Question about Steam Beer

Changing the subject slightly, the Batch of Old Foghorn I've been drinking recently seems rather hazy (borderline cloudy)...

 

That article is wwhen it sys Dampfbier uses a Weissbier yeast. It doesn't. I've been to Zwiesel and specifically asked the brewer about the yeast. It's just a normal top-fermenting strain. To my taste Dampfbier is like a lightly hopped Alt.

 

You don't need a cereal cooker to brew with adjuncts. Only if you get them in the form of grits. If you use flakes they can go straight in the mash tun. That's how most British breweries did it.

 

Do you know how old that quote is?

 

Do you know if Maisel in Bayreuth used a Weissbier yeast strain for their Dampfbier?

 

No idea what yeast Maisel used. Should have asked, because I was there during the same trip.

I don't know the story behind their Dampfbier. I'd be surprised if it was connected with the one from Zwiesel. OK, both are in Bavaria, but very different regions. Zwiesel is pretty out opf the way, only a few kilometres from the Czech border. Bayreuth is 200 km away.

 

Ron, that is an interesting point. I personally use flaked maize (corn) when I homebrew.

I suppose a question is what was the prevalent format of adjuncts (corn/rice) circa 1900. If flaked corn and flaked rice was readily available at economical prices then breweries would not be compelled to install cereal cookers. The contemporary AAL breweries that I am familiar with, Spoetzl (Shiner), Yuengling, Anheuser-Busch, etc., all have cereal cookers so there must be an economic benefit today to brew with non-flaked adjuncts. This makes me think there was an economic benefit to utilize cereal cookers in the past.

I can report that for me flaked maize costs me more per pound than malt. I have never priced corn grits.

Cheers!

Edit: What percentage of corn is used by British brewers? The amounts (precentage) of adjunct used can greatly affect the economics here.

 

From what I understand, the story behind theirs was that they wanted to brew a specialty, outside of their normal lineup. The brewers apparently came up with a few various beers, and the favorite among these was the Dampfbier. All I have heard about the yeast is that it is top-fermenting. When I drank the beer back in the 90s, it did have some distinct fruity, vanilla-type esters. Color was about what a Duesseldorf Alt would be, and (as you point out) hopping was light.

 

Makes me want to revisit Anchor Steam. Thanks for posting!

 

I can only assume it was from around the time that the book was published, which would be 1988.

 

In the 1880's they were using flaked maize and rice in Britain. Very rarely grits. From my limited knowledge of US brewing, grits seem to have been more common.

The use of flaked maize wasn't necessarily purely on the grounds of cost. British brewers worried about the amount of nitrogen in their wort. In Light Bitters like AK it has other advantages.

 

Is the concern FAN (Free Amino Nitrogen) levels of the wort? If so, what distinguishes flaked maize vs. corn grits in this regard?

I am not aware that flaked maize has a differing level of FAN of the wort vs. corn grits.

Cheers!

 

In the fiscal year of June 1895 – June 1896, US brewers produced 36 million barrels of beer, and used (according to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue):

114 million lbs of rice
5.5 million bushels of corn (@ 56lbs/bushel = approx. 308m lbs)
38 million lbs of grape sugar/maltose
27 million lbs of glucose/syrup
140 million lbs of “other material” *
​

* Unfortunately, corn and rice isn't broken down, but note that both corn flakes and corn grits are listed under the last heading of "other materials". What sorts of “other materials” you may ask?

 

A few other interesting descriptions of "steam beer" from my files.

 

@jesskidden

Considering material as percentages:

114 million lbs of rice: 18.2%

308 million lbs of corn: 49.1%

38 million lbs of grape sugar/maltose: 6.1%

27 million lbs of glucose/syrup: 4.3%

140 million lbs of “other material”: 22.3%

It would seem to clearly indicate that corn was the most used adjunct (as measured by weight) and that vast majority of the corn was unprocessed corn (i.e., not flaked maize, not grits, etc.).

Would the breweries have the ability to degerm and mill the unprocessed corn?

The degermed/milled corn would have to be placed in a cereal cooker prior to mashing.

Cheers!

 

I think he's just saying that brewers look to nitrogen content of the malted barley as an indicator of the protein content; if that is too high then they would wind up with a hazy beer, heavy mouthfeel, and there could be a lower yield as well. They would then use the corn (in whatever form was handy) as a 'nitrogen diluent' to bring the protein levels down to what was desired.

 

Didn't mean the reason they used flakes was because of nitrogen. That's one of the reasons they used maize. I assume they mostly didn't use grits because they didn't want to buy a cereal cooker.

Though Barclay Perkins used grits and flakes between the wars. Their English-style beers used flakes, while their Lager brewery had a cereal cooker.

 

In the 1894 book Amerikanische Brauindustrie auf der Weltausstellung in Chicago (on pages 23-25) the author, an Austrian official, writes:
"The preparation of the corn for brewing purposes has become its own industry and prominently among which are the Chicago Hominy and Milling Co, the Cerealine Manufacturing Co in Columbus Ind., the Indianapolis Hominy Mills, the Harlem River Milling Co in New York, the Crystal Rice Milling Co in Marion Ind and several others. The corn is shredded with sharp rotating knives in specialized machines and the broken down mass is then sieved with the help of an air stream, whereby the shell and the sprout is removed. The thusly generated course-textured product is called hominy. It is ground, sorted through sieves and lastly dried in kilns. In this way five different products are attained:

"Coarse grits with one half to three quarters of a percent oil as brewing material
Fine grits with circa 1 percent oil as brewing material
Coarse meal with circa 2 percent oil as foodstuff
Fine meal with circa 2 percent oil as foodstuff
Sprouts and shells with circa 9 percent oil as livestock feed

Through additional sorting the oil content of the grits themselves can be reduced to a quarter of a percent. The grits cannot be processed directly in the mash tun, instead it has to go through gelatinization. The gelatinization takes place in a separate vessel (called an adjunct cooker) with water and 20-30 percent crushed malt, which merely has the purpose, of simplifying the liquidification of the starch."

"In order to avoid this separate procedure another corn product is produced from the grits under the name "Cerealine", Cerealine-flakes, Frumentum, Maizeline, Quick-malt etc. It appears in form as very thin leaves, which are produced through steaming, rolling and drying the hominy. This Cerealin contains 1-1½ percent oil and can be used directly in the mash tun, where previously crushed malt has been doughed in with water of about 30 degrees reaumur."

"The oil content acts as the measuring stick for the value of the corn product. The less oil it contains, the better the production process and the higher the content of the valuable part of the corn, "the starch flour". The upper limit for premium wares can be set at 0.5%, for good wares at 1% and for average at 1½-2 percent. Corn products whose oil content is above 2 percent, is unusable for brewing purposes."

 

Michael,

I would have never considered that adjuncts (e.g., flaked maize) would be ‘required’ for lowering the nitrogen content of British malt.

“Protein values in malt are related to the total nitrogen content (proteins are comprised of nitrogen-rich amino acids). Sometimes a malt analysis will list the total nitrogen (TN) value in percent. In general, brewers want minimal protein in their malt because it has little brewing value except for enzymes and foam.

One percent TN equals 6.25% protein; to convert protein to TN divide the value by 6.25. British and Continental base malts are normally below 10 percent protein (1.6% TN). All-malt beers brewed with malt having a protein value above 12% may exhibit haze problems, which is why North American six-row malt (with protein as high as 14%) is best used with adjuncts that have far less protein. (The situation is actually a little more complex as the kinds of proteins present in a malt also play a role.)”

http://byo.com/hops/item/1544-understanding-malt-spec-sheets-advanced-brewing

Cheers!

Jack

 

These days I'd be right there with you, but it seems that Ron was talking about the quality of the malts in the 19th century.