Once the hops are well cooked, a little more wort is added and the pan or kettle is covered with a suitable lid. It is best if a hole is drilled in this cover, in which one can put a funnel or a filler neck. Now the fire is strengthened, so that the wort with the hops does not come to a boil, and enough wort is added through the funnel to fill the pan. At this time add 6 pounds (3 kg) of Italian oranges crushed into small pieces¹, then uncover the pan and put the hop rake²) in it, with which the hops are pushed to the rear part of the pan. The hops that are still dispersed in the beer are gathered with a small ladle to the other hops behind the rake. Let the wort boil for a small hour until it is very pale and the protein appears in flakes.

It goes without saying that at this point much malty wort remains with the spent grain and much sits in and between the spent grain, that one must now extract and use for a small beer. Since the pan is full of the first wort and the beer is boiling, in the rest tun pour over the spent grain hot water, and in the absence of that one can also use cold water, although the former is better. The addition of water determines the desired amount of small beer, that one wants to make. About 28 to 30 Eimer (19 1/4 to 20 1/2 Hl) of pure beer can be obtained from it, and indeed a very good beer of fine color and pleasant taste.

As soon as the wort is in the coolship, immediately transfer a part of it — intended for the small beer — into the pan, also take out the hop-rake and disperse the hops

Footnotes:
¹ The addition of this aromatic agent should be of significant influence on the quality of the beer. Never-the-less we believe that it could be left out.
² The hop rake is made of several composite, perforated boards in a frame of good oak wood and has the height and width of the pan. One puts it in the front of the pan, pushes back all of the hops with it, and fix it by hooks, which are attached to the rear part of the pan. In this way it is easy to separate most of the hops from beer. Of course this does not work for a round kettle. But since the hops are still needed for the small beer, in such a kettle one must try to separate them from the wort with a sieve, so that they do not get into the coolship with the wort.

so that they can combine with the wort. Now, the wort is added and as long as it still runs sugar-rich from the grain. For 30 Eimers (20½ Hl) of beer, always 46 Eimers (31.6 Hl) wort, calculated with the hops in the pan, is necessary, namely, if one wants to have 30 Eimers (20½ Hl) of pure beer for sale after completion of fermentation. When all of the wort is in the pan, cook it for a quarter of an hour, then use the hop rake to pull the hops to one side. The wort is then boiled for 3/4 of an hour and cooled in another coolship. If you once again add cold water to the spent grain, and cook the resulting wort with the remaining hops for 10 minutes, you will still extract a good kovent. [Krennmair, and Mosher in Radical Brewing, say that a kofent or kovent was a term for small beer. In this case it's a third-runnings beer.]

From the quantity of malt and hops given above, you can therefore easily obtain 26 Eimers (17.86 Hl) of very high-sugar beer. But at least 44 Eimers (30¼ Hl) of wort, with the hops, are necessary for this purpose, so that after boiling there remains 40 Eimers (27½ Hl). Significantly less is transferred to the coolship, since the hops are known to absorb a great deal of wort, but this is recovered with the small beer.

This type of sugar-rich beer deposits more trub [Schleimtheile] in the coolship than the lighter beer, and later on more yeast, which must be taken into account if one wishes to retain a certain quantity of beer for sale after all losses. The quoted quantity of malt and hops thus yields 26 Eimers (30¼ Hl) of English and 30 Eimers (20.6 Hl) of ordinary beer according to the above procedure. [The quantity 30 ¼ Hl seems to be a mistake. The 26 Eimers matches the previous paragraph, but there it is equated to 17.86 Hl. And everywhere but here there are more Eimers than hectoliters, i.e., an Eimer is smaller than a hectoliter. In fact, given the repetition and the error it looks to me like this and the preceding paragraph were not edited well. They should have been merged.]

Handling of the wort after brewing. After the wort has been cooled to 15°C (12°R), it is allowed to drain from the chiller into at least three open fermenters [Krennmair], which are more wide than high. Take three jugs [Kannen; Krennmair said they're around 1 to 2 liters, and gave this reference] of good ale yeast [or top-cropped yeast, which therefore would be ale yeast], put this into a suitable container with 8 cans of beer, a handful of sifted malt flour, 1½ loth (22 g) crushed mace and half a crushed nutmeg, stir thoroughly, and let fermentation start, which will happen soon. As soon as fermentation has reached the point that a cover of yeast is formed on the surface, it is stirred vigorously, and distributed in equal parts into the three different fermentation vats. These are stirred vigorously and covered, and fermentation will begin.

After 8 to 9 hours, the fermentation will begin and after 30 hours, will have advanced so far that the beer can be put in barrels, where it completes the fermentation process. These barrels must not be pitch-lined, but are scalded well with boiling water and crushed juniper berries. The same barrels should always be used for the same purpose and should not hold more than 7 Eimers (4.8 Hl) [about 127 gal].

As soon as the yeast flowing out of the fermenting barrels ceases to be frothy and assumes a firmer shape, it is necessary to refill diligently so that all the yeast is expelled. The barrels are straightened out more and more so that on the seventh day, calculated from the brewing, they finally lie quite straight. One now fills all of the barrels

[Krennmair: “Just to give a bit of context here, the technique described is similar to the British technique of cleansing: the yeast is added in an open fermenter and is let to ferment to a certain extent, then filled into a barrel with a relatively small bunghole through which any yeast that would otherwise float to the top is expelled. This is mean to minimize the amount of yeast in the barrel later on. The Burton Union is a larger scale implementation of the same principle (that also requires less manual intervention).”]

once again completely, and after 12 hours you will find a fizzy and frothy mass without yeast at the bunghole. This is the sign that fermentation is complete and the beer is ready for filling from the fermentation vats.

The barrels in which this beer will be lagered must be of sound oak, not pitch-lined nor sulfurized, but only scalded with boiling water and crushed juniper berries the day before use.

When the beer is transferred to the lagering barrels one should make sure that no yeast from the bottom is transferred, otherwise the secondary fermentation will be too vigorous and the beer will not keep well.

The lager barrels must be completely filled and then stopped tight, and in a few days secondary fermentation will begin, which will be more or less noticeable. This is due to carbonic acid developing. If the first fermentation was vigorous, and the yeast has mostly separated, so that the beer in the lager barrels is fairly free of yeast, the secondary fermentation will be calmer, and you will now notice that a few drops of beer push through the joints of the barrel or through the heads here and there, which soon subsides. When examining the beer after 6 months, it's very fizzy and still very rich in sugar. That's what its durability is based on.

When selling and shipping this beer you always have to take those barrels first that had a vigorous secondary fermentation and therefore had to be vented, because then the beer barely lasts 6 months. [Krennmair: “That reads like the barrels had to be drilled into (with the venting being implied).” So a more literal translation might be “had to be drilled into” instead of “had to be vented.”]

Treatment of second runnings beer after brewing. Cool the beer to 15°C (12°R), then distribute it from the coolships into three fermenting vats, put three cans of good bottom-cropped yeast in a bucket, add 8 cans of the beer, mix in a handful of malt meal [or malt flour], and if you want to give the beer a subtle aftertaste, mix 1/2 Loth (7 g) mace and 1 Loth (14 g) coriander into it, stir everything thoroughly and let it rest. [This is where I mistakenly translated Unterhefe as lager yeast. Krennmair: “I think in this context, “Unterhefe” simply means bottom-cropped yeast. The fermentation with the cleansing in the barrel is a method typically used for top-fermented beers, and at the time would never be used for a true bottom-fermented-at-cold-temperatures lager beer.”] The fermentation will begin soon and this portion will develop a cover of yeast. Mix this thoroughly back in and divide it between the vats of beer, mix them well and cover the vats with lids of light boards.

The fermentation will begin in 9 to 10 hours, and if the yeast is in good condition, on the fourth day the beer will be clean and strong and clear. Now you fill the beer from the vats and the yeast (after removing the foamy mass from the top of the beer) into freshly pitched — but if you do not like the pitch flavor, scald with boiling water and juniper berries — barrels and store it in the cellar. Lager this beer with the bunghole open, the secondary fermentation will take place soon and the beer will expel a foam-like mass. Top it off with fresh, pure water every day and clean the bunghole of the foam-like mass. When the secondary fermentation

subsides, the beer is topped up at longer intervals, but the barrels are always kept to a high level. If the beer is to be stored for a long time, close the bungholes tightly, as soon as the secondary fermentation becomes quite weak.

This beer is transferred straight from the barrels to containers of 3, 1 ½, 1, and 1/2 Eimer (2, 1, 2/3, and 1/3 Hl [about 50 down to 9 gal]) and shipped with the bottom yeast. It ships and keeps better that way.

[Wágner changes subjects here, and discusses Dortmunder Adambier. There follows the comment that

Dortmund “Adam”, Danzig “Joppenbier” and Braunschweiger “Mumme” must be counted among the most excellent beers in Germany.

In the footnote they are said to have high extract and low alcohol.]

References

Krennmair, Andreas, Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Homebrewer, 2018, Andreas Krennmair (publisher).

EK-3: Weird things I've tried

Prev: Discussion of Wágner's recipe

I've made this a few times now, experimenting with different approaches. Most were pleasant, and obviously I thought it worth making again.

I've usually followed a parti-gyle procedure, which makes sense for getting a strong beer, which tends to have low extraction efficiency, and then getting a weaker beer from the remaining sugar. Here are the ingredients I used for a recent batch with 5.5 gal of the English wort in the kettle, post-boil:

Grain:

• 15 lbs German Pils malt
• 5 lb Wheat malt
• 1 lb Acid malt

Hops etc., English

• 4 oz Saaz whole leaf, 5.1% AA, first-wort-hopped, but removed when the boil started.
• 2 oz Northern Brewer pellets, 8.5 AA, 60 min
• ⅓ oz Bitter orange peel, 60 min
• ¼ tsp ground mace, in secondary
• ⅛ tsp ground nutmeg, in secondary
• ½ whirlflok tablet, last 15 min

Hops etc., ordinary

• 4 oz Saaz whole leaf, 5.1% AA, first-wort-hopped, transferred from English.
• 0.1 oz Bitter orange peel, 60 min
• ¼ tsp ground mace, in secondary
• ½ tsp ground coriander, in secondary
• ½ whirlflok tablet, last 15 min

Wyeast 1007, German ale yeast.

I did a protein rest in a large pot at 128°F for a half hour. I then heated to 150°F and rested for an hour. I then heated to a full boil, not just some foam pushing through the grain. This is a lot of stirring, but there's no transferring between the pot and a tun.

I added all the hops to the English wort while running off, then when that came to a boil I removed the Saaz and added it to the ordinary wort while it was running off. I had 6 gal of English wort and trub in the kettle post-boil, and transferred a half gallon of that wort to the ordinary wort before its boil. The English OG was 1.072, a little low, and the ordinary's was 1.043.

I added the spices in the secondary because I'd forgotten to add them when pitching the yeast. This is less likely to give an infection, and it may give stronger aroma and flavor.

The ordinary is quite pleasant though mild. The orange has an obvious impact on the aroma and taste but I don't immediately identify it as orange. The mace is not obvious. The hop aroma and flavor is subtle at most.

I'm aging the English for another month or so. At this writing it's quite sweet, but not cloying. The sweetness, maltiness from the boiled mash, orange, and nutmeg/mace make a pleasant combination, working very well together. The orange flavor is obvious but it's not too much. Less would work too. The nutmeg and mace aren't obvious but I can pick them out, knowing that I added them. They will likely fade with time, as they have in past batches. Again the hop aroma and flavor is subtle at most.

They're both hazy. I'd call the English cloudy. In an earlier batch I tried maltgems^® and also boiled the entire mash. That came out cloudy too. At the time I thought it might be something about the maltgems^® and the boiled mash, but since the current batch with pils malt is cloudy too, it's just boiling the entire mash that makes it cloudy. Odd, since the runoff appeared to be very clear. Maybe the boil extracts extra starch, and at that point there are no enzymes left to break it down.

There are a number of things I've tried in past batches, like a single infusion mash. This was quite good, though not as malty. It was very clear, not hazy.

For the ordinary beer I admit I had thought that Wágner's word unterhefe meant lager yeast, since untergärig and obergärig mean bottom-fermenting and top-fermenting, respectively. So several times I used lager yeast for the ordinary. Krennmair told me this incorrect, it means bottom-cropped, and pointed out that this fits with the way fermentation in the barrels was conducted, so that the yeast pushed out of the bung hole. In my most recent batch I used the same strain of altbier yeast for both English and ordinary.

I've tried aging the English beer with oak chips that I had simmered for a few minutes with crushed juniper berries. I was thinking it can't have zero effect on the flavor, but I couldn't detect either oak or juniper in the result. Of course I was not doing a side-by-side comparison, so I wouldn't call this conclusive.

A couple of times I tried soaking some crushed pitch in the ordinary while in the secondary. In one batch I only left it in for a few days, and I couldn't taste it. In the other I left it in for a month while lagering. This also had a little dried orange peel in the boil. It definitely had some pitch flavor, but with the orange it was weird. I'd gladly drink more if I had it or found it on tap somewhere, but I won't use it again. That is a bit of history I'll leave behind.

Modern interpretations of these beers can differ in a few reasonable ways. Ignoring the use of wood, juniper berries, and pitch is obvious. Either beer can be made by itself, without using a parti-gyle. The mash procedure can be modernized. I intend to keep a protein rest, since I suspect the good head retention in my batches may be partly due to that. I like the maltiness a decoction gives, so I'll keep a regular single decoction, though my single infusion mash batch was pleasant. I'd use more modern hopping procedures, maybe FWH with some of the hops and then late boil additions. Since the gravity is uncertain, I can imagine making a barley-wine-strength version, so the second-runnings beer would have fairly normal strength.

Next: Wágner's text and my translation

EK-2: Wágner's recipe

Prev: Introduction to Englischer-Köstritzer

I'm going to scale the quantities to 5.5 gallons in the kettle post-boil, but I'll also give Wágner's quantities. He says his procedure will give 27.5 hectoliters (Hl) post-boil, and then 17.86 Hl of beer, after losses to trub and hops in the boil kettle, and yeast in the fermenter. He says it is this high because the beer is so strong. It's a lot of loss by our standards. I'm going to equate the 27.5 Hl value, about 726 gal, to 5.5 gal. This is a factor of about 0.0076.

Grain bill and mash procedure: As Mosher stated, the beers are pale, quite different from schwarzbier. There is nothing about dark-roasted grains in Wágner's text. The barley malt is clearly described as pale yellow (hellgelbes), and the color of the wheat malt is not described. I think it's safe to assume that the wheat malt was not dark, or Wágner would have made something of that.

Interestingly, the barley malt is de-germed. When I first read this I thought, well, too bad, that's not available, so I'm going to use Pilsener malt as Mosher suggested. Since then I noticed the Briess product Maltgems^®. Their literature emphasizes that this has had “the majority of husk, fine grit, and flour” removed, but in a blog they write “By removing the majority of husk and acrospires, Briess has created a product that can easily be used to create endosperm brewed beers.” The acrospire is the germ, having started growing, so this is at least largely de-germed. I would think that to get the germ out you have to at least open up the husk, and a significant amount of it could have been removed by the processing. So it's also possible that the nineteenth-century de-germed malt was very similar to Maltgems^®. But the old German maltsters could have left the husk in for mashing; it's hard to know. There are, of course, differences, like the malt used by Wágner's brewers was continental malt instead of American. Still, I think it's worth trying Maltgems^® for this beer.

Wágner says to use 11.54 Hl of barley malt (891 – 1,146 lb) and 2 ¾ Hl wheat malt, or 212 to 273 lb, if this were the same density as barley malt. Scaling these to a 5.5 gal batch gives 6.8–8.7 lb barley malt and 1.6–2.1 lb wheat malt. This doesn't seem likely to give a strong beer, nor will the grain-to-water ratio from the water numbers given below, so why think this is a strong beer? Several things Wágner says support the idea that it's strong. He emphasizes the high sugar content of the wort in more than one place. He says a lot of wort is lost to hops, trub and the yeast. He later says that after six months the beer will be very rich in sugar. He mentions making a third runnings beer, which suggests that the second and first couldn't have been too weak. Mosher's suggested OG of 1.079 or even higher seems reasonable. It's really unfortunate that Wágner didn't give gravities. I have to wonder whether there is something wrong with his numbers for water or grain. And if those are wrong, what else might be?

In any case, he says 23 ⅓ Hl (616 gal) water is brought to 60–62°C (140–144°F) and the grain is doughed in. This is 4.7 gal scaled down. A rest time is not given. More water is then brought to a boil. The first rest time would be determined by how long this took. Add 30.25 Hl (800 gal) boiling water to the mash, or 6 gal scaled down. After this, apparently without any pause except to mix, take half of the mash and bring it to a boil. Transfer that to the lauter tun and then bring the other half to a boil. Wágner explicitly says that you boil half at time because it won't all fit in the kettle, but I have to wonder if this had an effect, like giving the second half more time to convert. In any case, no boil time is given, and no time to come to a boil is given.

The rest times and temperatures are not given. The first might be a protein rest, though from his numbers I calculate a high temperature for it, like 133°F. There would be some saccharification (see Noonan). I calculate that the boiling water addition would bring the temperature up to something like 170°F. If his grain and/or water quantity numbers are wrong then these rest temperature numbers almost certainly are, too. The mash ratio comes out to 3 – 4 quarts per pound. I find this would give a starting gravity between 1.040 and 1.053. Again, I have to wonder whether there's an error in Wágner's water or grain volumes.

There is no description of lautering. Wágner says to heat some water to clean things, and then “During this time the spent grain separates from the wort, which one thus removes.” It almost sounds like you drain or even scoop the wort from above the spent grain. If that was the procedure, it would leave a lot of wort for the second runnings.

For the ordinary beer Wágner does not say how much water to add to the grain. He also says to transfer some of the post-boil English wort to the kettle to mix with the pre-boil ordinary wort, without specifying how much. He claims that you can get 509 – 542 gallons of beer from it.

Hops: Wágner says Faulkenauer hops are preferred. I found two towns this might be, one in Germany and one in the Czech Republic. Both are fairly close to each other and to Zatec, where Saaz is grown. That doesn't mean the hops were like Saaz, but obviously it's a possibility. The hopping rate is fairly high, 50 lb with a final kettle volume of 726 gallons. Scaled down this is about 6 oz.

Their treatment of the hops is a little odd by modern standards. Wágner says to take about 80 gallons (0.6 gal scaled down) of the first runnings and mix in the hops, which he says will make it cloudy. Then simmer or at least keep hot (it's unclear to me) until the wort turns clear, which he says takes about 1.5 h. Add the rest of the wort, and then insert a “hop rake” to push the hops to the rear of the kettle, where the rake is hooked so the hops are held there during the one-hour boil. The kettle is square or rectangular. For a round kettle he says in a footnote “in such a kettle one must try to separate them from the wort with a sieve, so that they do not get into the coolship with the wort.” So there's some room for choosing how to treat the hops, even if you're trying to follow Wágner's procedure.

For the second-runnings beer, part of the already-boiled English wort is transferred back to the kettle, the same hops are released from behind the rake, and the second runnings are mixed in. This is at least partly to help disperse the high-gravity wort in the hops. This is then brought to a boil. After the first fifteen minutes the hops are again restrained with the hop rake, and the boil continues, for a total of an hour.

Other flavorings: Crushed (chopped?) Italian oranges are added to the English wort for the entire boil. They are called oranges, not orange peel. A footnote says they are optional, but recommended. I'm not sure whether these are bitter or not. I've used sweet orange peel and bitter orange peel with good results each time. (Though I used too much bitter peel in one batch.)

For spices, 22 g ground mace (about 3/4 ounce) and half a crushed nutmeg are added to the srong beer when the yeast is pitched. I worry about sanitation but I've tried it twice anyway and haven't had a problem.

The ordinary beer does not include orange, though it will get some from the English wort, since that is added after the English wort has been boiled. Optionally one can add 7 g (1/4 ounce) mace and 14 g (1/2 ounce) ground coriander, and these are again added when the yeast is pitched.

Scaling down these quantities gives, for the English beer, about 3/4 ounce orange, 1/6 gram mace, and a similarly small amount of nutmeg. A dried nutmeg weighs about 5 – 10 g, so a half of one is about 2.5–5 g, and this scales down to 0.02 – 0.04 g. Really tiny. Wágner says this will give an unmerkliche flavor, which is, too literally, “unnoticeable.” I translated it as “subtle.” It may be this is meant the way we think of spice in Belgian beers, that if you can identify the spices you've added too much.

Following Mosher I suggest using somewhat larger amounts, but still pretty small. This is 1/4 tsp orange peel, 0.13 tsp mace, and 0.07 tsp nutmeg. (Mosher's article says “.7 tsp nutmeg, ground (.3 mL),” The “.7” seems to be a typo, missing a ‘0’.) I think the scaled amount of orange would be okay for orange, but not for dried orange peel. The latter probably gives more flavor for the same weight. I tried using about 2/3 oz bitter peel in one batch, and I would have preferred less. A batch with 1/3 oz bitter peel had obvious orange flavor, but was pleasant.

For the ordinary beer, 7 g mace scales to 0.05 g, and 14 g coriander scales down to 0.1 g. Again following Mosher I'll use somewhat larger amounts: 0.13 tsp mace and 1 tsp coriander.

What was sour? Mosher wrote that the ordinary beer was probably sour because Wágner said to add a handful of malt meal or flour when the yeast is pitched, and malt has lots of lactobacillus on it. However, for both beers Wágner's instructions are: After the wort is cooled to 15°C (59°F) take about a tenth of the wort, mix in the yeast, spices, and a handful of malt flour or meal (Malzmehl), wait for this to ferment actively and then mix it into the rest of the wort. According to Krennmair this pitching procedure, with the exception of the malt flour addition, is known from other sources.

So both beers might have been sour. I think it's possible that they weren't, but it's hard to be sure. My main reason is that the conditions were not very suitable for souring beer. First, the amount of malt flour is tiny, I estimate roughly a sixteenth of a teaspoon in a five-gallon batch. Second, the wort is quite cool when the malt flour is added, 59°F. Third, the beer was pretty highly hopped. The small potential amount of bacteria, lowish temperature, and anti-bacterial action of hops would all make for slow souring, at most. Also, I would think that if sourness were important, Wágner would say something about how long this takes to develop, but there is no mention of sourness at all. By contrast, he does mention this for Berliner Weisse and Gose. He also discusses how long Broyhan will keep before turning sour. For Englisch-Köstritzer he only discusses how long the beer keeps, which he says should be at least six months for the English beer. Still, it isn't 100% clear that they weren't sour.

The beers were barrel-aged. This may be minor. Beer was often distributed in barrels back then. Some were lined with pitch, to prevent wood flavor, and I suspect to reduce leakage. Wágner discusses the use of barrels for these beers in some detail. The English beer was expected to last at least six months in the barrel. For this, he says it should not be lined with pitch, but cleaned or scalded with boiling water and crushed juniper berries. Krennmair wrote that juniper berries remove the wood flavor. I would think they can't just cancel and leave nothing, so it seems possible that it had oak and juniper berry flavors, though neither was likely to be strong. Still, by using juniper berries they were apparently trying to avoid wood flavor, and apparently they were not trying to introduce juniper flavor.

For the ordinary beer, by contrast, Wágner says the barrels should be freshly pitched, but adds that if you don't like pitch flavor you can scald them with boiling water and crushed juniper berries. It's possible that he meant use boiling water and juniper berries on the freshly pitched barrels, but I doubt it. In any case it's clear that some versions of this beer had pitch flavor. To my surprise, food-grade pitch can be purchased today, and in fact it's referred to as brewer's pitch.

Why Englisch? I find this puzzling. The fact that these are ales may contribute to the one being labeled English, but Germany always had ales, so I suspect this is at most part of the reason. It also wouldn't explain why the weaker beer, also an ale, is called ordinary instead of English. It could be that exported English beer tended to be strong ales, perhaps flavored, and so the resemblence to this Köstritz beer would be closer.

Germany had unified shortly before this book, and there were attempts in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries (I'm not sure) to replace foreign words with German equivalents. I wonder if Englisch as a beer descriptor disappeared for that reason. But that would have nothing to do with how the term first came into use.

I once wondered whether other organisms like Brett might have grown in the barrel. That would fit with Wágner's statement that the barrels for the English beer should only be used for this purpose, and I have the impression that exported English beer was known for this. If so, maybe then there was also bacteria, and the beers really were somewhat sour. Maybe. This still conflicts with Wágner completely ignoring any development of this kind of flavor.

Other sources? Given all the uncertainties, it's worth noting that Wágner says that he is following Muntz. Unfortunately there's no bibliography, so he could have been more helpful than simply referring to “Muntz.” The reference might be somewhere in the preceding 923 pages, but I only searched a few tens of pages. I did find a brewing book by a Muntz online, and this has a first chapter titled “Introduction, with example of the system of the Köstritzer brewery and the causes of defective beers.” That might give one pause, but still it's clear that the book has some information about brewing in Köstritz in the early 19th century.

Next: Things I've tried.

References

Krennmair, Andreas, Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Homebrewer, 2018, Andreas Krennmair (publisher).

Muntz, Johann Philipp Christian, Das Bierbrauen in allen seinen Zweigen, als Malzen, Gähren, Schroten, Hopfen, 1840, Schröter. Available online.

Noonan, Gregory J., New brewing lager beer: the most comprehensive book for home and microbrewers, 2003, Brewers Publications.

EK-1: Englisch-Köstritzer

In his 2000 Zymurgy article on old North German beer styles, Randy Mosher discussed seven lost and strange styles of ale from Northern Germany, an area he called “the heart of whacky beer country.” The styles include several that we now see commercially or at least home-brewed, especially Gose. For some reason Englisch-Köstritzer has been largely ignored. Mosher wrote “this one is definitely not the inky, near-porter lager we associate today with Köstritz,” i.e., schwarzbier. The recipe he gives for Englisch-Köstritzer makes two pale beers using a parti-gyle procedure, so a single mash is performed and the first runnings are used to make a stronger beer while the second runnings are used to make a weaker beer. The grain bill is 80% Pils malt and 20% wheat malt. Mosher gave the first beer’s target gravity as 1.079 and the second’s as 1.032. In addition, he wrote that the second runnings beer is probably sour. The beers are fairly heavily-hopped. They also have small amounts of several flavorings, including orange peel, nutmeg, and coriander. This is pretty different from schwarzbier. I once wondered how they moved from one to the other, but there doesn’t have to be a relationship between the two beyond their common town. Just because Köstritz is now known for their schwarzbier, it doesn’t mean they couldn’t have once made some other beer that was well-known at the time.

Mosher gave a recipe that’s a little low on detail, no doubt due to the space constraints of the magazine article, but also probably because his source doesn’t tell us all we’d like to know. He referenced Ladislaus Wágner’s Handbuch der Bierbrauerei from 1877. (See also his book Radical Brewing.) I found a copy of an 1884 edition of this book, and I’ve attempted to translate the relevant section. Wágner’s text has a lot of detail but skips many things, like the original gravities of the two worts, and the mash rest times and temperatures. While this is frustrating, in a way it’s freeing. Since I don’t have the option of rigorously following his recipe I’m more comfortable modifying it, as long as I feel like the new version will give something plausibly close to the original, or perhaps a modernized version. That approach give us a lot of options, with Wágner’s text providing guidance. I’ve now tried several variations of these recipes, with some quite good results.

In the following I'll give a more complete description of Wágner's recipe. I'll then discuss recipes I've tried, and finish with scans from Wágner's book, and offer my translation. In one place Wágner calls the strong beer Englisch and the weaker beer Ordinairisch or ordinary, so I'll latch onto that sentence and call them English and ordinary.

Andreas Krennmair, author of Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Home Brewer, graciously checked my translation, corrected some of my mistakes and clarified text that puzzled me. I will include a few of his comments that help clarify Wágner's intent. Remaining mistakes are mine, of course.

There are four of these pages, each with links to the next and previous pages.

Next: Wágner’s recipe

References

Mosher, Randy, “The Outlaw Beers of Germany.” Zymurgy, vol. 23, no. 5, 2000, p. 18, September/October.

Mosher, Randy, Radical Brewing. Brewers Publications, 2004

Wágner, Ladislaus, Handbuch der Bierbrauerei. Bernhard Friedrich Voigt, 1884.

Acorn beer: Results, discussion

How'd it come out?

I brought some to the PALE ALES holiday party on Jan. 11, 2016, and the bottles were labeled "Acorn beer — Brown ale with acorns." I received many compliments on the beer, but I always asked, "Do you taste anything unusual?" The answer was "No." A few people mentioned that it had a dryness to the finish that they didn't expect. Maybe I hadn't leached all of the tannin out, and that gives that bit of dry mouthfeel. One person said he tasted a hint of something nutty.

I have to agree. It tastes like a pleasant but not terribly remarkable brown ale. It does have terrific head retention, and a strong chill haze. Maybe the acorns contributed protein.

What would I do differently?

So the cereal mash approach I used didn't give noticeable acorn flavor. These acorns are pretty mild, not just in tannin but in other flavor, too. There is one more thing I would try, which I mentioned earlier: Roast them and soak in the secondary. I may do this, if we get another big crop and I feel I have time on my hands for the shelling.

Just to summarize some points:

• Different oak species (and maybe different trees, seasons, other things?) give acorns with different levels of tannin, the bitter astringent chemicals that should be leached out before consuming. The Eastern white oak in my front yard gave acorns so mild, it wasn't obvious that I needed to leach the tannin out. I did it anyway. The pin oak in my back yard had very bitter acorns.
• The oil level of acorns apparently also varies with species, and maybe other things. The Eastern white oak acorns were not oily. The great head retention I got proves that it isn't a problem, at least for these acorns.
• Mashing the acorns doesn't give much flavor to the beer. In fact with the two pounds in the five-gallon batch I made, a number of people couldn't taste them.

Acorns to wort

Preparing the acorns for mashing

I don't know that soaking to remove tannin is necessary for these acorns, but I did it this first time just in case. I covered the dried acorns with cold (filtered) water and let them sit for a couple of hours. They soaked up some of the water, and the remainder turned a little cloudy and green. Surprising, given that the acorns are a chocolate brown.

After a couple of hours I drained the acorns and covered them again with fresh water, this time about twice as much as needed to cover. I was thinking if they just soak it all up, the tannin may be in the water but the water is inside the acorns, not out as desired. I let this go another couple of hours. I repeated this several times. One soaking was overnight, so longer than two hours, and another was a few hours while we were at church. They were soaking for more than 24 hours, all together.

In the last installment I mentioned a skin on the outside of the acorns that doesn't always come off easily. Some of it comes off during the drying, so you get flakes floating around, and the rest
seems to come off during the soaking. I haven't thought of an easy way to separate acorns from flakes. The acorns settle more quickly than the flakes in water if they're all stirred vigorously, but the flakes still settle fairly fast, so without a deep container it's not terribly effective. I removed quite a lot of the flakes by hand, while transferring from the sieve back into the jar in which I was soaking them.

During soaking, my acorns turned an unappetizing greenish-gray. When Lynn baked and soaked some for roasting, to see if they made good snack food, they came out "blonde" after soaking, and dark brown again after roasting. Hopefully the beer won't come out greenish-gray.

Some of the acorns after soaking. This was intended to show the odd greenish-gray color, but I was aware that camera-monitor systems don't reproduce color very well.

 I then ran them through the fine blade of a meat grinder. They are tender enough for this after the soaking.

Meat grinder, ground acorns, and acorns. Note the circa 1980 appliance color. The box says "Harvest Gold," but it leans toward avocado. No doubt it has changed in those 35 years.

Recipe and mash

I did an adjunct mash with the acorns, the day before the main mash. Following Mosher's description in Radical Brewing, I mashed the ground acorns and about half as much six-row malt together. I used rests at about 100, 120, and 155 degrees. Mosher's description doesn't include the rest at 100 degrees, but I was hoping this rest, which is supposed to help degrade glucans or gums, would help break down the acorns. After boiling it I let it cool overnight. In the morning I heated it to about boiling and mixed it into the main mash just after doughing in.

Adjunct mash, after sitting overnight. Thankfully the color is no longer greenish-gray.

For the recipe, I was torn between making a beer that might come out too boring, and one in which other flavors are confused with acorn flavors. An acorn IPA with Brett is out for this first try, at least. A recipe of acorns, pilsner malt, and a small amount of hops leans a little too close to acorn tea. So, I'm aiming at a brown ale (nut-brown, in this case) that's not too roasty but would probably be okay without the acorns. The recipe is

Adjunct mash

1 lb six-row malt
2 lbs acorns (shelled and dried, before soaking)

Main mash

8 lbs pale ale malt
1/2 lb 60L crystal malt
1/2 lb victory malt
1/4 lb chocolate malt

Hops

3/4 oz Horizon pellets, 10.1% AA, 60 mins
1/2 oz Willamette pellets, 5.2 % AA, 20 mins

Yeast

Wyeast American Ale 2 (1272).

I intended this to give an OG of 1.058, and 35 IBUs.

The home brewery (in the garage). It's mostly pretty simple. This really has nothing to do with acorn beer, I'm just throwing it in.

I used a no-sparge procedure. I was aiming at 6.5 gallons of runoff, but got 7.5. Apparently the acorns don't hold a lot of water, but that doesn't explain it all. Probably I added more water to the mash than intended. The runoff had a gravity of about 1.041, which, with the volume, is less extract than I hoped to get. I'm guessing it's because the acorns don't break down much in the mash. The adjunct mash still had lots of fairly hard bits in it.

I boiled the wort for 90 minutes. At the end of the boil and cooling, the actual OG was 1.053, and the volume was a little less than 6 gallons, 5.5 in the fermenter. The wort is a dark brown, dark enough to be a brown porter, I'm pretty sure. Some of that seems to be from the acorns, since the malt bill by itself shouldn't give wort that dark. There is evident acorn flavor in it, not intense but not too subtle, either. It may stand out more after fermentation.

Fermentation didn't start for more than 24 hours. I oxygenated well, so either I should have kept it warmer, or I should have made a starter, or both. (Oxygenation worries me, in a case like this. I'd think there's more time for the oxygen to do bad things before the yeast eats it.) The rest of the fermentation, secondary fermentation, and kegging will be completely standard, so I won't write about that, unless something weird happens.

Acorn beer beginnings

There are a lot of oak trees in this part of New Jersey, including some on our property. They drop acorns every Fall, but some years they drop a lot. Doesn't "acorn beer" sound appealing for Fall, like "nut brown ale?" I've semi-joked about it almost since I started homebrewing, in 1997. So this year (2015) the oak trees are dropping a lot of acorns. Remembering my comments, Lynn went and collected a little more than four pounds of acorns from the front yard, intending that I try them. How could I refuse? I love trying things, if there isn't too much work, sometimes even if there is.

I've googled "acorn beer," and found a bunch of hits on homebrew sites from people asking whether anyone had tried acorn beer. There was some discussion, but few mentions of results. The one I remember was from someone who tried making about a gallon of beer. He mentioned that it was quite bitter, and he'd try aging it to see if it smoothed out. I got the impression he did not soak the acorns to remove the tannin. So maybe there will be something worthwhile in this blog.

Acorns

I've also googled acorns, trying to find information on processing them. Korean cuisine seems to include the use of acorn flour, and you can get it on-line. I'm concerned about it being thoroughly processed, acorn starch, you might say, but I may be wrong. In any case, it's more aesthetically appealing to use acorns from my own yard.

I've found conflicting information on the nutritional content of acorns. Some say it's very close to that of barley, so good for beer. Others say it has a lot of fat, and so can go rancid. I suspect the different kinds of oaks produce acorns with different nutritional content.

Lynn tells me that the oak in the front yard is an Eastern White Oak. White oaks are supposed to have acorns with less tannin in them. And in fact, these acorns are pretty mild. We tried some raw, and they really don't make you pucker all that much, roughly the same as a walnut. By contrast, there is an oak in the back yard that Lynn says is a pin oak, a kind of red oak. Its acorns are very bitter. Good thing the white oak acorns are the less bitter ones, since they're quite a bit larger.

So lesson 1, white oak acorns may be better than others because of lower tannins.

By the way, they taste unusual but pleasant, kind of buttery, with a little sweetness in the aftertaste. Lynn collected some more, and shelled and soaked to remove tannins. She then oiled, roasted, and salted them to see if they worked as nuts for snacks. They don't quite. The taste is interesting, but they're a little hard, and the texture is a little odd.

Initial processing

Following some on-line sources, we baked them on low heat to kill any eggs or grubs in them. The source I followed said to bake them at 200°F for 30 minutes, so I did that, with the acorns spread one layer deep on three cookie sheets. I just turned the oven off after a half hour and let them cool overnight. The next morning Lynn took them out and put them on the kitchen counter. After a while she found a grub crawling away, so clearly they hadn't gotten hot enough. Lynn then baked them at 250°F for an hour. Although the meats were a fairly light tan when raw, after the time in the oven they are dark brown. They look like chocolate.

Then came the shelling. I used an ordinary nutcracker, the two-armed class-2 lever kind of thing, not the kind with the wooden figure that cracks the nut in its jaw. After an entire Eagles game I had worked through only half of the four plus pounds.

After another Eagles game plus fifteen minutes I had shelled them all.

There is a skin that sticks to some of the acorn meats, that's hard to get off, so I did not worry too much about it. It will mostly come off during soaking or mashing.

I stored the acorns in the big jar in the picture, flushed with CO₂, maybe being more cautious than necessary. After a few days I noticed that a few acorns had a little fuzz on them, I assume mold. Apparently they hadn't dried enough yet. So I baked them again for an hour or so (don't remember) at 200°F. I put them back in the big jar, which I had cleaned, sanitized, dried, and put in my chest freezer (~45°F). As soon as the acorns entered the jar, water started condensing inside it, so they were still out-gassing water. The next day I put them in the upper oven with the oven light on and the door cracked, as Lynn suggested, and left them for a day. No more condensation in the jar. I can't get to the beer for a month or so, so I flushed the jar with CO₂ again, and I'm storing them in the chest freezer. There are a little more than two pounds of acorns, now that they're shelled and dried.