Historical Beer Recipes

[Ballard]

Has anyone got experience in hunting down old recipes? My great grandmother was a Combe (of Watney Combe and Reid Combes) and I'm interested in hunting down a recipe one of their 19th century London double stouts. Where do I start? Any suggestions would be gratefully received!

 

[cheshirehomebrew]

you could try tracking down a beer historian, or contacting any historical societies/museums who may have experts in such fields.

Whats the lineage of that brewery, who bought it, who bought them and so on, they may still have some records somewhere.

good luck in your hunt, if you do track it down please share its sounds like a belter!!


I may try the same with a brewery my dad used to tell me about from my home town who closed before I was born and all their beers were stopped by possibly Courage i think!

 

[Monte Cristo]

Try this link it is a book about vintage beer recipes i think http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=42953:hat:

 

[ericmark]

I was rather surprised watching a re-enactment program about abbey land use how beers did not have hops in them.

Beer was a method of storing drinking water and it would seem there would be a number of beers made from the same grain as a kit user I don't have the option to try this but would be interesting to taste these old beers.

I would guess since monks could write there would be recipes but they must have been a low ABV as other wise no work would have been done.

 

[clibit]

The leading historian of brewing in this country is Ron Pattinson who runs this blog..

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/

You could contact him via Twitter @patto1ro. He posts on here and on JBK sometimes as patto1ro. He researches old brewery records for historical recipes, but doesn't have everything obviously.

 

[patto1ro]

I'm pretty sure no Combe brewing records survive. These two recipes are for something similar:

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.nl/2012/08/lets-brew-wednesday-1867-courage-double.html
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.nl/2010/04/lets-brew-wednesday-1890-truman.html

 

[Ballard]

Thanks for the input guys!

Ron, thanks for those recipes. I'm going to do some digging if I ever get some time.

 

[marksa222]

This is a very interesting subject. I heard Ron have a chat to Brad Smith on the beersmith podcasts. I have my sights on his book. It combines my main 2 interests (brewing and history) so looking forward to that one.

I wonder what THE oldest complete recipe that could be reproduced with available ingredients would look like. I'd give it a go!

 

[cheshirehomebrew]

am trying to remember where i saw a reference to pictish ale. the remnants of brewing ingredients were found in that bronze age village you have up there in scotland, all grains i believe, no hops were found at all

or possible egyptian ales might be around the same age!

 

[Ballard]

While looking for ways to add elderflower to my beer I came across this recipe

http://recipewise.co.uk/ellen-ealu-elder-ale

It uses Bog Myrtle instead of hops, so should keep the mosquitoes away too!