Airgead
Ohhh... I can write anything I like here
- Joined
- 6/4/05
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- 3,651
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Folks
I don't mean hops that have been sitting in the back of your fridge for 10 years...
One of my hobbies is historical fencing. We teach the sword fighting styles from the old European masters form 1200 onwards. Our main style is from george Silver who wrote his books in 1599. We have a prize fight coming up where students advance to the next level of study. These fights are held acording to the rules of the London Masters of Defence which was a fencing guild from around 1600. As part of this prize fight I would like to brew a historic beer so new schollars can celebrate their rank in the traditional manner.
The historic malts are no problem. I can make up a brown malt by roasting and lightly smoking pale malt. Traditionaly beers back thn were wild fermenattions but I'll cheat and just use a pommy ale strain as I don't know what my microflora is like. The main problem I am having is the hops. Hop beers were just becoming popular around 1600 and I would like to make a hopped beer as well as an older style gruit ale. The trouble is - what hop? Most varieties used now date from the 1900's not the 1600s and I would like if possible to re-create the taste of the really old hops.
From what I can work out, the oldedt English variety still commerialy grown is EKG which was selected from something called Canterbery Whitebine in 1790. I can't find any references on the origins of whitebine but I assume it was a decendant of the original hop brought to England which was hallertau. At the moment my plan is to use a mix of EKG and hallertau but I would rather try to get hold of a real older hop if possible. Apparently there is a variety that is slightly older than EKG called Canterbery Golding that is still grown.
Does anyone out there know whether there are any really old English hop strains still available commercally? I would love to get hold of some Whitebine or better still one of whitebine's parents.
Ross? Anyone?
Cheers
Dave
I don't mean hops that have been sitting in the back of your fridge for 10 years...
One of my hobbies is historical fencing. We teach the sword fighting styles from the old European masters form 1200 onwards. Our main style is from george Silver who wrote his books in 1599. We have a prize fight coming up where students advance to the next level of study. These fights are held acording to the rules of the London Masters of Defence which was a fencing guild from around 1600. As part of this prize fight I would like to brew a historic beer so new schollars can celebrate their rank in the traditional manner.
The historic malts are no problem. I can make up a brown malt by roasting and lightly smoking pale malt. Traditionaly beers back thn were wild fermenattions but I'll cheat and just use a pommy ale strain as I don't know what my microflora is like. The main problem I am having is the hops. Hop beers were just becoming popular around 1600 and I would like to make a hopped beer as well as an older style gruit ale. The trouble is - what hop? Most varieties used now date from the 1900's not the 1600s and I would like if possible to re-create the taste of the really old hops.
From what I can work out, the oldedt English variety still commerialy grown is EKG which was selected from something called Canterbery Whitebine in 1790. I can't find any references on the origins of whitebine but I assume it was a decendant of the original hop brought to England which was hallertau. At the moment my plan is to use a mix of EKG and hallertau but I would rather try to get hold of a real older hop if possible. Apparently there is a variety that is slightly older than EKG called Canterbery Golding that is still grown.
Does anyone out there know whether there are any really old English hop strains still available commercally? I would love to get hold of some Whitebine or better still one of whitebine's parents.
Ross? Anyone?
Cheers
Dave
