February 2, 2010 · Comments Off
J.C. Jacobsen's letters to his son reveal a wealth of technical brewing details
I’ve been digging into Carlsberg history again – more specifically the letters from J.C. Jacobsen to his son Carl. As a young man Carl was packed off to travel the breweries of Europe for four years as part of his apprenticeship in brewing. The letters published in Danish as Din hengivne Jacobsen (Your devoted Jacobsen) are a fascinating insight into not only the characters of J.C. and Carl, but also into the techniques and practices of brewing at the time (1866-1870).
On his sojourn, Carl gained access to some of the greatest breweries of the time – both on the continent and Great Britain. Zum Spaten, Weihen Stephan, William Younger, Allsopp, Bass, Ushers, Evershed, Barclay Perkins, Lovibonds, Truman and Whitbread all figure in the letters of the father to the son. Carl actually worked for some time in Wm. Youngers and Eversheds Allsopp’sand had several interviews while in Burton with the noted brewing chemist Horace Brown
The letters illustrate Jacobsen’s thirst for brewing knowledge as he fires off letter after letter with questions about malting, mashing temperature, the cost and construction of pumps and corrugated iron, bottling and especially how English ales were brewed – Porter and Pale Ale in particular. His goal was to open a brewery for English-style beers to get a slice of the lucrative export market.
Some of his last letters in 1870 are with a desperate need for detail before Carl leaves Great Britain to return home:
Have you in Burton received reliable information about the degree of attenuation for Export Ale and Pale Ale in the larger breweries during the main fermentation and at the filling of casks? It is not necessary for me to call attention to how important it is to know the measurements one should achieve during fermentation.
Despite this demand for information about the brewing techniques used in Great Britain he never really got over his dislike of the taste of the beer. He writes about Bass:
Most of the beer types from Bass have, to my taste, far too much dry hopping. In some of the casks there was an unreasonable amount of hops. Is this necessary for its keeping abilities or is it only a matter of taste?
When Carl returned to Denmark he did in fact open a brewery for English styles, but was never convinced that it would take off at home. He preferred to export lager beer, which he considered excellent, despite his father’s worries that it wouldn’t travel well and damage his hard-won reputation.
Categories: Beer · Brewing · Brewing history · Carlsberg
Tagged: Bass, Export Ale, Pale Ale
October 3, 2009 · Comments Off
Uhhm, I'll have a nice cold glass of rat poison, please.
For years ‘industrial’ lager has ben ridiculed for adding rice and corn as adjuncts to provide extra sugar for fermenting. The beer purists locked into Reinheitsgebot have accused brewers of cheapening the brew, watering it down for commercial gain, and generally being evil. All-malt is the best seems to be the general opinion.
But this week there was a story in the LA Times that describes how some craft brewers are experimenting with rice and corn ales. The horror! Well, not really, the Times’ story is nicely balanced piece describing how rice can be used for giving flavour, rather than taking it away.
“Yes, rice gives beer a light body,” says Brian Dunn, owner and brewer at Great Divide Brewing Co. in Denver. In 2007, the brewery released Samurai, an unfiltered rice and barley ale, to retail outlets. “But it’s also crisp and refreshing, and has a little fruity character that really comes through.”
Also quoted is Maureen Ogle, author of Ambitious Brew, a book exploring the history of brewing in the US, who says “Craft brewers treat rice almost as if it’s rat poison.”
According to Ogle, the anti-rice sentiment is traceable to the early craft brewing revival in the 1980s. “It was all about, ‘We’re only using four ingredients, we’re not like those industrial brewers making watered-down, cheap beer by using adjuncts like rice.’
“The mythology is that these giant beer makers began adding rice and corn to their beer after World War II to water it down, but that’s simply not true,” she adds.
The American brewing industry was built in the late 19th century by first-generation German American immigrants such as Adolphus Busch, Adolph Coors and Frederick Miller. Although these men, craft brewers themselves, initially re-created the full-bodied beers of their homeland, many Americans had not developed a taste for the malt-heavy style.
“They needed a domestic ingredient that would make the beers more effervescent, bubbly and lighter,” Ogle says. “Rice and corn did that — it was a desired flavor, not inexpensive filler.”
Categories: Beer · Brewing · Lager loathing · US lager · ingredients
September 16, 2009 · 1 Comment
Beer and Philosophy. Two subjects that go together surprisingly well. Or not surprising really if you’ve ever spent an afternoon or an evening putting the world to rights over a beer.
The two subjects also go surprisingly well together in a book of the same name, Beer and Philosophy: The unexamined beer isn’t worth drinking, edited by Steven D. Hales.
What has this to do with lager I can hear you asking? Well, if philosophy is all about the examination of our human lives and how we experience them, then questions such as ‘How on earth can people brew Budweiser with a straight face’ are extremely relevant. And Beer and Philosophy doesn’t disappoint, with some interesting background on what goes into US lager – or perhaps that should be what doesn’t.
What makes beer good or not good is one of the themes and crops up repeatedly in the book. Is a beer good because I like it, or do I like it because it is good? Also, it questions what makes a beer good.
Quality in, quality out
The chapter entitled ‘Quality, Schmality’ looks at ‘goodness’ by considering what goes into US lagers in terms of the type and quality of malt and the amount of adjuncts and hops. And the authors reproduce an interesting table that shows that since 1915, the amount of fermentable material has fallen consistently. The amount of hops in US beer fell by 60% from 1935 o 1990. The table by the way comes from a paper entitled The all-American beer: a case of inferior standard (taste) prevailing?
Source: Choi and Stack (2005)
Categories: Beer · Brewing · Brewing history · Lager · US lager · ingredients
Tagged: beer and philosophy, Budweiser
