small-beer-msg - 10/28/06 A weakly alcoholic beer made using the mashed grain from a previous batch of beer. NOTE: See also the files: beer-msg, beverages-NA-msg, wine-msg, mead-msg, cider-msg, hops-msg, herbs-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 09:38:22 -0500 From: "Decker, Terry D." Subject: RE: SC - alcohol content in beer > As beer was drunk daily by children, pregnant women, and nursing > mothers, one hopes it had a very low alcohol content > Caroline Barat FitzWalter Reynolds produced a period small beer based on some monastery records. It was very low in alcohol and sour tasting. Convenience store Coors has more alcohol and tastes better. Bear Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 11:28:38 -0400 From: "Jeff Gedney" Subject: Re: SC - Small Beer? > Is "small beer" a lighter, lower-alcohol version > of what would have been drunk later in the day? Small beer, as I understand it, was made form the second sparge run from the mash. (Today it is made from a comparativly diluted wort.) The process of getting fermentable sugar from grain, involved three steps, Malting, mashing, and sparging. Malting starts the sprouting process, to release the plants own enzymes that converth the grain's starches into maltose and other sugars. Mashing takes the Grain, crushes it, and adds heat and water to allow the natural enzymes to do a more complete job of converting the sugars than would be possible otherwise. Sparging ( lautering) is the process of running hot water through the mashed grain to rinse out the sugars. The rinse water then is called "wort" and is used as the base to make the beer. The sugars come out strongly at first, and as the process continues there is naturally less sugar in the grain, so the wort contains less sugar as you go along. The first, strongest, runs take longer to brew, and make heavier and stronger ales or beers. After these are boiled and flavored with spices or hops, they are innoculated with yeast and put aside to ferment and age. The grain is washed again to get as much sugar as possible. this much weaker liquid ferments and finishes quickly. (it is still boiled first, which is why it was so popular as a "common" beverage for all ages, because the natural yuckey stuff from the effluvia of the village upstream was killed in the boiling!) So if a very diluted malt beer is made, usually put up the same day or soon after and drunk within a week, before the ferment really finishes. this results in a lightly fizzy, and somewhat sweet drink. Kinda the "soda" of it's day. Brandu Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 00:17:15 +0200 From: "Cindy M. Renfrow" Subject: Re: SC - Small Beer? From: "Jeff Gedney" Is "small beer" a lighter, lower-alcohol version [OF SMALL BEER] - 1631 This recipe uses the malt and hops left over from the following recipe, and was very likely originally part of that recipe. 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 boil the other also, then clear it from the 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. (From The English Housewife, etc., by Gervase Markham, 1631, pp. 205-6.) (OF BREWING ORDINARY BEER - 1631 Now for the brewing of ordinary beer, your malt being well ground and put in your mash vat, and your liquor in your lead2 ready to boil, you shall then by little and little with scoops or pails put the boiling liquor to the malt, and then stir it even to the bottom exceedingly well together (which is called the mashing of the malt) then, the liquor swimming in the top, cover all over with more malt, and so let it 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; this done, pluck up your mashing strom, and let the first liquor run gently from the malt, either in a clean trough or other vessels prepared for the purpose, and then stopping the mash vat again, put the second liquor to the malt and stir it well together; then your lead being emptied put your first liquor or wort therein, and then to every quarter of malt put a pound and a half of the best hops you can get, and boil them an hour together, till taking up a dishful thereof you see the hops shrink into the bottom of the dish; this done, put the wort through a straight sieve, which may drain the hops from it, into your cooler, which, standing over the gyle vat, you shall in the bottom thereof set a great bowl with your barm and some of the first wort (before the hops come into it) mixed together, that it may rise therein, and then let your wort drop or run gently into the dish with the barm which stands in the gyle vat; and this you shall do the first day of your brewing, letting your cooler drop all the night following, and some part of the next morning, and as it droppeth if you find that a black scum or mother riseth upon the barm, you shall with your hand take it off and cast it away; then nothing being left in the cooler, and the beer well risen, with your hand stir it about and so let it stand an hour after, and then, beating it and the barm exceeding well together, tun it up into the hogsheads being clean washed and scalded, and so let it purge: and herein you shall observe not to tun your vessels too full, for fear thereby it purge too much of the barm away: when it hath purged a day and a night, you shall close up the bung holes with clay, and only for a day or two after keep a vent-hole in it, and after close it up as close as may be.) Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu cindy at thousandeggs.com Author & Publisher of "Take a Thousand Eggs or More, A Collection of 15th Century Recipes" and "A Sip Through Time, A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes" http://www.thousandeggs.com Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 19:35:42 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Small Beer? Christine A Seelye-King wrote: > More questions for my Breakfast class: > I taught my new "Breaking the Fast, or, What Did They Eat For > Breakfast?" this weekend, and it went very well. We started talking > about the references to beer and wine in many of the listings of what > people were allotted for breakfast, and the question about the SCA not > giving out alcohol came up. What I am wondering is, what kind of beer > would have been served? Is "small beer" a lighter, lower-alcohol version > of what would have been drunk later in the day? As Brandu sez, small beer is often made from the second running of liquor (i.e. water) from a batch of malt, usually by boiling the malt (since the conversion from the original mashing has already taken place) with freshwater and any spent hops or other gruity herbs (and how come nobody on this list warned me valerian stinks so bad???). It can also be made in the more standard manner, in weaker form, but it's probably more economically feasible, in terms of things like fuel usage, to make regular ale or beer, then use the spent malt for a smaller brew. It is smaller, by the way (and here's where the name comes in, I believe) because you get less of it than of the original brew. I believe Gervase Markham speaks of two grades of ale from one batch of malt used to make regular ale, but from the ingredients used to make strong ale, you can get both a second-grade and a third-grade ale, in decreased quantities. > I have a recipe for a > lemon-beer, three days, 10 lemons, some sugar, a package of baking yeast, > water, and voila!, you have a fizzy lemon drink, not enough fermentation > to have much alcohol (and just how much is another question, when does it > cross that line and become too much to be used for our purposes) but just > enough to be fizzy. I don't think this is a period recipe, but it is a > very simple, easy to make beverage. I am wondering if we are dealing > with something similar when the sources refer to these as morning > beverages. I know that wine was often drunk watered, and again, I wonder > at what point the alcohol level is low enough to be considered null and > usable. Okay, rather than tell you again all about SCA funds, let's try another way to put this in perspective. You know drinks like Malta Goya, or the various near-beers, which are theoretically non-alcoholic, at least for practical purposes? Once upon a time, these beverages (before pasteurization of beers) logged in at under 1% alcohol. Modern, crappy American beer, that awful pseudo-pilsener made with lovely stuff like unmalted rice and corn, measure in at something like 5-6% or less. I would guess, very rough estimate, y'unnerstand, that small beer gets you something like 2%. Of course it varies greatly depending on how the malt was mashed, for example, if it was a hot mash and there are a lot of dextrins, and therefore fewer fermentable sugars, the ale is lower in alcohol, and a second running will be commensurately lower. > Christianna > > "Breakfasts in Lent: > My Lord and My Lady -- a loaf of bread in trenchers, 2 manchets, a quart > of beer, a quart of wine..." > > "...THE KYNG for his brekefast, ...dim' gallon of ale. " (A demi-gallon?) > > "Queen Elizabeth's breakfast was 'manchet, ale, beer, wine and a good > pottage made of mutton or beef'." Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 07:48:38 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy Subject: Re: SC - Small Beer?. Hey, here's a thought that I don't think anybody has mentioned in detail yet. If you _really_ want to serve a perod ale at breakfast, you could simply brew it on site. Work it into the event as a hands-on teaching/research project. You could probably do it on, say, Friday night in the case of one of the Meridien weekend-long events. Somewhere, there's a record of a law on the books in Oxford (Cindy can doubtless provide details) that says a brewer/tavern owner may not sell ale that has not sat and settled for at least six hours prior to sale. This suggests that the practice of selling new ale was probably pretty widespread. What you'd be serving would be, essentially, unfermented ale, with virtually no alcohol, but just the taste of the malt and any flavorings you chose to add, which might or might not include hops. Would it taste like Guinness Stout, Heineken, or my own favorite, Chimay? No. Would it taste bad? No, because the only way it might suffer is in comparison to certain modern beers and when modern criteria are applied, which is clearly unfair. Not bad, just unlike a modern beer, as anybody who's done any perod brewing knows. It actually tastes more than a bit like sweetened, iced tea, especially when you cool your wort in an oak vat. Would it have any alcohol? None to speak of. And it is a good representation of a period beverage? Absolutely! Adamantius, Sometime Evil Period Brewer Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 05:39:56 -0500 From: "Terry Decker" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Small beer, was period beverages To: "Cooks within the SCA" > Aellin wrote: > Small beer has been mentioned a few times, but I don't know anything > about it but the name. Is there anything like it currently available? I > was wondering about Malta, though that's totally a wild guess... I'm > not familiar with that, either. Anyone know? Coors at 3.2%. I would recommend one of the "alcohol free" beers, like O'Douls. A friend who is a good brewer extrapolated a small beer recipe from some moestary accounts. The result was drinkable but not very tasty. It was easier to drink after you got accustomed to it. Bear Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 22:18:10 -0400 From: John Kemker Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Small beer, was period beverages To: Cooks within the SCA My message on the SCA_Brew list: *From:* "John" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] brewing and small ale To: "Cooks within the SCA" Small Ale 1.5 kg..,Brupacks Pale Malt syrup (www.thehomebrewshop.co.uk ) 1 kg., porriage ots 12 litres, water 1 pkt, English Ale Yeast 1 pkt, 24 Turbo Yeast (optional I don't use this now) Sterilize a food-grade plastic bucket with lid Also sterilize a strainer to separate liquid from grain later. Boil water, I use electric kettles. mi malt, with the oats. Open Bucket and place it on the floor near the rayburn (solid wood cooker) (or somewhere nice and warm if no rayburn airing cupboard perhaps ?) Pour 2 litres of water into the bin from a reasonable height, fairly slowly. Slowly pur 3 more litres of boiling water over the grain. Don't stir. Put the cover on the bin and let it stand for 10 mins. Then add another 1 litre of boiling water. . Put the lid back on and wait 20 more mins. Take the lid off and stir. It should be the conistency of thick porridge. Put the lid back on and wait at least an hour and a half. Open up the bucket and stir in 3 more litres of boiling water, and stir. Close up again and wait 25 more mins. Finally, add remaining boiling water Stir well. Strain iquid into another sterilized bucket for the fermentation. (This liquid is the wort) Close the fermenting vessel and let the wort cool overnight. Add the yeast into the wort, and shake, stir, agitate the wort in order to get air into it Let the ale ferment for about 3-4 days; the yeast should have started, and alcohol production well under way. After that start drinking it. I usually pour into a period style vessel for serving. Barrel or crock. Sterilized well. Do not strain, siphon off or otherwise et modern about it ! As the days of camp goes on it gets slightly more alcoholic. It tastes quite yeasty and is weak not like British beers so can be drunk easily and frequently (except if you are driving of course) Edited by Mark S. Harris small-beer-msg 8 of 8