OnTap Magazine

original. Crush or mill these in with your other malts as normal. Bittering Perhaps the greatest difference between modern beers and their ancient equivalents is the absence of hops. Ancient brewers employed a whole host of herbs and spices to give bitterness to their beers, and you can do the same. Good options that are relativelyeasy tocomeby include: rosemary, juniper berries, cardamom, sage, edible flowers, black and green peppercorns, grains of paradise, lemongrass, ginger root and liquorice root. But this is just an initial list; let your imagination soar! And as with hops, adding herbs and spices early in the boil will tend to extract more bitterness and less flavour, whereas adding later in the boil or in the fermenter will emphasise the aromatics of your chosen ingredients. Yeast One thing we can be certain of is that ancient brewers did not use dry yeast packets to ferment their brew. Instead, they relied on the wild yeasts and bacteria available in the environment, whether that was in the air around them or embedded in the vessels they used for fermentation and storage. To re-create an ancient ale, you can try open fermentation, which is exactly what it sounds like: cool your wort and splash it into your fermenter, but don’t close the lid. This is risky, and tends to work better if you’re living in the country or near cultivated land, where beneficial wild yeast is more abundant. If this all sounds a little too crazy for you, you can always use one of the many cultivated wild or near-wild strains available, like Fermentis’s SafAle BE- 134, T-58, or play around with adding some Brettanomyces or Lactobacillus . Fermentation Finding archaeological evidence on ancient brews is largely possible because brewers of that time stored their beer in clay vessels or amphora. Unlike wooden caskets, clay survives millennia of being buried, which is convenient for those of us that want to recreate ancient beers. Of course, if you can get your hands on some unglazed terracotta amphora, you can ferment your beer in that: perhaps make friends with a local potter. Or if you live near a wine farm, they may be able to help you out: some wine makers are returning to aging wines in clay nowadays. Aging in wood can also lend your beer that authentic edge. Barrels, even small ones, tend to be expensive, but you can go the budget route and add some oak (or other) chips to the fermenter and have your beer condition on those. Other tips and tricks Apart from your ingredients and fermentation, other avenues for re- enacting ancient brewing methods include using actual fire to boil your brew. Wood firing your kettle will create “hot- spots” that will caramelise some parts of the sweet wort, which in turn imparts intense flavours to the brew. If you don’t have a wood fire handy, you can simulate this effect by saving about a cupor twoof wort and reducing it in another pot on your stove, essentially creating a caramel that you can re-introduce into the brew before flame-out. Here is my take on that ancient Celtic brew - use it as a template if you like and feel free to experiment with your own ancient beers. Just don’t forget to let me know how it turned out. All-Grain, 19 litres (BIAB method) Nuts and bolts Brewhouse efficiency: 70% OG: 1.070 FG: 1.016 SRM: 20-24 ABV: 7.5% Mash ingredients 4kg Munich or Vienna malt 500g home-made smoked malt (use pale malt as base) or store- bought smoked malt 450g rye malt 400g flaked oats 400g biscuit malt (or similar Belgian-style malt) 90g roasted barley Boil ingredients 30g fresh rosemary leaves @ 30 minutes 30g crushed juniper berries @ 30 minutes 20g fresh sage leaves @ 30 minutes 10g grated ginger root @ 10 minutes 28g crushed juniper berries @ 5 minutes 3g cracked black pepper @ 5 minutes 28g fresh thyme leaves @ flameout 400g honey (wildflower, heather, or fynbos honey) in the whirlpool Method Mash grains at 67°C for 75 minutes. Boil for 60 minutes, following the herb and spice additions listed. Chill to 25°C, then pitch rehydrated yeast. Aerate your wort well. Ferment at 18-22°C. After seven days in the fermenter, add 7g of oak chips. Steam the oak chips in a colander for 15 minutes before adding them into your fermenter. Bottle after two weeks or when FG has been reached. If bottle conditioning, use 100 grams of dextrose for 2.1 volumes of carbonation. Fermentation tips Use a Belgian-style ale yeast like Fermentis T-58 or similar or an English Ale yeast to reproduce more phenolic and fruity flavours. If you're feeling adventurous, you can try using wild, open fermentation. Just know that creating successful wild fermentations can be tricky, so rather practice with a few starters left out in the open before committing to a full brew. To add some authentic sourness to your beer, you could also look at pitching Lactobacillus or Brettanomyces, a topic we’ll tackle in a future issue of the mag. If you have questions about your brewing or just need to make sure that your beer really is fermenting, you are most welcome to drop me a line at: contact@beginnerbrewer. com and I’ll help you out. ANCIENT CELTIC ALE: THE RECIPE ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2020 | 51