Tim H in the comments to the last post had asked about the dry-hopping of stout and porter, pointing to some evidence it was done. Dry-hopping means adding a handful or more “dry” (unboiled) hops to the beer when barrelled or sometimes when stored in a vat or tank before barreling.

At p. 400, here, from A Textbook of the Science Of Brewing (1891) by Edward Moritz and George Morris, you will read that dry-hopping was generally not used for stout and mild ale.

The reasons are evident from the way Moritz explained the advantages of dry hopping. It was primarily for bouquet and taste in pale ale, and also to stimulate an after-fermentation for long-stored beers. Export stouts were the latter case, so that Brettanomyces yeast would consume the non-fermentable (by normal brewers yeast) dextrins and complex sugars.

In contrast, for mild ale a fresh, sweet quality was sought, with the malt to the fore. The hops play a lesser role versus the pale ale family.

Porter was increasingly sold fresh in the 1800s and correlatively maltiness was a signature, with a roasted malt flourish. I think it likely a flowery or herbal note was felt to clash with the malty character of new porter or stout and only a neutral bitterness was wanted, as say Guinness has today.

Certainly porter as handed down before the craft era, in my experience, did not have a strong hop smell and taste: Sinebrychoff Porter, Carnegie Stout, Anchor Porter, Molson Porter, the surviving U.S. regional porters, Guinness, Murphy, Beamish, Sheaf Stout, Lion Stout, the East European porters – none had a pungent hop smell from dry-hopping that I can recall.

Many of these beers survive, and remain unchanged in this regard.

It’s in tune with what Moritz wrote and he was a highly regarded brewing scientist of the era.

To my recollection Victorian brewing writer Frank Faulkner stated the same thing, or in substance. I recall as well similar statements in issues of the Journal of the Institute of Brewing.

Did some breweries diverge from a rule of thumb? Yes, Moritz himself noted this. But this was not typical, judging from his comments and other factors I’ve noted.

20th century practice is less significant as gravities had fallen. Dry-hopping can encourage stability, as Moritz noted too. Nonetheless it was only with the onset of craft that one started to see dry- or aroma-hopped porter and stout, particularly with citric New World varieties.

 

 

 

 

What is stout, what is Black IPA? The beer above, from Magnotta in Ontario – a winery, brewery, and distillery – is a Black IPA.

This style emerged in the U.S. in the last 20 years, and is a dark-coloured India Pale Ale. The idea is to retain the hoppy burst of an IPA but with a dark colour and touch of roast flavor.

If IPA was a Supermarine Spitfire with eight Browning guns, Black IPA is the night fighter version.

A stout is black, or very dark brown, beer with the same element of roasted malt or barley, but enough to lend a decided toasted or even scorched flavour, burnt cordite comes to mind. Traditionally, stout was very bitter but in a neutral way, not aromatic like some pale ale was.

Stout is still often associated with Ireland but it emerged in the 1700s in London with its brother-in-arms, porter. The expedition to Ireland was later, under British auspices when Ireland was British, that is.

Stout and porter are really the same thing, the only difference was a general tendency that porter was less strong. Stout could describe a pale beer too and did before porter emerged – meaning in other words simply a strong beer. Once porter conquered the London beer market stout meant the brown kind, and has ever since.

Some Black IPA crosses into stout territory, some leans more to the IPA encampment. It’s a no-man’s-land of beer styles, really.

Generally, the “IPA” in Black or most contemporary IPA denotes a modern American hop signature: floridly fruity, often citric, sometimes weedy or “dank”.

IPA in England, where it originated also in the Georgian era, and also in London, can be as sharply bitter – was originally – as American IPA but the hop flavour is different. English hop yards produced flavours more like garden flowers or an autumn forest.

Sometimes English IPA had an acerbic bitterness but not much aroma at all, the Burton style could be like this.

Even before craft beer mobilized, some IPA as such survived in U.K. but the pint of “bitter” still available in many English pubs is a descendant. If you want to know what English IPA was like, the closest surviving examples in English pubs today are the bitter.

Magnotta’s version of Black IPA commendably uses Ontario-grown hops. These ended by not tasting very American at all, or are used at any rate in a way to impart a neutral bitterness. Some Ontario hops are rather acerbic or dank in my experience but not here, the taste is very good and traditional.

The result is to approach more closely an English heritage, perhaps like the old Black and Tan, a mix of bitter and stout.

In general the beer is excellent, with a full malty taste. Nothing crow about it except the colour!

Magnotta has been brewing for many years now, but this beer is the best I’ve tasted from them. I hope to get out to Vaughan, ON soon, where the company is based, to revisit the range.

 

 

No, I don’t mean me, although I appreciate Bass ale – more especially its history.

In 1987, C.C. Owen wrote a scholarly article, “The History of Brewing in Burton Upon Trent”, published in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing. You can read it here.

He writes:

The Ace Hill Light pictured on the left is the latest release from the Toronto-based Ace Hill Brewery, which has its beers produced at Brunswick Bierworks in east Toronto. Although I forgot to take a picture of the poured beer, it has a notably pale colour, a la American adjunct style of the 1960s-2000s. This can be Mexican too, as stated on the label, as both are grain adjunct, light-tasting styles.

Indeed the label indicates wheat and flaked corn are used with the malt to produce a 4% abv beer.

The Mexican reference may point as well to the light lemony tang in the beer. I don’t think there is a citrus addition (not sure), it’s probably from the hops blend.

Ace Hill always had stylish packaging and imagery but this new can outdoes anything that came before, it must be the most attractive in Canada and maybe anywhere. The company has been astute to identify a market few small breweries exploit: craft light.

How is it craft? Well, it is produced in small amounts clearly, it may be unpasteurized (not sure again at time of writing), and it actually has a full flavour. Nothing bland about it, but the tang of adjunct is there of course, that’s the style.

It should rock a few patio tables and beach coolers this summer, I have no doubt.

It’s not my preferred style, but from a business standpoint it’s a great idea and potentially has a large market. It’s a much better beer too than any of the macro brewery efforts at a light.

The Czechvar Dark pictured has a really good Dunkel flavour, but repeated tastings in the last couple of years confirm the brewery is going for a light palate. If they ramped up the taste – same taste but just more – it would be a world classic brown lager, but it’s dialled down too much.

The best way to drink it is almost shelf temperature, as this makes the taste stronger. The yeast taste comes out more too, one I find hard to describe, but you know it when you taste it. Almost yogurt-like, maybe, or buttermilk.

Anyway most Dunkel styles, certainly those I’ve tried in North America, don’t really get close to the “original”. This one, via a Czech city, does, and it’s good to investigate for that reason alone.

The LCBO brings it in real fast too, it’s just a couple of months from packaging and the super-freshness shows.

Come to think of it, consumed iced it would make a great summer beer too. It’s traditional Mitteleuropa bottle and labeling don’t encourage the idea – more Black Sea resort under greyish skies – but it would be perfect for that.

 

Pictured are two beers bearing the badge of Upper Canada.

One is still “original” in the sense it is brewed by a successor of Upper Canada Brewing Company (UC), which started in 1985. After a middling run, in 1998 its assets were bought by Sleeman Brewery in Guelph, ON. Of the line of beers UC produced, only Upper Canada Lager and Upper Canada Dark Ale are still made. Somewhat unfortunately they are priced as budget craft beers, with a dozen fetching $18.00, a pretty good buy in this Province as the beers are excellent.

Not that many people buy them though judging by the few cases I see in Beer Stores in Toronto. I think many beer fans who would enjoy them are put off by the case format (minimum purchase 12), and, strange as it sounds, low price. You have to have confidence to pay low for something good and not everyone has that, I’ll say frankly.

The new Repatriation Lager is a re-brewing of Upper Canada Rebellion Lager. It was sometimes styled in its day malt liquor, probably for legal reasons as it was always a lager, except when a (separate) Rebellion Ale was issued c. 1997.

Henderson Brewing in Toronto did the remake by permission of Sleeman, a nice gesture by Sapporo of Japan which owns Sleeman now.

Rebellion became Repatriation, a double pun only Canadians will fully understand. I’d guess Sleeman wants to retain the name Rebellion, maybe for future use or disposition, or maybe there is some other issue for Henderson to use the name, I’m not sure. (Henderson has used “Upper Canada” on the label with no issue clearly from Sleeman).

The Repatriation is a partial success in my view as its colour seems somewhat darker than I recall, see also the original pictured below from the Ratebeer page on the original beer, here. (The reviews are interesting too. They describe the colour as gold, deep yellow, mustard yellow. One mentions orange highlights).

But the colour difference is neither here nor there really. Taste is the important thing and it is close to the original but needs to be more impactful in the palate. The yeast background is correct, and the slightly fruity note, but the taste is too restrained even by 1980s standards.

I think this is a great initiative and I’d encourage Henderson to brew it again but just bring the taste profile forward.

Before I get to the Dark Ale, I want to say that Upper Canada never really hit the mark for me. It’s not that its beers were early-generation and lacking by comparison to today’s craft range as such. It’s that they never were spot on and I think that played a role in the demise of the original concern.

The Dark Ale as made by Sleeman is much better than the Upper Canada original, plain fact IMO.

The original had a distinct, almost Belgian banana note (isomer?) that seemed unusual, not English, the ostensible inspiration for the beer. Perhaps the brewery was aiming for a Trappist-like taste, some Trappist beer has that profile.

Some people of course enjoyed UC Dark Ale and more power to them, but the way it is now, it is much better: the taste is malty, quite rich, a good emulation of an “English brown” of the post-WW II era. It reminds me of what Newcastle Brown Ale used to taste like and some other of the older-style English brown ales.

As craft beer is old enough to provide its own examples for emulation, myth stories, and more, hopefully one will see more recreations and salutes. But I’m being honest to say that in general, early Ontario craft brewing did not stand tall in the brewing leagues. Other areas well exceeded it, even taking account of the milder profile craft beer then had in comparison to today.

In contrast, the brewing scene today in this province is much more accomplished, in taste not just quantity.

Still, Rebellion was a good effort, one of the best of the UC range in fact, and I’d tweak Repatriation to get it exactly right.

 

 

 

 

 

1878 and all that

Cocktails history is an occasional interest of mine. Stimulated by a discussion today with drinks historian David Wondrich on Twitter, I’ve looked into the year the Manhattan and Martinez cocktails first appear in print. Many consider the Martinez the ancestor of the Martini, or in effect the same thing, but it has a connection to the Manhattan too.

In terms of when a proper written recipe first appeared, sources on these cocktails seem to accord on 1884 via the book The Modern Bartenders’ Guide, or Fancy Drinks and how to mix Them by O.H. Byron, published that year by Excelsior Publishing House in New York. See e.g. this original edition, and page 21 where Byron states in lapidary fashion that the Martinez recipe is the same as his (two) detailed recipes for the Manhattan, but with gin used for the whiskey.

However, was Byron’s book published earlier? Consider (via HathiTrust) page 400 of Jennie June’s American Cookery Book, published in 1878. Jennie June was the nom de plume of Jane Cunningham Croly.

According to my searches, see e.g., the Catalogue Record in HathiTrust for this title, Croly/Jennie June’s American Cookery Book was first published in 1866. It appeared in numerous later editions or reprintings, including in 1878 (new edition, see preface). She published a number books dealing with female and “domestic” issues, and founded an influential womens’ club. She is remembered enough to merit the Wikipedia biography entry linked above.

Excelsior was her publisher, hence its ad in the closing pages for the (uncredited) The Modern Bartenders Guide. This Guide seems essentially the 1884 one as the drinks list in the Contents page is almost the same. “Manhattan Cocktail” duly appears in versions No. 1 and No. 2 and their actual recipes must have been the same as for the 1884 edition, ditto for the way to make the “Martinez Cocktail”.

For the Manhattan, the modern Difford’s Guide states that the first written recipe appears in O. H. Byron’s book published in 1884 and that a reference to the drink appears earlier in print, in September, 1882 in the Daily Morning Herald of Olean, NY. The latter mentions the key ingredients of a Manhattan but is not a recipe as such.

(There is other evidence suggesting an earlier origin for the drink but nothing in print to confirm it before 1882 as far as I know).

Yet, the Manhattan, in two versions, and Martinez, sans recipes but surely the same as in the 1884 book, appear ostensibly in 1878 in an ad in Jennie June’s cookery book published that year. No ad for The Modern Bartenders Guide appears in the original, 1866 edition of Jennie June’s book, or what appear to be reprintings in 1870 and 1874.

I’m wondering now if Jennie Jerome Churchill, Winston Churchill’s mother and associated in lore with the creation of the Manhattan at the Manhattan Club around 1880, has been confounded with the Jennie of the cookbook mentioned. Or is that just a coincidence?

If I’ve gone wrong, happy to be put straight, but so far I don’t see where.

Storing Beer in Non-Traditional, American Oak Becomes Fashionable

It turns out that at the late year of 2004, we can read of the wood cask history of English and other U.K. breweries. This time, it’s not in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing.

It’s not by one of the current beer or beer historical writers, not by a predecessor of the Brewers Association, not in the journal Brewery History. It’s not in the pages of a brewing technology text. It’s not from a publication of the well-known Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), although we’re getting warm.

It’s in an issue of the quarterly magazine of the fairly obscure Society for the Preservation of Beers From the Wood (SPBW). The SPBW is a U.K. social group founded in 1963 by enthusiasts of naturally-conditioned beer. Originally the group promoted interest in beer that literally poured from wood casks, but today supports traditional (real) ale even if dispensed from metal containers (the main form of container today).

You can read the objects of SPBW here and how the group distinguishes itself from CAMRA.

In 2004 Anthony Redman wrote up the history of oak barrel use by breweries for SPBW, and most interesting his account is. He also provides an interesting bridge to the present in that it appears he was (may still be) connected to Innis & Gunn, who had recently developed a new type of oak-aged beer in Scotland.

His article appears in the SPBW magazine in four parts, in issues 88, 89, 90, and 92. The first part explains how Innis & Gunn Scottish Ale, aged in oak barrels, came onto the market. It’s the familiar story that the beer was meant originally simply to season casks to hold a William Grant whisky, but with some twists and extra background. In a sense the story goes back to the 1970s and early research experience of Russell Sharp, founder of Caledonian Brewery who earlier had worked in distilling.

Dougal Sharp, a founder of Innis & Gunn and son of Russell, worked at “Cally’s” as a brewer and came up with the recipe for what is now Innis & Gunn Original.

The second part gives some general history on use of oak barrels to hold wine and beer. The third part is the heart of the discussion, with a detailed history of the use of Memel and other oak in U.K. brewing. Some interesting information appears I’ve not read elsewhere, including that Memel wood ceased to be definitively available to British coopers in 1934, on the Persian oak supply that saved British cask plant in the 1950s, and on how the troublesome American oak was dealt with finally by lining the barrels in different ways.

Redman writes that Memel came back to the market in the 1950s but was too expensive by then. (Other sources state quality issues arose as well, some of the wood still showed effects of war damage).

Redman’s series bears an appropriately Victorian title: Some Animadversions on Beer in Wooden Casks.

Here is the page from the SPBW’s website on which past editions of its magazine are archived in pdf. So you can pull any issue mentioned to find each or all parts of the article.

Redman gives as well the detailed recipe to season casks, of any provenance, he emphasizes, in the brewery. He takes care to explain this is different from seasoning the staves at the cooperage. It means using a strong salt and soda solution to clear out the woody, vegetal smell of untreated oak, and he says, if you use oak for casks you had better do this else the beer will taste awful.

What this shows us among other things is Innis & Gunn were well-aware of how American oak was viewed historically in the British brewing industry. They knew everything we do, and probably lots more. It’s not the case that they thought American oak was a wood typically used for beer casks in the past or was on a par with other woods previously used.

Yet, almost all wood used in any form by Innis & Gunn to my knowledge is of American white oak origin. All bourbon barrels and staves certainly would be, but most rum and whisky barrels too, as most other barrels used in the spirits and wine industries. There are some exceptions to be sure, e.g., for Cognac, some French wine, but American oak is the general type used for maturing most spirits and wine today.

Innis & Gunn clearly made the business decision that a taste formerly not felt suitable for the British market could find new favour. This was probably due to the fact that ale itself had become a smallish category in the beer market: lager was the main form of beer by the 2000s.

Also, American craft brewing had introduced a wide range of new flavours in beer. Goose Island and other U.S. brewers had shown by 2004 that beer from American white oak could sell and even have cachet.

It has long been reported that William Grant distillery workers liked the beer destined for the rubbish tip after doing its work to season whisky casks. Perhaps I&G went on nothing more than this and a hunch the vanillin-tasting beer would sell.

But one thing certain is, I&G clearly understood the history here. They knew they had something novel but turned the old learning on its head, to their advantage. In this sense they really are innovators, just as, say, Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing was when he used the new Cascade hop as a top note in his beer in 1975.

Anthony Redman obviously was (or is) a well-trained and experienced brewing technologist. He sounds like a scientist or technical consultant, one quite familiar with the literature on beer cask history and then some. He writes well, too.

These are the concluding words to the third part of his article (issue 90), where he brings the historical picture up to date (2004):

 

 

For beer casks, Findlay liked oak wood in general. It was cheap and offered good insulation from temperature swings.

He noted:

From the same consular reports publication on the American stave trade I’ve referred to earlier, the position in countries other than Britain can be gleaned, not least Germany.

About a dozen German cities are represented through the reports of American consuls there, in 1891 again. It’s interesting reading. In Munich, the consul got very little cooperation from his trade contacts. It seems Munich brewers and merchants kept things close to the vest.

Perhaps the illustrious Munich beer tradition (and it was, I’m not being tongue-in-cheek) was in no mood to enlighten an American on their practices.

Yet, in other German cities the situation was quite different, with consuls getting good cooperation.

I’ll summarize the picture by saying, in this period almost no U.S. stave wood was used for German beer casks (or for much else it seems). The wood used was mainly from Hungary, Galicia, Serbia, Russia, depending on the town in question and local practices.

Some German oak was used, e.g. from the Rhine but it was generally not considered top grade due to excess porosity and brittleness. It seems to have been reserved for family and farm trade. Perhaps some small breweries used it that had a quick turnover where leakage was not an issue.

Some consuls, encouraged in some cases by the local cooperages, saw good opportunities for American stave exports.

The shining exception to no Ami wood was in Frankfurt. A personage no less important than German-American Budweiser major domo Adolphus Busch convinced a factory to use American oak for barrels and it seems the wood was found most acceptable. The taste issue, often mentioned in the consular reports from the U.K., does not arise here.

This may be due to the very limited reach of the American timber industry in Germany for beer casks, or perhaps (more probably I think) because German casks were usually coated with pitch, which prevented a wood-derived taste, or undue taste, affecting the beer.

Below is the first page of the Frankfurt report, read the next two pages from the link given. Bear in mind this city is the exception. The message from the other cities viz. American wood is, we don’t use it.

The Russian section is quite short. The consul states basically that Russian oak, and this would take in the Memel type, or that quality, was viewed as the best in the world and there was no chance for American oak to compete.

British brewers, with the main exception of Irish-based Guinness, could only agree when it came to their cask inventory.

 

 

 

In my last post I included four consuls’ reports from 1891 summarizing local trade information on the source of staves used for barrels to hold different kinds of beer. For Cork, Ireland, the evidence showed clearly that porter brewers used American wood.

My post just before that one made it even more clear as the firm that gave the Cork consul this information advertised in an 1880s Cork exhibition catalogue that it used Orleans oak for porter and Memel wood for ale barrels.

American wood also ruled for porter in Dunfermline, Scotland, and, at least to a degree in Liverpool.

In contrast, the report for London made clear almost all staves for casks were from Memel or other European ports, and little American wood was used. This meant London porter production had to use traditional Memel or other suitable East European oak, if not still English materials for its oldest surviving vats and perhaps some casks.

What about Dublin? The Dublin consul’s full report makes clear that Guinness had to use almost exclusively American oak staves for its barrels, see here and the partial extract below. The consul offers an interesting explanation why American wood did not adversely affect porter while not being so benign in relation to ale.

The explanation is somewhat confused, as he relates the effect solely to colour, which is not the full story. As technical discussions later made clear, a taste was imparted by American oak felt unsuitable for ales, and indeed it seemed for most English porter. As so often, laymen ended by not explaining the technics right, and even people in the trade, who probably imparted the information Reid used, may not have understood the situation correctly.

My feeling is, Guinness made a cost calculation due to the cheaper net cost of American wood (factoring its matchless durability), and the rest can be laid to fictive or at best “heroic” explanations.

But on the point of what kind of wood was used, taken with the 1902 Journal of the Institute of Brewing article I’ve referenced, it’s pretty clear Guinness used barrels mostly coopered from American white oak around the turn of the century.

Other evidence that Guinness used such barrels is found in David Hughes’ 2006 “A Bottle of Guinness Please”, see here. True, Hughes referred to Baltic wood as well but it is obvious a huge producer as Guinness, taking all the evidence together, relied strongly on American oak stands c. 1900.

Certainly in 1930 Guinness used only American wood, as confirmed in this business report.

The Dublin consul was unusually prescient on the need to conserve the American white oak forests, as well.