Tom Archer.
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2023
- Messages
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- Reaction score
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From time to time I pick up old books on home brewing to see how practices have evolved over the years.
Some books seem to be essentially ghost written and compiled from previous publications, but some demonstrate a lot of personal experimentation and experience.
One of my favourites in that regard is Graham Wheeler's CAMRA sponsored book 'Brew your own British real ale'
The text is littered with detail, lessons the author has learned the hard way from everyday home brewing.
When it comes to making a starter culture, he advocates 55g DME in 300mL water.
But where did 55g come from? It's a slightly odd number until you realise that it closely equates to two ounces. Older books from the pre metric era tend to refer to liquid malt extract rather than DME, which is slightly less concentrated, so my suspicion is that his 55g DME into 300mL water started off life as an old rule of thumb of 2oz of LME into a half pint (284mL) of water.
Wheeler is not alone advocating what is roughly a heady 1.067 solution, and one tome from the seventies advocates 40mL of LME into 150mL water, which works out at a towering 1.090.
Nor is he alone in taking tiny innoculation rates from slants or bottle dregs and taking them in a single stage up to a pitchable starter for a five gallon brew, using, in his case, a milk bottle and without recourse to a stir bar.
The conundrum is that if you try to put these numbers through online starter calculators, you reach the conclusion that the innoculation rates are impossibly low, the wort strength hopelessly high and the yeast yield nothing like enough.
- But they clearly worked..
Am I missing something?
Some books seem to be essentially ghost written and compiled from previous publications, but some demonstrate a lot of personal experimentation and experience.
One of my favourites in that regard is Graham Wheeler's CAMRA sponsored book 'Brew your own British real ale'
The text is littered with detail, lessons the author has learned the hard way from everyday home brewing.
When it comes to making a starter culture, he advocates 55g DME in 300mL water.
But where did 55g come from? It's a slightly odd number until you realise that it closely equates to two ounces. Older books from the pre metric era tend to refer to liquid malt extract rather than DME, which is slightly less concentrated, so my suspicion is that his 55g DME into 300mL water started off life as an old rule of thumb of 2oz of LME into a half pint (284mL) of water.
Wheeler is not alone advocating what is roughly a heady 1.067 solution, and one tome from the seventies advocates 40mL of LME into 150mL water, which works out at a towering 1.090.
Nor is he alone in taking tiny innoculation rates from slants or bottle dregs and taking them in a single stage up to a pitchable starter for a five gallon brew, using, in his case, a milk bottle and without recourse to a stir bar.
The conundrum is that if you try to put these numbers through online starter calculators, you reach the conclusion that the innoculation rates are impossibly low, the wort strength hopelessly high and the yeast yield nothing like enough.
- But they clearly worked..
Am I missing something?
