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Author Topic: Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter  (Read 1266 times)

Offline Jefferson Coastal

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Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter
« on: August 26, 2021, 02:27:09 pm »
I've done some research on this, but always looking for additional ideas.  Looking to brew a historical Pre-Prohibition Porter.  Something from 1801 if possible.   Anybody have a recipe that turned out fantastic?

Offline Kevin

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Re: Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter
« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2021, 04:16:53 pm »
I have made one (more than once) but the recipe is stored in my Beersmith folders on a different computer than I am using now. These are what I could find doing a quick Google search...

https://homebrewacademy.com/pre-prohibition-porter-recipe/

https://www.greatfermentations.com/pre-prohibition-porter-recipe/

https://beersmithrecipes.com/viewrecipe/1705886/pre-prohibition-porter
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Offline Jefferson Coastal

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Re: Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter
« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2021, 01:50:09 pm »
Thanks for the links.

How do you like yours?

Offline Jefferson Coastal

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Re: Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter
« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2021, 01:51:12 pm »
Thanks for the links.

How do you like yours?

Offline KellerBrauer

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Re: Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter
« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2021, 06:27:24 am »
I like a Porter with some Brown Malt.  It adds that roasted taste typically found in a good porter.
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Offline tommymorris

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Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter
« Reply #5 on: August 28, 2021, 09:10:36 am »
I like a Porter with some Brown Malt.  It adds that roasted taste typically found in a good porter.
Brown malt is good and I agree it is the main ingredient that makes a porter a porter.  I also like Special Roast as a substitute.  But, Special Roast probably doesn’t fit in a pre-prohibition porter.
« Last Edit: August 28, 2021, 09:35:52 am by tommymorris »

Offline Kevin

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Re: Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter
« Reply #6 on: August 28, 2021, 09:24:08 am »
Thanks for the links.

How do you like yours?

I don't like the flavor that 6-row malt or corn/maize gives them. I prefer historic English porters and my favorite is an 1880 Whitbread Porter recipe from Ron Pattinson's book; The Homebrewers Guide to Vintage Beer. The grist is pretty typical of recipes of the era... Pale malt, Brown malt and Black malt. I believe the percentages are something like 80, 15, 5. The hops are Cluster, Fuggle and Spalter. And the yeast in his recipe is either Wyeast 1098 or Wyeast 1099.

If you are looking for something very old I have a reprint of a book published in the American Colonies in 1768 called The Complete English Brewer. In a chapter called "Of the Ingredients of Porter", is this interesting passage" "All beer is made of malt, hops and water: and the particular additions used to the porter are only two, isinglass, and the juice of elder-berries" ... "What is thought by the common people to be oxe's<sic> blood, is nothing but the elder-juice before-mentioned : and the other ingredient is only beaten isinglass well dissolved, and perfectly fine".

The specific ingredients are described by the author this way: "The malt is a high dried kind, made of very ordinary barley, dried with culm (coal). There would be no difficulty in any person's having this made at a common maltster's; nor indeed is there any necessity even for that trouble, since it is sold ready-made under the name of "porter-malt., in many places. As to the hops, all that is necessary is chusing<sic> the best of their kind. As for the yeast it only says to use a good and moderately thick yeast.

There is another chapter called "To brew Porter in a Private Family" It's a very long and involved process but there are a few things that stood out for me.
- One was their method of milling the grains... "Let it be ground carefully, so as only to crack the grains, not to let out the flour".
- The second is the mash process - after adding the crushed malt to the hot water in the mash vessel it was stirred "first one way and then another" for a full half hour "but this must be done gently, not to bruise or break the malt" before covering it up and then letting it mash for two and a half hours. After this they basically did a batch sparge draining the first wort and adding more water "considerably hot" over the grains again, "stirring them well about" and letting this stand two hours more.
- I have read this part several times to make sure I am not missing something but this is what is says... "pour the wort into the copper, put in the hops with it; and boil them about twenty minutes". Before this passage is the mashing and sparging description. Immediately after this sentence it goes right into cooling and pitching yeast. So it appears the author is actually suggesting they did a 20 minute boil?

The Porter-malt mentioned as being so commonly available is described elsewhere in these chapters as "high-dried brown malt" which is no longer in use today and the brown malt you find at your LHBS is not even close. When Goose Island in Chicago recreated their London Porter a few years back they had to commission a small maltster to attempt a custom run of high-dried brown malt. So recreating this is possible using modern malts but difficult if impossible to determine how close it might be with the original. Experimenting with elderberry juice might be interesting though.
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Offline Silver_Is_Money

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Re: Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter
« Reply #7 on: August 28, 2021, 11:35:42 am »
The Porter-malt mentioned as being so commonly available is described elsewhere in these chapters as "high-dried brown malt" which is no longer in use today and the brown malt you find at your LHBS is not even close. When Goose Island in Chicago recreated their London Porter a few years back they had to commission a small maltster to attempt a custom run of high-dried brown malt. So recreating this is possible using modern malts but difficult if impossible to determine how close it might be with the original. Experimenting with elderberry juice might be interesting though.

This is the key.  The brown malts of today are simply not the brown malts of yore.  But one indicator of this is their relative Diastatic Power characteristics.

Offline hopfenundmalz

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Re: Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter
« Reply #8 on: August 29, 2021, 06:01:06 am »
Sugar creek malts makes a diastatic Brown Malt.
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Offline Kevin

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Re: Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter
« Reply #9 on: August 29, 2021, 08:30:43 am »
Sugar creek malts makes a diastatic Brown Malt.

The diastatic brown is a special order and may be for pro brewers only but I've put in a request for more information. The only brown malt directly for sale on their site is non-diastatic. Ten pounds for $30... 25lb @ $75... 55lb @ $120 !
“He was a wise man who invented beer.”
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Offline hopfenundmalz

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Re: Historic Pre-Prohibition Porter
« Reply #10 on: August 30, 2021, 07:14:21 pm »
Sugar creek malts makes a diastatic Brown Malt.

The diastatic brown is a special order and may be for pro brewers only but I've put in a request for more information. The only brown malt directly for sale on their site is non-diastatic. Ten pounds for $30... 25lb @ $75... 55lb @ $120 !
A place local to me has a Porter using that malt. It is a little smokey.

Didn't know it was pro only right now.
Jeff Rankert
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BJCP National
Ann Arbor Brewers Guild
Home-brewing, not just a hobby, it is a lifestyle!