X Ales:
1838 & 1945

Two versions of the same X (Mild) Ale brewed by the same London brewery 107 years apart.

Our new releases in March 2012! Two X Ales from the same London brewery, 107 years apart: these beers were brewed and sold as the “same beer”. But they weren’t the same beer at all! This side-by-side release allows you to taste history in a very direct, beat-you-about-the-head kind of way. The beers are whoppingly, fantastically different. There’s no way you would think they are connected by the same brewery, brand name and style. Isn’t history wonderful? Ron Pattinson once again provided recipes and brewday documents for these beers. The 1838 Mild (X Ale) is 7.4%, golden and very hoppy: if you tried our 1832 XXXX Mild ale, you could certainly see this as it’s little brother. The 1945 Mild (X Ale) is 2.8% and more of a mild-as-we-know-it. Dark, weak, grainy. It’s a fantastic way to get yourself into a World War II rationing frame of mind (Note; we recommend drinking this a bit warmer than the fridge). All in all, these beers drunk either alone or side by side demonstrate brewing history in action, and even more wonderfully, they reflect the massive changes that occurred in London between 1838 and 1945, the intimate relationship between working people and their beers, and the passion and creativity that brewers throughout the ages have applied to their craft. We are honored to re-brew these beers, and we give Ron our heartfelt thanks once again for making it possible. Prepare for some time traveling from the comfort of your pint-glass-accompanied armchair! Cheers!

1832 XXXX Mild Ale

1832 Mild Ale

This 1832 Mild Ale was the first beer we brewed in our Once Upon A Time series. February 27th, 1832 was a London XXXX Mild Ale first brewed on Brick Lane at the Truman brewery. It is a 10.5% alcohol beer: golden coloured, with Kent Golding leaf hops. It was brewed without refrigeration, and we followed the original brewday document (see below), as collected by brewing historian Ron Pattinson.

London at that time was a frenzy of inequality: Truman’s brewery existed in close proximity to poverty-stricken tenements and work houses, while a short distance away the wealthy hosted parties and kept large homes. There were no sewers, and a cholera outbreak was just beginning in East London, right around the brewery.

Breweries in London at that time were enormous, and drinking only beer would have saved you from the cholera. Our batch is a drop compared to the size of the batch that was originally brewed. It was common to use a LOT of hops: this beer has around 4.5lb/bbl, comparable to a modern American Double IPA, but it was not unheard of to use a ton of hops in a single brew: insane.

The beer was available rather briefly in 22oz bottles and on draft. We’re not sure if you can still find it anywhere, but if you do, have fun drinking it!

1901 KK

1901KK

Beer Style: KK
Hop Variety: Kent Goldings, Bramling Cross
Malt Variety: Pale Malt
ABV: 7.8%
IBUs: 100
Color: Black

On November 15th, 1901, a brewer at Whitbread’s Brewery in London made a KK beer: black, dry, hoppy, but with no roasted malts. Another crazy, confusing beer from the past that was ripe for recreation in the 21st century. For this second installment in our “Once Upon a Time” historical beer series we once again teamed up with historian Ron Pattinson of Amsterdam to recreate a beer from Britain’s past.

Just to remind you of the project: This is not one of our creative beer projects, but a straight re-brewing of a beer from a specific day in history. Ron provides and translates an original handwritten brewsheet. Unlike recipes, brewsheets record exactly what the brewer did on the day. Using this document avoids any unwarranted creativity on our part (or any wishful thinking on the part of the original brewery) – and we follow this document religiously. A point that we state perhaps all too joyfully is that we’re happy to recreate a crappy beer from the past as long as it is true to the original document. Thankfully, the beers we’ve made so far have all been crazy interesting and crazy good!

The other thing about Once Upon A Time is that they’re real beers that were brewed in their true context. So there’s no need to discuss what style they are – They were classified hundreds of years ago! We have to take the original brewer’s word for it. So this is a KK beer. That’s all there is to it. If you call the KK a black IPA, fair enough: but please realize that you are applying modern, internet-age beer classification to a beer that never required or requested it. KK beers were brewed by several breweries and the style existed well into the 20th Century.

Ron describes the November 15th, 1901 KK as a “Burton Ale” that was meant for aging in vats at the brewery. In his book entitled “1909!” Ron says “when maturation went out of fashion, K Ales just became Strong Ales, that may or may not have had a lengthy secondary conditioning.”

Our KK boasts a black colour, cocoa-coloured head, and satisfying dryness with a substantial bitterness. Most of the colour of this beer comes from sugar, which is surprising and not something you see often these days – almost never here in the states.

We hope you enjoy the KK!

1855 East India Porter

1855EIP

Beer Style: Porter
Hop Variety: Kent Goldings, Spalt
Malt Variety: Brown, Pale
ABV: 6%
IBUs: 93
Color: Black

In early 2011, we once again teamed up with Ron Pattinson (our very favorite brewing Historian), to recreate a beer from history. Ron’s “afflict the comfortable” brewery research takes assumed beer styles and flips them on their heads. Want a 10.5% mild? Not a worry: here’s one from 1832. How about a black ale that uses no dark malt? 1901 KK.

Check out Ron’s page

This time around, Ron’s taken us back to colonial India in the 1850s.  The rum-drinking troops (or “squaddies”) were dying at alarming rates until a beer sent from London to India saved them: but it isn’t what you’re thinking. No, that whole IPA story is a bit of a ruse… We’ll let Ron tell the rest:

“We’ve all heard the romantic tale of beer being shipped half way around the world to quench the thirst of the British in India: the birth of IPA. But Pale Ale wasn’t the only beer sent to India: In fact, it wasn’t even a majority of the beer sent. That honour belongs to beer that’s been lost to history: India Porter.

British military units in India had a big problem. Their men were dying at an alarming rate. Climate and disease played a role, but so did the troops’ drink of choice: rum. What was the solution? Give them Porter instead.

The effect was dramatic. Here are annual death rates of British troops in India in the first half of the 19th century:

Bengal: 73.8 per 1000.
Bombay: 50.7 per 1000.
Madras: 38.4 per 1000.

In Bengal soldiers mostly drank rum, in Madras Porter: Porter-drinking troops had a significantly higher life expectancy than their rum-drinking colleagues!

The East India Company, which effectively ruled large areas of India and had its own military units, took notice and began ordering beer. Lots of it. Casks of Porter out-numbered the Pale Ale 2:1. Between 1849 and 1857 the East India Company ordered 23,511 hogsheads of Pale Ale and 46,363 hogsheads of Porter.”

The recipe that we’re using dates back to a brewsheet from Barclay Perkins Brewery in London, from December 6th, 1855. As with our other historical beers, the EIP was brewed in a vast batch-size that we cannot hope to recreate. The “Porter tuns” were apparently over 3400 barrels in size (that’s bigger than any modern American brewhouse). So, we’re brewing at 1/34th that size, but so much else is the same.

We visited our favorite maltster, Thomas Fawcett & Sons in Yorkshire a few months before we brewed this. The Fawcett maltings has been around since the 1780s, this is pretty authentic stuff.  So we employed their lovely grain for this beer. Their brown malt is sublime; the amber was, and to some degree still is a mystery. It’s a lightly roasted malt and our guess was that it would accentuate the dryness of the beer. But why did they use it back then?

The hops are a different story altogether:

4.47 lbs hops per barrel (Kent Goldings & Spalt)

4.5 pounds per barrel! That’s a double IPA, and as many hops as the 1832 10.5% Mild had! It’s more than some of the hoppiest MODERN IPAs out there… Crazy!

So: our Once Upon a Time 1855 EIP is dry, malty beer with a substantial pipe-tobacco bitterness, dark garnet colour and 6% abv.

So what ever happened to these India Porters? Back to Ron:

“Why have we only ever heard of IPA and not India Porter? It’s all to do with who drank the beers. IPA was the tipple for officers, officials and bureaucrats. Porter was the drink of the ordinary soldiers. Like so much of British history, it’s all about class: It was the middle and upper classes who wrote about their experiences in India, so as far as anyone knew (or cared), IPA was the beer consumed. No-one really cared about the tales of the enlisted men.

A couple of London brewers cornered the Indian Porter market: Whitbread and Barclay Perkins. Both brewed a special version of their Porter for export to India. Like IPA, the difference with domestic beers was the hopping. EIP was no stronger than standard Porter, but contained almost double the amount of hops.

The India trade was very important to Whitbread in the 1850s. In some years almost 30% of their Porter output was exported to India, hitting a peak of 50,000 barrels in 1860.

Beer exports declined after the Indian Mutiny and gradually petered out at the end of the 1800’s as breweries were established in India and continental breweries started shipping Lager. But as late as 1910 Barclay Perkins were still brewing their India Porter.

There is still a remnant of the Porter trade. In fact, in one respect, Porter has fared better than Pale Ale. Because Stout is still brewed throughout the tropics, from Sri Lanka to Jamaica. Whereas you won’t find a drop of Pale Ale.”

1939 No. 1 Ale

1939 No. 1 Ale

As you may have heard, we here at PTB&AP are really fascinated by brewing history.  We enjoy dreaming about breweries from back when breweries were breweries: old brick buildings that took up acres of city real estate, loaded with copper, slate and wooden vessels, floor maltings, cooperages, stables, deep springs, tied pubs and beers we can only imagine.  Imagine?  Well we try to do more than that.  That’s why we began our Once Upon A Time series three years ago and it’s what keeps it going today.  With the help of our friend and brewing historian Ron Pattinson of Amsterdam, we recreate beers from brewing history from the original brewday documents.  In short, we authentically recreate these beers from notes in the original brewer’s hand.

Frankly it’s not a very popular or economically sound side-project.  There are no sexy spices, citrussy hops or bourbon barrels being used by a bunch of dudes who started brewing in their bathtubs.  Instead we’re recreating beers that someone’s Great Grandfather may or may not have enjoyed.  And we love the fact that this series of beers both salutes the real brewers who wrote the handwritten brewsheets we work from, and highlights the fact that these brewers were not rockstars, left no name on their records, and therefore get no real credit, then or now. And it’s a good reminder that today too, in a heyday of branding and “brewers” with their photographs on facebook, the real brewers are often unrecognized, damp and tired at the brewery.

Unfortunately there’s no one around to say to us “I had that beer in 1901 and it was rubbish!” But we love the risk inherent in re-brewing these extinct beers, and hope to bring you more and more and more until you just explode from the education your palate will be given. That all of our palates will be given.  I say this because when you try one of these beers you’re trying it along side us and we’re all the better for it.  If you enjoy addages then here’s one you can finish for us:  unless we taste our brewing history we’re doomed to _____________.  What do you think?

Anyway, trumpet fanfare.  We have a new one coming out this week.

This beer was originally brewed November 15th, 1939.  On that very day Franklin Delano Roosevelt  was laying the cornerstone to the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C.. Across the Atlantic a shift brewer in Edinburgh, Scotland was making one of the strongest beers his brewery had in its repetoire and it was called “No. 1.”  This dark, malty and sweet beer epitomizes Scottish beer of the day and it was a real treat to have Ron tell us that it was a good looking recipe.  Actually it was a peculiar recipe!

Not only does this recipe contain lactose sugar and require us to colour the beer mostly with caramel, but it also demands a “cereal mash”.  This one really is a beer from a comparatively modern industrial brewery.  If you don’t know what a cereal mash is that’s okay.  I imagine many people don’t.  The basic idea follows:  For reasons known mostly by the Head Brewer or maybe even the brewery accountant, corn grits are required as a major portion of this mash. Obviously corn isn’t well suited for the brewhouse.  It has no husk, no enzymes and tends to gum up the works and ruin beer.  Not ideal.  But I guess it does have a couple of good characteristics as well: it’s cheap as chips and works to lighten the body of the finished product.  So in order to make this all work the corn is separated out of the main mash and attended to on its own, save a small amount of 6-row malted barley.  In a cereal mash a different and more complete temperature regimen is used so that various enzymes are empowered to take these grits and turn them into a sweet, free running liquid like wort.  It’s not unlike a single decoction mash that a German or Czech brewer might employ.  Like a decoction, the final step in a cereal mash is a boil of the mash and then it’s pumped back into the main mash to achieve a combined temperature that is good for lautering (a temperature that makes the wort less viscous).

So far in our list of historical beers we have beers reproduced from the years 1832, 1839, 1855, 1879, 1901 & 1945. Not one of them showed this type of complexity in the brewhouse. So it was a great joy and challenge to be able to tackle this beer.  There was quite a lot of coincidence in our brewing of this beer too.  In the late 1990′s I brewed with a cereal mash in, for these purposes anyway, a very under-equipped brewery (a 15bbl Pub system). It was at the old brewpub North East Brewing Company in Allston where I was the brewer.  A good friend of mine named Jeff Biegert was across town brewing at the old Tremont Brewery and from time to time we’d get together and brew a beer collaboratively (though back then we had to keep it a secret, I don’t know why).  One of our projects was to brew something very much like classic Budweiser.  What can I say, we were young punks and we wanted a challenge!  I dug out notes from my brewing school and we endeavored to perform this crazy cereal mash we read about. Long story short, it WAS crazy, but we did it and the beer was great.  Though it’s kind of a dead end.  No one wanted to hear how hard it was to make Budweiser.  But Jeff, my old assistant brewer Aaron Hecker and I learned to appreciate the cereal mash that day.  Anyway, back to the point: We flew Jeff out from the brewery that he now works at in Fort Collins to do another cereal mash with us.  We were all thrilled to be able to relive our victory over corn in Allston.  In a second coincidence, the one and only time any of us had been in Edinburgh it was together, me, Martha and Jeff, on what Martha hilariously calls our honeymoon (and I call our “pre-honeymoon” because who on earth would invite their friend Jeff on their honeymoon?! Um…). Either way, pretty cool.

So the cereal mash team was assembled for brew day.  We had a slightly hobbled Martha who had broken a bunch of bones a few days earlier, me, Jeff along with Ron Pattinson and his son Andrew in town for the week.  Here’s Ron’s take on the brewday. We were all chuffed to be there and to try this thing out, to become part of the history of No. 1, albeit a small fleeting part.  And what more can I tell you than: it all worked out, and you can drink the results?!  Ron was on hand to help us with the colour. There’s most definitely a scientific way to add caramel colouring and I didn’t do it that day.  We didn’t have any colour numbers so it was going to have to be by sight.  I would add some, mix it in and then run a sample down to see what Ron thought.  Once we established that we were roughly looking for the colour of Old Peculier I was all set though.

The cereal mash hit every temperature rest spot on and we hit all our gravities.  This is the sort of thing that makes you feel good about yourself for a while before it dawns on you that it all worked because someone put in all the work in the 1930s…

The one bit that was slightly out of our control was where the fermentation finished.  This peculiar recipe called for a high “terminal gravity”, in other words quite a lot of unfermented sugars after the fermentation was complete.  40% of the sugars were to remain unfermented.  I think at the end of fermentation we had something like 32% left over.  So pretty close.  I guess after so much success a little failure at the end is a healthy reminder of the vagaries of brewing!

So that’s the story of the No. 1 Ale, first brewed in 1939, and now in 2013.  We are launching the beer this Tuesday at VeeVee in Jamaica Plain as our part of Boston Beer Week.  The bottles and kegs should follow to bars and shops in another week or so.  Thanks for reading and cheers from Dann.