I wrote the posting below offline last night.
I have been brewing since 1993 and personally believe that your friend may be suffering from nostalgic amnesia. That being said, we need to put things into context. At that point in time, home brewing supplies were a cottage industry in the United States. Most local home brewing shops were part-time endeavors or small add-ons to existing business like one still sees in non-metro parts of the county today. What this situation means in layman’s terms is that very few ingredients were fresh and knowledge about how to keep and use them was in short supply.
As far as to dry malt extract, we were pretty much limited to British offerings. The bulk of the extract sold at that point in time, dry or liquid, would have been from Munton & Fison (I am fairly certain that Munton & Fison produced extract for other labels). Briess did not enter the malt extract business until later in the nineities.
Please do not get me started as to the state of hops at that point in time. Hops were usually sold in zip lock bags that were displayed on normal store shelves. I credit Dave Wills and than later Mark Garetz for improving this problem by providing the amatuer brewing community with direct sources of hops that were not cast-offs from the industrial brewers.
Now, the dark crystal malt was more than likely Briess 6-row caramel 80. If it was not Briess caramal 80, it had to be Munton & Fison dark crystal, but that was a much darker crystal malt.
If we look at the typical non-100% pale malt extract that was coming out of the UK at that point time, it was more than likey 90% - 95% pale malt, 5 - 10% crystal/coloring malt. The dominant barley cultivar would have been Halcyon. Halcyon is still available from Thomas Fawcett (TF). It was bred from Maris Otter, but produces a less sweet wort. I would not use Maris Otter for this recipe because of the large amount of crystal malt between the amber extract and the dark crystal. This beer was your typical two pounds of crystal malt malt extract recipe. I would use TF Pearl if you cannot get Halcyon or it is going to be cloyingly sweet after drinking beers that were formulated as all-grain beer from the start.
What was the original gravity? Well, DME contributes 45 points per pound per gallon (PPG). DME is also hygroscopic; therefore, it tends to suck in moisture if not in an air-tight package in a high humidty environment, so the yield could be potentially smaller. We can look at a maximum of 25 PPG for the crystal malt. A lot of extract recipes were not formulated with leaving break and hops behind in the kettle because they were concentrated boils, so we can assume the maximum volume was 5 gallons. Given that information, we are looking at a (6 * 45 + 25) / 5 / 1000 + 1 = 1.059 beer, of which the beer would have probably had an O.G. of 6 * 45 / 5 / 1000 + 1 = 1.054 without the dark crystal. That is the part of the recipe for which we need to formulate a grist.
total_gravity_points_from_extract = 45 * 5 = 225
With that information presented, let’s give formulating an all-grain recipe for this extract recipe a shot assuming an extraction rate of 27 PPG for the entire grist (an efficiency of approximately 75%) and an end of boil volume of 5.75 gallons to allow for loses of 0.5 gallons of volume to trub in the kettle and 0.25 gallons of volume to break and yeast in the fermenter, yielding full 5 gallons to a soda keg.
total_gravity_points_for_dme_equivalent = 5.75 * 54 = 310.5
pounds_of_grist_for_dme_equivalent = 310.5 / 27 = 11.5
First attempt at the grist for the DME portion:
Pounds of TF Halcyon malt (90%) = 11.5 * 0.9 = 10.35lbs
Pounds of TF Crystal II (10%) = 11.5 * 0.1 = 1.15bs
As to the hops, we can leave the late addition measurements as is, but we need to ballpark the Chinook addition. Chinook has an AA that ranges in the 12-14% range, but it does not have the best hop storage index. To account for the poor storage conditons hops suffered during that period, lets assume that the hops had lost 30% of their AA rating by the time they were used. Furthermore, let’s take the lower end of the AA range, which yields 0.7 * 12 = 8.4 alpha acid units. We can assume that the Chinook hops we purchase today are at least 12% AA; therefore, we are looking at 8.4 / 12 = 0.7 ounces (approximately 20g).
As far to yeast, well, let’s not go there. Life is better that way. Doric was about as hit or miss as any other dry yeast culture at that time. I would suggest using a Whitbread B offering (Wyeast 1098, WLP007, or S-04) or Nottingham, if dry is required (Nottingham is probably a better choice because it is more attentuative).
Putting it all together
Winter Rain
Grist:
10.35lbs TF Halcyon malt (90%)
1.15lbs TF Crystal II (10%)
+
1lb TF Dark Crystal I
Hops:
0.7oz (20g) Chinook, 60 minutes
1oz Tettanger, end of boil (a.k.a. knock-out addition)
2oz Cascade, dry hop in primary
Yeast:
Whitbread B or Nottingham
I personally would not waste 5 to 6 hours of my time on this beer, but it should help your friend realize how much sweeter most home brew was during that period of time as well as how time has given a lot of us nostalgic anemesia. The beer was probably a good extract beer for 1990, but it will not hold up to a modern all-grain beer that takes advantage of a blend of pale and darker colored base and specialty malts addition to a smaller amount of crystal. Back then, caramel/crystal malt was the primary way to infuse fresh malt flavor in a beer without resorting to mini or partial mashing. That is why so many of the early all-grain recipes contain so much crystal malt. They were basically conversions of older extract recipes.
Topic: 1990-era extract recipe conversion (Read 1564 times)
