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 not brewed any of these YET, but several of them are on my list to brew someday. He collected a lot of very interesting recipes and I’ve at least been inspired by some of them, if not brewing them to the letter.
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.
I haven’t brewed one exactly following a specific recipe, but once did an early 19th century pale ale that was 100% Maris Otter malt, a boatload of Goldings hops added at 60, 30, and 15 minutes left in the boil, WY1968, and an OG of 1.075. It was outstanding.
Not sure if it’s in the book, but I brewed his 1957 Whitbread IPA. Very tasty.
I haven’t brewed any from the book verbatim, but I did an “inspired by” recipe, for a dark mild (Dark Mild 2021 | Andy's Brewing Blog). Turned out pretty tasty…
I did a stout and a porter that were sort of “averaged” 1880s recipes from that book.
They came out pretty well (considering my own missteps in the brewing process).
As others have mentioned, you’ll have to substitute a mix of medium-darkness malts to approximate historic “Brown Malt” if the recipe called for that.
Brown malt IS commercially available. It won’t be exactly the same as historical but it might be the best we can do.
Actually when brewing historical I simulate wood-drying by adding around 5-10% Bamburg smoked malt for part of the base malt, gives it a little something.
I’ve also toasted my own malt many many times to produce amber or brown malt. It will usually lose its diastatic power so don’t rely on it for more than say 30% of the grist. But you can do this easily in your own oven just by spreading out a couple pounds or whatever on a baking sheet in a 375-ish F (190 C) oven for 20-45 minutes until quite toasty, then cool, grind, and brew as normal. Deeply toasted flavors, a little goes a long way actually, probably don’t want to use more than 10-20% of the total grist.
Funny you mentioned that dave, when I was far younger, my much older brother had gotten into home brewing, I’m not even sure it was legal in the US yet, and I can remember making a porter with him that we roasted the barley in the oven because you couldn’t get a dark roast malt at the time. I think I may be dating myself, but I’m okay with that. LOL
That’s a good point on using the smoked malt as a substitute for the authentic old Brown malt. That process is long long gone, they had all kinds of malt house fires from that stuff. It goes without saying they don’t do it that way anymore. It just makes me wonder what that flavor profile was.
As was mentioned by someone else, I used one of the recipes as a starting point. It was for a Burton Ale I brewed. Actually brewed it a few times. I loved it.
I got a lot of good input on the forum here. This was the discussion: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=32563.0.
i think everyone is on the same page about at least using them as datapoints, i really really appreciate what he has done and i think he is super important on a lowkey level for beer, beer history and home/craft brewing.
i just love his digging up primary sources for facts that cut through all the conjecture and myths/old stories that had built up as people sought to explain the beers we had.
-brett in english beers, including IPA
-evolution of porter
-quantities and characteristics of invert syrup
-to a lesser extent his obsession with characterizing the common pub pint ie. “AK/mild/bitter”
@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 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.
Wasn’t he just there last week? (or the week before)?
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…
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.)
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.
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.
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.