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oak and Bailey have posted about Ron‘s stock ale brewed with Goose Island, Brewery Yard. I asked which malt was used in the comments and learned it was Maris Otter, a variety introduced later than the era being emulated. Which is normal as very little older malt is actually available.
But that is changing. As Ed noted, work is being done to reintroduce the heritage English hop Farnham Whitebine. A year ago, apparently the first batch of the pale ale using malt made from Chevallier barley was made. Chevallier was introduced in the 1820s and became a key malt barley strain in the Victorian era. It’s return is a blessing for those who now want to explore the beers of over a century ago.
But I am greedy. I want more now. I want my Battledore barley based porter. As we pass from this era of amazeballs murk – just as we’ve long since passed the era of X-Treme heavy metal themed big bombs – I hope and pray we are moving into a time when at least rare strains of hop and barley become more and more available so we might know what the beers of our forefolk were really like. And so we might one day actually have a true double double.
From everything I hear from the folks at Devils Backbone, being part of the AB-InBev world has given them access to a much broader range of ingredients and equipment. It would be fantastic if the same were to be true for the AB-InBev owned Northern Brewer homebrew stores, making some of the same resources available to homebrewers would be really cool, and would definitely make brewing historical beers more interesting.
I would have to assume it was the cost of Chevallier malt that dictated going to Maris Otter, not to mention the small supplies available. I would love to see heritage malts like this in my local home brew shop, but at over double the price of Maris it would be a bitter pill to swallow. It might make for a great excuse to have a couple of friends to buy a bag and everyone make a different historical recipe.
Not so much the cost as the availability as it turns out. Over at Boak and Bailey, the maltster indicated that more Chevallier is coming on line this year.