1503-Sm-Beer-art - 12/25/18
"Brewing a 1503 English 'Small Beer'" by Master William Brewer.
NOTE: See also the files: 1503-Eng-Beer-art, small-beer-msg, ale-msg, barley-water-msg, beer-msg, Basic-Beer-art, Brew-w-Gruit-art, Malthouse-art, The-Egg-Test-art, Warm-Beere-art.
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Thank you,
Mark S. Harris...AKA:..Stefan li Rous
stefan at florilegium.org
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You can find more work by this author on his website at:
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Brewing a 1503 English 'Small Beer'
by Master William Brewer
In period London, there were several ways to brew "ordinary beer." I have previously discussed one of those methods, based on a recipe from a 1503 edition of "The Chronicles of London" and process descriptions from "A Description of Elizabethan England" and "The English Housewife" (for more details, please see Appendix A: Brewing Beer In Medieval England). This article will focus on a small part of the process described in "The English Housewife:"
"…and so let [your malt] stand an hour and more in the mash vat, during which space you may if you please heat more liquor in your lead for your second or small drink;…"
"…then stopping the mash vat again, put the second liquor to the malt and stir it well together…"
"Now for your second or small drink which are left upon the grains, you shall suffer it there to stay but an hour or a little better and then drain it off also; which done, put it into the lead with the former hops and cover it very close till your first beer be tunned, and then as before put it also to barm and so tun it up also in smaller vessels, and of this second beer you shall not draw above one hogshead to three of the better."
"Now there be divers other ways and observations for the brewing of ordinary beer, but none so good, so easy, so ready, and quickly performed as this before showed: neither will any beer last longer or ripen sooner, for it may be drunk at a fortnight’s age, and will last as long and lively."
These four phrases are interspersed throughout the section on brewing an Ordinary Beer, and describe how to make a Small Beer. The written process describes rinsing the grains used to brew the Ordinary Beer to get as much of the residual sugars out of them as possible, then boiling the wort and fermenting it to make a beer with a lower alcohol content, thus getting more use out of ingredients which could be very expensive. Modern brewers will often run their malt back through the mash repeatedly (called "batch sparging," a variant on simply sparging) to get as much sugar as possible into the "Ordinary Beer," then dispose of the grains after one use. Before sparging was discovered in very late-period times, brewers would rinse the grains with fresh water to make a small beer.
What is the recipe?
The original recipe comes from The Customs of London, also called Arnold’s Chronicle, by Richard Arnold, and was a section divider. It was displayed as a single line:
To brewe Beer.
X. quarters malte, ij. quarters wheet, ij. quarters ootes, xl. Ib. weight of hoppys, To make Ix. barells of sengyll beer.
I redacted this recipe to the following:
· 12 lbs malted barley
· 2.4 lbs malted wheat
· 2.4 lbs oats
· 1.5 ounces hops
· 5 tsp Burton-on-Trent hardening salts
· Wyeast 1335 – British Ale II
What is a small beer?
Based on the description from Markham, a small beer is a low-alcohol beer created by re-mashing previously used grains with fresh water.
Who made small beer?
Several different types of people made small beers throughout Europe. At the beginnings of the 16th Century, housewives and the beginnings of large-scale breweries were the most common producers of all types of beer. For the purposes of this study, though, I will only discuss the beer made by wealthy English housewives as part of their overall household duties.
Where was small beer produced?
Beer, March Beer and Small beer were each made all throughout England, according to Markham.
Who would drink a small beer?
According to Markham: "They have March beer, household beer, and small beer: the first is for strangers, the second for the Master, Mistress and better sort of the family, and the last is for ploughmen or hind servants." Per this description, the people who would drink a small beer were dirty, smelly, and not generally invited into the main house during the course of their duties. Ploughmen drove plows behind team of mules, oxen, or horses, while farm assistants did dirty, heavy jobs where intoxication could be dangerous to themselves or others. Giving them a beer with less alcohol could provide them with safe liquids to drink, without as much risk of inebriation.
In Shakespeare’s "Othello," Iago suggests, in a heavy dose of irony, that the ideal woman -- after describing her as a strong, gentle woman who is kind and generous to all, and never rude or mean to anyone -- is fit only "To suckle fools and chronicle small beer" – i.e. a poor housewife has to keep track of everything; even the smallest of expenses. A modern translation of this passage says, "…and clip coupons."
How was small beer made?
Small beer was made as part of the brewing of Ordinary Beer. After mashing the Ordinary Beer, the brewster would add another batch of liquor to the same grains, and re-mash them while boiling the Ordinary Beer. This second running of the grains would then be boiled in the same boil pot as the Ordinary Beer, using the same hops over again. Once it was boiled, it would be cooled overnight, then barm from a previous batch of beer would be added to it, and it would be allowed to ferment as normal. Once fermentation was complete, the barrel in which it fermented would be closed up tight so it could age for a fortnight before serving.
Why did I choose to make a small beer?
This particular small beer was made for a metalworker who requested a batch of low-alcohol beer which he could drink while forging. I had been interested in the process for a while, but had not taken the opportunity to make one. At his request, though, I did my best to accommodate him, following the recipe from Markham, above.
How did I make this small beer?
Following the instructions of Markham, I brewed a batch of ordinary beer. After it mashed and I moved it to the boil pot, I heated more water in my mashtun. Basically, as I finished a step in the Ordinary Beer process, I repeated it with the Small Beer. I mashed the used grains at 161F for an hour, then moved the wort to the boil pot. I boiled the wort for an hour, then chilled it and moved it to a carboy.
What changes did I make from period?
I made no major changes from the period method, besides those modern sanitation requires:
1. I used bleach to sanitize all of my brewing equipment instead of just cleaning it with soap and hot water
2. I used heavy-bottomed stainless steel brew pots instead of a lead or copper cauldron
After this brewing process, I followed mundane procedures for fermentation and bottling.
These are the steps I followed to make the beer:
Markham says, "yet indeed there can be truly said to be but two kinds [of beer] thereof; namely, ordinary beer and March beer, all other beers being derived from them." The small beer, being made from the spent grains of the ordinary beer, certainly meets that description.
What is the Alcohol Content of a small beer?
This beer started with an initial gravity of 1.032. The batch you will be tasting today also started with an initial gravity of 1.032, but stopped at 1.010 -- a fair bit short of what I wanted, which was 1.002. This means it is sweeter than I intended, but does not make it a bad beer in general, or even a bad example of the type. Different yeasts ferment differently, and based on availability, I ended up using Wyeast’s "British Ale Yeast" instead of "British Ale II." The difference in yeast most likely caused the difference in final gravity.
Initial gravity = 1.032
Final gravity = 1.009
Alcohol by Weight = (IG – FG) * 105
ABW = (1.032-1.010) * 105
ABW = .022 * 105
ABW = 2.31%
Alcohol by Volume = ABW * 1.25
ABV = 2.31 * 1.25
ABV = 2.8875
ABV = 2.9%
Had the final gravity finished where I wanted, the result would have been 3.9% alcohol. It’s not a large change in alcohol, but it will make a noticeable difference in sweetness and hoppiness.
What conclusions did I come to?
Based on my research, I feel this small beer is a good example of what would have been produced in medieval England during the 15th century and later. I followed period processes to produce the wort for this beer, and then followed mundane procedures to ferment, bottle and store it. As with each brewing of the 1503 Ordinary Beer, I chose to make the 1503 Small Beer this way to prevent infections of the wort.
What would I do differently?
The next time I brew this beer, I will do further research on the time spent boiling. Per some sources I have read, day-time and night-time were always divided into 12-hour segments. This means that beers boiled for an hour in the summer would have been boiled far longer than beers boiled for an hour in the winter. If I brewed this beer in the summer for an "hour," it could easily be an extra 30-40 minutes of boil time. This would further concentrate the wort, leading to higher gravity in a lesser amount of finished product.
The beers on the left-hand side of the table are the Ordinary Beer, for a point of reference, and the ones on the right-hand side of the table are the Small Beer.
Please enjoy your samples of this beer with my compliments, and feel free to leave kudos or complaints on the notepad using the attached pen. As always, I leave final judgment to you, the drinker.
Sláinte!
Resources
Richard Arnold, The customs of London: otherwise called Arnold's Chronicle, 2nd Edition, London, Published for "F. C. and J. Bivington; T. Payne; Wilkie and Robinson, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; Cadell and Davies; J. Mawman; and R. H. Evans," 1811, p. 247
William Harrison
A Description of Elizabethan England, , 1577, pp. 155-161
A Description of England in Shakspere's youth, London, N. Trubner & Co., 1881, p. 134
Gervase Markham, The English Housewife, Best, M. ed., 1986 McGill-Queen's Press. (Originally published 1615, 1623, and 1631.), pp 204-208
Rowlett, R. A Dictionary of Units of Measurement, University of North Carolina. Web. 4/22/2010 and ongoing. [http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/index.html]
Cornell, M. Befuggled: doubts about a hop’s birth, Martyn Cornell’s Zythophile, Web, 4/23/2010 [http://zythophile.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/befuggled-doubts-about-a-hops-birth/]
Zohary, D., Hopf, M., Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The Origin and Spread of Cultivated Plants in West Asia, Europe, and the Nile Valley, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press, 1988, 1993, 2000, Reprinted 2002, pp 59-69
William Shakespeare
Othello, Barnes & Noble, 2007, from Act II, Scene 1, Page 8
Merriam-Webster Dictionary, definition of "sparge." Retrieved 12/3/2014, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sparge
Merriam-Webster Dictionary, definition of "hind." Retrieved 12/3/2014, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hind
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Copyright 2018 by William Wagers. <Wm.Brewer.OL at gmail.com>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited. Addresses change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the author is notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.
If this article is reprinted in a publication, please place a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.
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