"Historic" india ale

oliver

oliver

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was reading through some things, and had some weird ideas and questions..

so, the original India Pale Ales were dry hopped in barrels and transported on a boat that went across the sea to India, or something like that? Assuming this would subject the beer to some interesting conditions, I can only imagine the sun destroying the beer and hop character on the voyage.

My question on this sort of thing if anyone has insights, as to what the effects of hot oak conditioned ale would be. If i primary for 2 weeks at about 70ºF, and then double dry hop it into a secondary with some oak chips, and toss the thing in the trunk of my car for 2 months, what am i looking at here?
 
oxidation to start lol, before the invention of hops in beer one of the things they realized was the beer went bad during the voyage so hops weren't added for flavor but used as a preservative to to keep the beer from going stale, it was still bad as far as hour standards today
 
I think the holds of the ship were different conditions than the trunk of your car. :lol:
 
It is a little peculiar, isn't it? People have been brewing beer for thousands of years, trying to make it better, and succeeding. But now we want to do a throwback to the swill they used to drink!
 
Head First said:
I think the holds of the ship were different conditions than the trunk of your car. :lol:
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Yes just like a basement that stays 60 here the ocean was very cold so below deck stayed cooler than we think most of the time, the key is filling all air space to the rim making it hard to oxidize
 
you've never seen the trunk of my car! heh.

maybe i'll split the batch and take half of it on a road trip. "historic" mmmm tasty

so the only issue is i'm looking at oxidation if on a boat, or in a car. But, what are the general effects of just much warmer temperatures in the secondary without the beer sitting on yeast??
 
jeffpn said:
It is a little peculiar, isn't it? People have been brewing beer for thousands of years, trying to make it better, and succeeding. But now we want to do a throwback to the swill they used to drink!
Click to expand...
We've learned to make better swill? Point is we'll never know what a turn-of-the-century Kentucky Common really tasted like, much less a 300 year old recipe! But it's still fun to try....

I'm imagining a beer stored in a wooden cask and transported all the way to India in a slow ship would have lots of "sherry notes" (if not wet cardboard) due to micro-oxidation from the wood leaking. It would have been shaken, heated, otherwise insulted. And I really think, since the primary flow of wealth was from India to Britain, not the other way around, its function was likely ballast as much as refreshment for the troops of the Raj.
 
I'm not saying don't do it. I just think it's funny. Imagine taking the attempted brew along with your finest brew in a time machine back to the early days of beer making, to see how close it is. Those early day brewers would be scratching their heads wondering why you wanted to make worse beer!
 
My wife wrote that recipe!! :lol:
 
Great topic for a slow morning! I'm fairly certain that if you went back in time with a good drop and started talking about hops aromas, citrus or floral flavours or mouthfeel you would have copped a rifle butt to the forehead!
It would be interesting to know what the blokes back then considered a decent drop! At what point was it spat out and followed by a good old fashioned punch on? although I think beer had 1 purpose in those days, like my early days of drinking beer :eek:
 
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