[CounterPressure]

It was back at the of May.

I just checked his blog and there his last mention of it by name was 11 June.  He was drinking Diatribe it appears. Still seems longer than I recalled, but that's what happens to my memory as I get old. I plead the 5th...


http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/

[dbeechum]

I was very disappointed that it just didn't work for me to make it to his collaboration with Zebulon this spring.  He's the closest brewer to me that's done historical ales like that.  I hope they made enough money from it this year to do it again next year.

I'm not exaggerating when I say I was contemplating travelling to NC to see that presentation and drink those beers. This was, what, Mike's third or fourth Pattison collab. I think he's jazzed enough to keep doing them. (Mike doesn't seem to be driven by the same desire to follow a safe path to profit as other brewers.)

[CounterPressure]

It was back at the of May.

I just checked his blog and there his last mention of it by name was 11 June.  He was drinking Diatribe it appears. Still seems longer than I recalled, but that's what happens to my memory as I get old. I plead the 5th...


http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/

I looked at his blog again, and it appears he had just been in the US earlier. and then returned in June from at least 6/1 to 6/11.  No mention of a collab brew on this last trip, but I sure thought I heard talk of it in an interview he did while he was over here. Either in a YT video or similar linked from somewhere I can't recall.


I seem to recall him talking about an aged brew also.  Something that might be a year to maturation in a small batch?  I read too much stuff to remember all of it.

[Kevin]

Just curious if anyone has attempted to brew any of the recipes in there.  I typically do kit porters and stouts, but might see if I can't do one of his 1880s-1920s porter recipes.  Some appear do-able with contemporary available malts.

I have made many of Ron's recipes. I have 261 saved in Beersmith so far. Many from his blog and others from his books. Modern malts work quite well in his recipes. They were written with the modern homebrewer in mind so when the recipe says brown malt he isn't expecting you to come up with a 100% diastatic brown like they used in the 1800's.

Not too long ago I read one of his posts where he said that you can substitute Imperial Malt from Simpson for the old style of brown malt for brown ales, porters and stouts. I haven't had a chance to try it since reading that however.

If you use Beersmith and would like some of the recipes I have archived I can export them into a .BSMX file for you.

[CounterPressure]

Thanks for the offer but I use an old version of Beersmith so I probably couldn't import them anyway. That's a pretty impressive archive though.



I see Morebeer has a few of the Simpson malts, but not that one of course.

[Drewch]

I'm not exaggerating when I say I was contemplating travelling to NC to see that presentation and drink those beers. This was, what, Mike's third or fourth Pattison collab. I think he's jazzed enough to keep doing them. (Mike doesn't seem to be driven by the same desire to follow a safe path to profit as other brewers.)

If he does it again next year, I fully intend to make the trek. Weaverville is only a day's drive from where I am.

[dbeechum]

Weaverville is only a day's drive from where I am.

I mean it's only like 35ish hour drive for me! That's easy!

[CounterPressure]

9:28 one way for me. In a 2500HD that'll be about $500/pint by the time I add up gas and lodging.

[fredthecat]

@fredthecat
I'm with ya on all points. I particularly enjoy listening to him talk about collaborating with brewers who agree to brew these old recipes for him. Sometimes even having custom small-batch malting done in order to make an authentic historical beer. The average home brewer isn't going to go that far with it, but it is cool to see someone does. I'd love to taste some of them.

One of the things that keeps me out of craft breweries is the menus being heavily weighted toward abv of 6% and above. Often well above. As I get older I just can't drink those, never mind drive home afterward.  It's interesting that virtually every recipe in that book is 5.5% or lower.  Yes, there's a few 8.x or so, but not very many.  There's quite a few < 3%. And If I heard correctly, I think he said the top selling beer in the UK today is 2.9%, or thereabouts.

i feel that, but in canada at least craft breweries realized that they can make a 3.5% "light/session/mini" cream ale/lager/IPA/pale ale for less money and when people ask for a pale bland beer to suit the bland canadian palate they can still charge the same price as most of their other beers. so we have """craft""" 3.5% "light pale lagers (CRAFT!!!)" made with 2row and a tiny amount of hops and fermented with minimal care as the default "CRRAAAFFTT" beer here so people can say "i really love CRAAAAAAAAAFFFFTTTTTT beer" which i hear frequently.

unrelated but had 1 pint of guinness tonight at a dinner and someone of course had to inform me that its "a meal in a glass" "a very heavy beer" and also implied it was a strong beer.

Just curious if anyone has attempted to brew any of the recipes in there.  I typically do kit porters and stouts, but might see if I can't do one of his 1880s-1920s porter recipes.  Some appear do-able with contemporary available malts.

I have made many of Ron's recipes. I have 261 saved in Beersmith so far. Many from his blog and others from his books. Modern malts work quite well in his recipes. They were written with the modern homebrewer in mind so when the recipe says brown malt he isn't expecting you to come up with a 100% diastatic brown like they used in the 1800's.

Not too long ago I read one of his posts where he said that you can substitute Imperial Malt from Simpson for the old style of brown malt for brown ales, porters and stouts. I haven't had a chance to try it since reading that however.

If you use Beersmith and would like some of the recipes I have archived I can export them into a .BSMX file for you.

your mention of his diastatic brown malt thing made me remember that some of his attempts at making (im making it up but yo know what i mean) "1884 Chiswick Porter" will have 25% brown and black malt and no sugar and he'll have some yeast like WLP002 and he will state the attenuation at 85%. lol purely theoretical.

[CounterPressure]

i feel that, but in canada at least craft breweries realized that they can make a 3.5% "light/session/mini" cream ale/lager/IPA/pale ale for less money and when people ask for a pale bland beer to suit the bland canadian palate they can still charge the same price as most of their other beers. so we have """craft""" 3.5% "light pale lagers (CRAFT!!!)" made with 2row and a tiny amount of hops and fermented with minimal care as the default "CRRAAAFFTT" beer here so people can say "i really love CRAAAAAAAAAFFFFTTTTTT beer" which i hear frequently.

unrelated but had 1 pint of guinness tonight at a dinner and someone of course had to inform me that its "a meal in a glass" "a very heavy beer" and also implied it was a strong beer.

I can clearly see we are annoyed by the same sorts of stuff. .  Here, they don't make any sub-4% stuff that I've seen,  but they have no reservations about charging $5.50/pt for Miller light clone. Lol. A few months back I was at a place and ordered a "lager", expecting something kinda special.  As God is my witness, I could not pick it from Miller light, side by side. I left that up to the ML drinker I was eating with to decide. "Craft" beer is it? 


The sad part is, I CAN make a good, low-gravity beer that truly qualifies as a craft beer. Or at least as a very good beer that's brewed well and to style. Even at home brewer scale, I only have ~$3.50 in a gallon, including the gas to cook it. The lager I was drinking tonight is fantastic, 5.5% and still under $4/gal, all in. 1000% better than the stuff I paid 5.50 for.  I'm guessing at commercial scale, they have less yet in it. Maybe considerably less. I no longer even feel bad for them as I watch the places go under. That place sold since I had that beer there months ago.

[Kevin]

your mention of his diastatic brown malt thing made me remember that some of his attempts at making (im making it up but yo know what i mean) "1884 Chiswick Porter" will have 25% brown and black malt and no sugar and he'll have some yeast like WLP002 and he will state the attenuation at 85%. lol purely theoretical.

That beer would have sat in a vat for at least a year with Brettanomyces chomping at it the whole time.

[erockrph]

Not sure if it's in the book, but I brewed his 1957 Whitbread IPA.  Very tasty.

That recipe (or slight variations thereof) is a staple of mine. I brew it at least once every year or two. It's just a great drinking English Pale Ale. For context, he originally posted that recipe when "Session IPA" was becoming flavor-of-the-month amongst craft brewers. This recipe was posted in response to show that the idea was nothing truly novel.

I brew a lot of milds and bitters, and his recipes and research are the basis of most of my beers. I have his book, and I still refer to it from time to time, but it is more for ideas with formulating my own recipes than brewing beers verbatim.

[hopfenundmalz]

Not sure if it's in the book, but I brewed his 1957 Whitbread IPA.  Very tasty.

That one is very tasty.

I've used the book for some milds and bitter guidelines.

[CounterPressure]

Looking at his blog entry today and he talks about 1923 Cairnes Double Stout,  for which he shows a bottle label.  Was sold in 6-1/2 oz bottles.. Never seen that before. 
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2024/07/lets-brew-wednesday-1923-cairnes-double.html

[Lazy Ant Brewing]

I know there's no chance of getting the original brown malt that was done over fire and basically amounted to some light kilned malt and others burnt to a crisp.  That's not gonna be available.  But by the turn of the century, I think most of the malts were done with processes similar to today. So we should be able to brew those beers and end up with something pretty close to the original.  I think we can anyhow.

There's a good bit of information to be had by listening to his appearances on Beersmith podcast, where he talks about these recipes.  Little tidbits he drops here and there on numerous processes, might help in getting closer to the original beers.

Randy Mosher recommends Brown Malt for porters in mastering Homebrew.  Yes, it isn't the same as the brown malt from a century or more ago, but IMHO it contributes a lot to a great porter.  I use it at 10% of the grist and the members of my local homebrew club seem to like the results. One member asked for the recipe and then brewed it.