Beer without Hops

jeffpn said:
Look at your basic wine coolers these days. There's no wine in them. They're labeled as malt beverages. To me, that's beer without hops.
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True, perhaps, but they're certainly not medieval (or even Elizabethan) ale. More the product of laboratory manipulation than the ingenuity of necessity.
 
I don't believe that they had anything in those days that tastes as good as anything anyone makes these days. If beer is a work in process, it's always getting better!

That said, I don't believe it required people dressed in lab coats to develop wine coolers any more than it required those same people to develop today's beer.
 
You only quoted half of my sentence. My point was the part you left out.
 
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After all the reading and discussion I think the best path to a Modern Medieval Ale would be Maris Otter with 5% - 6% brown malt or pale chocolate malt. My LHBS doesn't have brown at the moment, but I think it would be a better fit than the pale chocolate if it comes in stock.

Mash temp and pH would be toward the low end to keep it fairly dry, and ABV of around 5 - 6%. I would boil the wort, but only long enough to secure the hot break; perhaps 30 minutes or so. Cooling as normal.

Not sure which way to go on yeast... something earthy or neutral, but not fruity. The most authentic would be a blend of English ale yeasts (they didn't have pure strains by any means) but would need to include wild strains, too. Prolly not available these days...
 
Just leave the lid off,the fermentor for a bit you'll get your wild yeast then thirsty :D joking
 
Thurston Brewer said:
After all the reading and discussion I think the best path to a Modern Medieval Ale would be Maris Otter with 5% - 6% brown malt or pale chocolate malt. My LHBS doesn't have brown at the moment, but I think it would be a better fit than the pale chocolate if it comes in stock.

Mash temp and pH would be toward the low end to keep it fairly dry, and ABV of around 5 - 6%. I would boil the wort, but only long enough to secure the hot break; perhaps 30 minutes or so. Cooling as normal.

Not sure which way to go on yeast... something earthy or neutral, but not fruity. The most authentic would be a blend of English ale yeasts (they didn't have pure strains by any means) but would need to include wild strains, too. Prolly not available these days...
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Most authentic would be, as Trialben stated, just leave the top off your fermentor overnight. When you finally get a drinkable beer, start pitching that "blend" forward.
 
Nosybear said:
Most authentic would be, as Trialben stated, just leave the top off your fermentor overnight. When you finally get a drinkable beer, start pitching that "blend" forward.
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You have hit on an exbeeriment! Searching for a useable wild yeast. Reminds me of my dad's home brewing. Cans of malt(the old premier malt)equal amounts of sugar, an old ceramic crock with a piece of plywood for a lid with a hole in the center for the hydrometer to poke through while fermenting to watch the reading. Different beer every time, some good some not so good. A couple were excellent though.
So the exbeeriment would be find a yeast to develop that made the beer you want.
 
Well, leaving it to chance would be more authentic, but I'm looking for something with a higher probability of being drinkable and repeatable, should I decide to make it more than once. I'm good for being a student of history, but I don't really want to go back there!

I'll take a tiptoe through the White Labs listing and pick out something likely.
 
Also wild yeast grow on the skins of fruit. I read somewhere of a brew being made with bacteria that were growing on skins of ripe plumbs probably lactobacillus or brettanamyces .

Very interesting read is lambic beers of Belgium now them Brewers have more patience then me.

I'm itching to drink a brew after a month let alone a year!​
 
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