Harrison's Wife's Ale
Being a Redaction of a 16th
Century Beer Recipe, with my
research and notes.
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The Original Recipe:
"Nevertheless," he says, "since I have taken occasion to speak of brewing, I
will exemplify in such a proportion as I am best skilled in, because it is the
usual rate for my own family, and once in a month practiced by my wife and
her maidservants, who proceed withal after this manner, as she has oft
informed me.
"Having therefor ground eight bushels of good malt upon our quern, where the
toll is saved, she adds unto it half a bushel of wheat meal and so much of oats
small ground, and so tempers or mixes them with the malt, that you cannot
easily discern the one from the other, otherwise these later would cluster, fall
into lumps, and thereby become unprofitable. The first liquor which is full
eighty gallons according to the proportion of our furnace, she makes boiling
hot, and then pours it softly into the malt, where it rests (but without stirring)
until her second liquor be almost ready to boil. This done, she lets her mash
run till the malt is left without liquor, or at least the greater part of the
moisture, which she perceives by the state and soft issue thereof, and by this
time her second liquor in the furnace is ready to seethe, which is put also to
the malt as the first wort also again into the furnace, whereunto she adds two
pounds of the best English hops, and so lets them seethe together two hours in
the summer, or 1 1/2 hours in winter, which gives it an excellent color and
continuance without impeachment or any excess tartness. But before she puts
her first wort into the furnace, or mingles it with the hops, she takes out an
eight- or nine-gallon vessel full, which she seals up tight, and allows no air to
get to it until it becomes yellow, and this she reserves by itself for further use,
as shall appear later, calling it Brackwort or Charwort, and as she says it adds
also to the color of the drink, whereby it yields only amber or fine gold in hue
to the eye. By this time also her second wort is let run, and the first being
taken out of the furnace and placed to cool, she returns the middle wort into
the furnace, where it is stricken over, or from whence it is taken again.
"When she has mashed also the last liquor (and set the second to cool by the
first) she lets it run and then seethes it again with a pound and a half of new
hops or perhaps two pounds depending on the quality of the hops, and when it
has steeped in summer two hours, and in winter an hour and a half, she strikes
it also and reserves it to mix with the rest when it is time to do so. Finally,
when she sets her drink together, she adds to her brackwort or charwort half
an ounce of arras and half a quarter of an ounce of finely powdered bay laurel
berries, and then puts these into her wort with a handful of wheat flour, she
proceeds in such usual order as common brewing requires. Some instead of
arras and bay add so much long pepper only, but in her opinion and my liking
it is not as good as the first, and hereof we make three hogsheads of god beer,
such (I mean) as is meet for the poor men as I am to live withall whose small
maintenance (for what great thing is forty pounds a year all told able to
perform?) may endure no deeper cut, the charges of which grow in this manner.
"I value my malt at ten shillings, my wood at four shillings which I buy, my
hops at twenty pence, the spice at two pence, servants wages two shillings
sixpence, both meat and drink, and the wearing of my vessel at twenty pence,
so that for my twenty shillings I have ten score gallons of beer or more,
notwithstanding the loss in seething. The continuance of the drink is always
determined by the quantity of the hops, so that being well hopped it lasts
longer. For it feeds on the hops and holds out so long as the force of the same
endures, which being extinguished the drink must be spent or else it dies and
becomes of no value."
---Harrison, cited in Renfrow; text cleaned up and "modernized" for
readability.
The Original Recipe, in "Plain English":
8 bushels malt, ground
160 gallons water, boiling
1/2 bushel wheat meal
1/2 bushel oats, ground
3-1/2 to 4 lbs English hops
Boil 80 gallons of water, then pour onto the grains. Begin boiling another 80
gallons of water. When this is almost to a boil, drain wort from grains.
Reserve 8 gallons of first wort; add two pounds of English hops to the
remainder, then boil 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Pour second batch of watr onto grains.
Allow to steep, then drain second wort. Add 1-1/2 to 2 lbs hops to the second
wort and boil 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Strain hops from both worts then combine.
The Modern Recipe, for 5 gallons:
10 lbs 2 oz pale malt
1 lb flaked wheat
1/2 lb flaked oats
1-3/4 oz Fuggles or E.K. Goldings hops
I used a British pale malt; 5 lb I've roasted to a nice amber (350F for 15
minutes), and another 1 lb of which I've roasted to brown (350F for 20
minutes), to account for the vagaries of the medieval malting process (per
Grossman). I mixed the grains in my mash tun (a Gott cooler), then brought
3-1/2 gallons of water to a boil. Just as it came to a boil, I struck the grains
with this water, and started another 3-1/2 gallons heating. As this second
water reached a boil, I drained the liquid from the grains. When all the liquid
has been removed (as much as will flow out), I struck the grains with the
second batch of water. To the first wort, I added 1 oz English hops, then
brought to a boil for 90 minutes. I repeated the draining and boiling process
with the second batch of water/wort, using 3/4 oz hops. When both worts
cooled, I racked them to the primary fermenter and pitched a yeast starter (a
blend of various English/British ale yeasts).
The water used (about 7 gallons) was sufficient, after absorption by the grain
and boil losses, to amount to about 5 gallons of wort. I decided against
reserving any of the wort for brackwort/charwort, as the amount set aside in
the original recipe is only one twentieth of the entire batch--not enough, in my
opinion, to significantly affect the smaller "modern" brew. Additionally, other
recipes of the period do not mention brackwort, so I felt safe ignoring it.
I originally redacted this recipe in 2003, and revisited it in 2005; re-reading it,
a twofold flash of insight hit me: Harrison was writing down his recipe as his
wife dictated it to him, complete with verbal "backtracking," and they're
batch sparging!! The first realization helped fully clear up the somewhat
jumbled directions in the original, and the second enabled me to fully and
clearly visualize the process.
A note on the measurements, as used in my recipe:
Per Russ Rowlett, the director of the Center for Mathematics and Science
Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:
A "hogshad" was a volume of liquid of various amounts, depending on the
liquid in question:
Ale: 48 gallons
Beer: 54 gallons
Cider: 60 gallons
Wine: 63 gallons
The American bushel is based on the old English "Winchester" bushel, which
dates from ca. 1300, and is equivalent to 8 gallons. By comparison, the bushel
used in England today is the Imperial Bushel, and was set in 1824. The USDA
and FDA regulate the "standard" amounts of the bushel, and list the following
"bushels":
Malt: 38 lbs
Wheat: 60 lbs
Oats: 32 lbs
The pound as it is known today (avoirdupois) wa also set around 1300 by
English merchants (adopting the avoirdupois pound of 16 oz used by European
merchants), while the "other" pound (troy) "quickly became highly
specialized, used only for precious metals and pharmaceuticals."
My Notes:
Sources:
Grossman, R., "Home Grain Roasting", Zymurgy, Vol. 18 #4, Special 1995,
pp. 28-30
Harrison, W., The Description of England, 1577 (quoted in Renfrow, below)
Renfrow, Cindy, A Sip Through Time: A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes,
1994
Rowlett, Russ, "A Dictionary of Units of Measurement",
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/index.html, 2003