EGYPTIAN BEER EXPERIMENT Steve Gustafson .Fac Quodlibet Vis/ This is a description of a very experimental beer that I brewed about six months ago, in an a-historical attempt to recreate a beer using ingredients that were (except for one very obvious exception) available to the ancient Egyptians. The only archaeological authority I consulted was the Roman author Diodorus Siculus, who described Egyptian beer. 1 lb barley flour 1 lb millet flour 2 cups corn sugar Water to make dough Baker's yeast. ----------------------------------- Step the first: Mix a cup of corn sugar each with the barley flour and millet flour. Mix in water enough to make a fairly thin, pourable dough with each, and add the baker's yeast and knead or stir as best you can. This will not rise far. After about 6-8 hours, pour the risen dough for each onto greased cookie sheets and bake it until brown. Then, take the barley and millet "bread", and cut it into white-bread-slice sized squares, and toast each of them in a toaster. ----------------------------------- Step the second: 2 gallons of water One small bottle of "Beano", an anti-flatulence enzyme available from most vegetarian grocery stores. For better or worse, Beano was unavailable to the ancient Egyptians, who according to other ancient authors suffered frequently from intestinal gas. Boil 2 gallons of water from the Nile. When boiling, crumble all of the squares of barley and millet bread toast into each of them. Let the bread and water mixture set until it becomes just above room temperature. Add the entire bottle of Beano to the mixture and allow it to set overnight. ----------------------------------- Step the third: 3 1/2 gallons of water One 6" liquorice root 1/2 oz. anise seed 1/2 oz. herb rue (very optional - if bitterness desired) 4 pounds light barley malt extract 3 pounds honey Four cups sorghum molasses syrup Wine Yeast (I used Montrachet; Champagne might have been better.) Strain the bits of bread out of the bread, water and Beano mixture you made yesterday and bring the whole mess to a boil again. Give the bits of bread to the birds. Grate the liquorice root and reduce it into little pencil shaving sized bits. Put everything except the yeast and extra water into the water/bread mixture. I let it boil for 45 minutes. Pour the wort into the 3 1/2 gallons water. If you are using Nile water boil all of the water first. Pitch, ferment, prime, and bottle as you would a regular ale. This will have a long fermentation. ----------------------------------- NOTES: The beer was cloudy. I suspect this was a natural consequence of brewing with bread and Beano. Grain brewers may have more success if they tried to mash the bread, or mash whole grains. Whole millet may be available from feed stores as a bird seed. Just what you want to tell your friends about what you put in this beer. Diodorus Siculus's "Historical Library," book IV, chap. 2, and book V, chap. 26, contains a description of the product of Egyptian breweries. He relates that it was "nearly equal to wine in strength and flavour." The product of this recipe may not reach quite that stature, but it comes close. Hops, of course, were unknown to the peoples around the Mediterranean in antiquity. Rue was a bitter herb that was available to them. I have heard from another experimenter that tarragon also makes an interesting addition to ancient beer styles. Some models of daily life included in Egyptian tombs provide images of brewers, usually combined with bakers. Apparently in Egypt, as in much of the ancient world, brewing and baking were considered two aspects of the same trade. ----------------------------------- Since this got started by a discussion of recipes using sorghum molasses, this recipe may be more successful. It's another one of my own creations, albeit it's based on a very standard recipe. ----------------------------------- MOTHER DAMNABLE'S EXTRA PECULIER INDIANA PALE ALE ----------------------------------- 3.3 pound can John Bull amber malt extract 1 pound dry light malt extract 2 1/2 cups sorghum molasses 3/4 oz. Northern Brewer hop pellets (boiling) 1/2 oz. Fuggle hop pellets (finishing) 1/3 oz. package Burton water salts with papain Red Star ale yeast ----------------------------------- S.O.P. --- boil 2 gallons of water, put in all the ingredients except the yeast and finishing hops; boil for 45 minutes. Put in Fuggle hops in final 5 minutes of boil. Pour immediately into 3 1/2 gallons of water & cool to room temperature and add yeast. S. G. approx 1.052; final gravity approx. 1.007 Prime with 1 cup sorghum molasses in 1 pint water. This batch has been aging in the bottles for about a month now, and I've just started breaking into it. It is rather different, but not bad, at this point. The sorghum seems to lend it a rather tart flavour that is not at all like the British "Old Peculier" ales brewed with blackstrap molasses. ----------------------------------- And, for those who are interested, here is the recipe for my first experimental batch of an attempt to approximate the flavour of Ballantine Ale. What I did was take the ingredients for the smoothest lager-style brew I liked the best of all my rather infrequent essays into that style, upped the bitterness with some extra boiling hops, and am going to brew this as an ale. I just set it aside to cool before typing this. ----------------------------------- BALLANTINE ALE EXPERIMENTAL NO. 1 ----------------------------------- One 3.3 pound can Premier hopped light malt extract syrup 2 pounds dry light malt extract powder 2 pounds bulk clover honey 1/3 ounce Northern Brewer hop pellets (boiling) 1/2 ounce Cascade hop pellets (finishing) Yeast that came with the Premier cans. S.O.P. for ales once again; I boilt the ingredients except for the finishing hops and yeast in 2 gallons of water, then added the mixture to 3 1/2 gallons water drawn off earlier. I boiled this very delicately --- with very few large bubbles until the very finish --- for an hour. 1/2 ounce Cascade pellets at the last 5 minutes of the boil. I used no water salts for this one, only the very hard New Albany, IN tap water. New Albany tap water already contains some rather unusual trace elements, including manganese up to some 150 parts per million. I've been suspicious of it since I've never seen a discussion of the effects of manganese in brewing, but I thought I'd give it a try. If it proves to be an invaluable invention I'd be glad to start selling bottles of New Albany tap water to homebrewers. ;-) ----------------------------------- http://www.cs.csustan.edu/~gcrawfor/beerfiles/egypt.html