New Albion was a beer brewed in Sonoma, California that is heralded as an important beer in the growth of the craft beer movement in the U.S. Wikipedia: New Albion Brewing Company - Wikipedia
Would they have added gypsum or calcium chloride, or both? I assume just gypsum, right?
Using the Bru’n Water spreadsheet, and 100% adding Sonoma water, and this all 2 row grist, I’d have to add so much gypsum and/or CACL2 to lower the mash pH that the hardness goes WAY above the 350 ppm hardness in the recipe notes, what gives?
Keep in mind this was in the 1970’s at the first micro brewery.
I know I could add acid malt or lactic or phosphoric acid but the history does not indicate they used that.
I could dose in RO water but I doubt the brewery had such a set up.
I really doubt they would have used acid, especially considering what I know of New Albion. Not to mention you really don’t know of your water is like theirs was. Just go with gypsum.
I agree that I shouldn’t assume my Sonoma Water (2018) is the same as their Sonoma water (1970’s), but even if close, the amount of gypsum I’d need to load in there (to lower the mash pH) would push the hardness way above the 350 ppm that Don Barkley (a brewery there) suggested for hardness.
English brewing practice has long employed the addition of water salts to brewing liquor. The recommendation to increase hardness to 350 ppm with gypsum is reasonable and would have the effect of lowering mashing pH. Since brewers of our time have barely recognized the benefits of acid use in brewing, its less likely that the Albion brewers did so. While the resulting pH probably won’t be ideal by today’s standards, it will still be an acceptable beer. Having tasted the recent recreations of that early IPA (Boston Brewing?), I can imagine that the modest hopping level of that beer could be aided by the hop roughness created by a higher than desirable wort pH.
If you’re looking for a semblance of accuracy, I’d go ahead and brew it with the gypsum dose and assess the result.
By the way, that source water could have been pre-boiled to drop some of the alkalinity and a bit of the calcium. That would help with the pH issue.
If I did want to pre-boil the water, how long to boil it to get the desired effect?
I agree they didn’t likely use acid and being that British beers appear to have been the inspiration, I can imagine they had their water boiled because their “research” on process may have included that.
I guess I have to decide how “authentic” I want to get.
Given the water quality, the pre-boiling technique would only have minor effect. So I’m less inclined to believe that they would have pre-boiled.
Regarding pre-boiling duration. It should be almost instantaneous upon reaching boil, but the practical required duration is about 15 minutes. That recommendation is well over 100 years old.
anykine, you might want to check out brewersdaughter.com. This is a blog by Renee DeLuca, who is the daughter of Jack McAuliffe, original brewer of New Albion.
I know the spot in town where the Brewers brewery was. I assume it was municipal water (given the amount of use) versus well water. Assuming municipal, I wonder if (how) they removed chlorine? Would they have used campden / known about it?
What they knew and what they did might not match up. They did have some guidance from UC Davis. But then they had a primitive, gravity-fed brewhouse in a shed, hand built from 55gal drums and copper tubing. I expect they were limited not so much by knowledge as by practical ability to apply it. All their processes must have been bare-bones minimalist.
Hey, I’m the one who did the research on New Albion Ale. I just noticed this thread!
I don’t have any information on the water beyond what is posted. But I have a few general thoughts on this:
As far as I know, English brewers harden their water much more than American brewers. Maybe Martin can tell us if I’m off-base on that. Given that a lot of the homebrewing and available professional brewing knowledge in 1976 was of English provenance, it wouldn’t be surprising to me that they were truly hardening the water to Barley’s recollection based on English practices.
Someone on reddit was disparaging New Albion as if they must have been bumpkins in terms of knowledge. I was able to respond with a quote from Jack McCauliffe to the effect that running New Albion was like three jobs: (a) studying at the library; (b) manufacturing and maintaining the brewery; and (c) brewing and distributing. I don’t have the exact quote at hand. The point is that McCauliffe and Barkley were no rubes, were only 50 mi. away from the library at UC-Davis, and had access to the brains of the brewers at Anchor (not to mention some technical assistance from Coors). I am sure they had their water chemistry sorted out.
If anyone is skeptical. it would be easy to brew to a more ‘modern’ water profile and then dose some beer with gypsum to achieve the purported profile stated by Don Barkley. Or you could pick up the phone and call him.
Yes, indeed. Some English breweries do mineralize their brewing water to levels that Americans rarely do. Some of the brewing schools do recommend high mineralization and at least one brewing water lab recommends mineralization that I have a hard time justifying. So if Jack’s training was under a British brewer, it is possible that the water used to brew his beer was well-mineralized.