How you like my coolship? Any recommendations on how to use it? Temperature wise. Or or grain build wise?
I was told when the temps get into the 50s over night.
I’m still cleaning it out and smoothing the edges.
OK, I give up, what is it?
Open fermentation.
- formerly alestateyall.
Question is, not how cool the air gets, but what’s in it, right? Before building a coolship, did you do a small-scale test, with, like, a jar of starter wort, to see if you’d catch desirable bugs? Location, location, location. (I’m assuming spontaneous fermentation is your goal, because the actual historical use of a coolship was simply to cool and aerate the wort while expressly trying to avoid inoculation with non-culture yeast and bacteria. Where your good old wort chiller would serve you way better.) One heck of build (unbuild?) though! You didn’t seriously do the whole job with the hacksaw in the picture, I hope! :o
Hack saw bruh! No. 4” electric saw. Just couldn’t get the top without the hack saw. I did not do a test. Never crossed my mind. But. Some breweries did a coolship not too far from where I live. I think I’m just gonna make some camping brews. Like biab overnight chill. Wild things do grow where I live. Hops. Berries. Mushrooms. I’m surrounded by forests. So who Knows! Besides the beer gods.
Also. You are partially right, but they didn’t even know about yeast until the 1800s.
I’m pretty sure brewers knew about yeast well before 1800. They might not have know the nature of yeast and it wouldn’t be until the 1830’s that anyone knew yeast was a living organism but they were certainly aware of it’s existence and it’s importance in fermenting their beer.
I haven’t read anything to support that. They knew something was happening, but I don’t believe they knew it was yeast. I’m happy to be proven wrong.
What I’m getting at and mean is, even in the Reinheitsgebot of 1516 doesn’t include yeast as an ingredient and yes, the process of fermentation has been going on since the Neolithic area but it wasn’t until the 1800s that yeast was understood to be a living organism.
Do you think they had yeast pitches back in the day though? Or that regional areas contained certain strains of yeast? I understand that bread and such has been around quite a while too. I’m more interested in strain development, but then, is yeast even an ingredient?
Edit: plus, they couldn’t even chill wort back in the day.
I recall references made from the pre-microscope era of the ingredient called “God is Good”.
From an All About Beer article on history of brewing:
Little wonder that the foamy evidence of yeast in action was known to brewers in the Dark Ages as “Godisgood.” They couldn’t see where it came from, they couldn’t explain it, but they knew it turned mundane ingredients into something inspirational.
Lars Garshol has two interesting articles on some myths: All beer used to be a little sour, and people didn’t know about yeast before Pasteur.
TLDR? People knew about yeast, dating back to the Egyptians.
Reusing yeast: a history
http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/390.html
[quote]Let’s look at one example, the first Danish cookbook. It was published in Danish in 1616, based on earlier German works. The first recipe is for bread, the second for beer, and that recipe doesn’t say you should add yeast. It takes for granted that you already know that. What it does say is (my translation from the original Danish):
When you pitch the yeast, then take good care that you do not add it too hot or too cold, but when it is somewhat more than milkwarm.
[/quote]
He goes on to talk about yeast makers in Egypt and yeast in Greece.
All beer was sour
http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/306.html
Ya know, I researched the godisgood thing for the new book, and again I couldn’t find any authoritative references to it. Not to say they don’t exist, but I couldn’t find any.
He goes on to talk about yeast makers in Egypt and yeast in Greece.
All beer was sour
http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/306.html
[/quote]
Thanks for that
^^^
Now I’m learning something fun. Sorry if I misspoke. Hope you all had an idea which direction I was coming from though.
Medieval bakers used to buy yeast from brewers, who were skimming way more than they needed to pitch the next brew. It seems everybody knew about yeast, but it isn’t always mentioned – maybe just taken for granted. There were of course farmhouse bakers, without access to a village brewery, making sourdough, just as there were spontaneously fermented beers. But there seems always to have been a distinction between spontaneous and cultured fermentation of both bread and beer. Harold McGee says yeast production for baking was a specialized profession in Egypt by 300 BC. And the genetic studies of late prove that today’s brewer’s yeasts were selected and propagated many centuries before Pasteur identified the organisms.
So coolships likewise have a dual history, I suppose. Some brewers left them exposed to inoculate the wort like Lambic brewers today. Others must have learned early on to keep the wort protected on the coolship until it was ready to receive the culture yeast. One thing I find fascinating about this is its indication of the dichotomy between the Medieval urban and countryside economies: in towns we see specialized industries linked in trade networks (the places where you find beer and bread that are not wild fermented.) This may explain why beer and bread yeasts are so genetically uniform today: the yeast was traded in hubs of commerce and would quickly spread across Europe. The countryside, where estates were self sufficient, depended on local, wild organisms.
Note also that the more important Bavarian brewing statute historically is not the Reinheitsgebot but the 1553 prohibition of Summer brewing, in response to the inability to keep beer from being infected by wild yeast in the warm months. This was rescinded only in 1850 with the advent of refrigeration and modern brewing science.
Sorry for the dissertation, I think this is fascinating.
I had forgotten about that fascinating blog. Such great and interesting information!
Seems like there should be countless better options out there for stainless food grade cool ships apart from cutting a keg open but I guess I can’t think of any right now…
One great thing about jkirkham’s half-keg coolship, though, is that the semicircular profile maximizes surface-area-to-volume with a smaller footprint than traditional shallow rectangular vessels.
I recommend some edging material so you don’t slice your arm/hand.
Something like this; Poly Edging By the Foot
Safety first! Only an engineer could think of these things! lol
I took a metal file and some emery cloth to the shell and the edges are pretty dull now. I also put a gallon of hot water inside and scrubbed it out with a steel scrub pad.
I think it would be good to test after one more wash and hen I’ll probably iodophor it and star San it for good measure. Though, i also want to set it on my turkey fryer and boil some water in it.
There’s so much unsupported myth in beer history and brewing. I don’t know the origin of this “godisgood” story but the word yeast (often spelled yest) appears in brewing and beer texts at least back to the middle ages in Europe. If you look at nearly every culture that brews some type of alcoholic beverage, they figured out well before the common era the function of yeast. Some reused vessels that made a good beverage and unintentionally repitched. Others repitched slurry from the bottom of their vessels or added fermented liquid from a prior batch to a new one. Humans didn’t know yeast was a fungus until the nineteenth century but they definitely knew fermentation was not a supernatural force.