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I brought tools and ingredients for brewing to Pennsic 51, determined to do a short brew onsite that could be consumed before the end of war. I'd never done this before but I'd practiced at home with an outdoor brew so I figured I was a ready as I would ever be. I chose to use modern tools and equipment for this first time: digital thermometer, plastic fermenting bucket, nylon mesh grain bag, kegs, CO2... I was making a bigger batch of ale than I'd ever done before and I was using many hours of a vacation day to do this, so I wanted to maximize my chances for a successful brew. I also used storebought springwater because Pennsic water needs filtering and I did not have a good filter. Brogan of Tuathe de Bhriain provided much needed muscle, consultation, and company throughout this process and I'm quite sure it wound up a better brew due to his contributions--Thank you Brogan!
On Tuesday of Peace Week we started a fire between two cinderblocks and set a grate on top. Cinderblocks are an inelegant but sturdy solution to supporting the brewpot. If I do this again, I'll try to find something more visually appealing than cinderblocks. But the space that buckets and pots took up in my car had already required difficult choices; I'd wound up leaving precious teaching materials for my class at home--so I worked with what we had in camp. I did bring the grate from my Green Egg grill, which is of solid cast-iron construction. Five gallons of liquid is heavy.
Once the water was hot, we added malt. The grain bill was ten pounds of Great Western 2-row malt and 1/4 lb Dingeman's Special B. We dropped a mesh bag filled with the grain down into the water in the pot and dipped it up and down a few times to make sure the grain was saturated. We put the lid on the pot, wrapped the pot with a sheepskin and put a wool blanket on top. The mash had begun.
A dot thermometer sensor was submerged in the pot, with a cord that led outside so we could keep an eye on the temperature (the blue disc in the photo is the thermometer). The temperature did drop more than it had when I did this at home, perhaps because we put the pot on a wood platform. Next time I'll leave it on the ground instead. When we saw the temperature had dropped, we added more hot water and quickly closed up the pot again. It started above 155F and stayed above 146 F the whole time.
After an hour, we unwrapped the pot and pulled the grain bag up out of the water. Brogan did the pulling--ten pounds of dry grain becomes much heavier when wet! We poured hot water over the grain in the bag, to get as much sweetness as possible from the grain and to bring the wort volume up to 6-7 gallons. I was pouring the water and Brogan was holding up the bag, so we don't have pictures of that part.
Next it was time for the boil. The pot went back onto the fire and we boiled it for an hour. After 30 minutes I added 2 oz of meadowsweet, a common additive found in Iron Age brew residues. Again I used a mesh bag to make cleanup easier. In this picture if you squint you can make out the mesh bag on the left side of the pot.
Controlling the temperature to avoid a boil-over was as simple as sliding the pot off onto the cinderblock, while raising the temperature just meant pushing the pot back more fully over the fire.
After the boil is when sanitation becomes important: from this point forward, nothing unsanitized must touch the wort. In the future I may try less modern methods for sanitization, but as I mentioned, this first time I wanted to maximize my chances for success. I filled a 5 gallon plastic bucket with Star-San solution and sanitized the spoon, thermometer, fermenting bucket, and anything else that would touch the wort.
Next the wort needed to be cooled down. We could have chosen to just leave it till the next day, but we wanted to get it into the sealed environment of the fermenter bucket as quickly as possible, to avoid potential contamination. We used another inelegant solution that worked well enough: we put the pot on a 7 lb bag of ice and stirred it vigorously, pulling the spoon up from the bottom to circulate the fluid. By the time the bag had completely melted, the wort was around 90 F, which is cool enough to not kill the yeast. Then we transferred the wort into a sanitized fermenter bucket.
Next it was time to add the yeast. A friend with elderberry bushes had let me pick some to capture yeast the week before Pennsic. Prior to this, I'd only used frozen or dried elderberries for yeast capture, so this was a treat--thank you Michael Baker! The fresh berries, perhaps unsurprisingly, grew yeast faster than dried or frozen, so I was in a hurry to brew as soon as I got to war. I wouldn't have wanted to wait another day, or I might have had to think about adding honey to feed the yeast and keep it going.
The process for making yeast is not complicated: mash the berries and add some water. Cover the jar, shake it every day, and when the plastic wrap bulges up from the lid, the yeast is happy and ready to use. I'd planned to sanitize a mesh strainer and strain out the berry solids before adding the yeast to the wort, but Brogan said that would increase the chance of contamination (high surface area on a mesh strainer)-- so we just dumped the whole jar right into the wort, seeds and everything!
We dragged the fermenter bucket up the hill to my tent in a wagon. Once it was safely in the tent, I wrapped it in a sheepskin. Friends who brew had warned me about cold nights at Pennsic--I didn't want my brew to get so cold that fermentation stopped. In this picture you can see the airlock poking out the top. I went to bed and hoped for the best...in the morning that airlock was bubbling away, so I knew that fermentation was happening! This was a huge relief. You can see a video of the airlock here.
Four days after brew day, on Saturday of Pennsic middle-weekend, we tasted the brew. It was uncontaminated but had pulled sour, a common occurrence when brewing with wild-caught yeast. The yeast had worked quickly, eating up every bit of the sugar in the wort. Luckily some bee-keeping friends staying in a nearby camp came to our aid by donating honey to the cause. On Sunday I added three pounds of this precious home-produced honey to my brew (thank you Sam and Skogur!). I gave it a stir with a sanitized spoon, and sealed the bucket back up quickly. Again the next day I saw the airlock bubbling again, much slower this time.
On Monday, six days after the brew, we drained the brew from the spout on the fermenter bucket into a sanitized keg loaned by Brogan and his camp, Tuathe de Bhriain. This was my first experience using a keg for a homebrew and it does seem easier than bottles, especially for higher-volume brews.
The resulting beverage had a slight sweetness, balanced by a pleasant tartness that was not overpowering. It was well-received; many said it tasted like cider. Half was served a week old, at a bardic on Tuesday night in my home camp of Anglesey. Because I had used firewood paid for by camp fees, I wanted to give brew back to the camp! The other half was served at Early Period A&S day in Preachain camp on Wednesday. It was satisfying to be able to share this drink brewed using methods and ingredients used in Iron Age Europe, at an event themed for Early Period reenactors. I enjoyed serving the beer and chewing the ear off anyone willing to stand there and hear about prehistoric brewing. I'd sprouted some spelt in the days before the event, so there was a bowl of sprouted spelt on the bar for guests to try, as I explained the mechanism for how sprouting makes grain sweet.
If event brewing is something you want to do, I hope this story gives you courage and/or inspiration--happy brewing!
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