19th Century Bran Beer

[The_Professor]

Good fresh table beer may be made with sound wheat bran, at the rate of 2d. per gallon, beer measure, estimating the price of bran at 4s. per cwt, and the saccharine density of the wort еxtracted, at 16 lbs. per barrel; but the use of the instrument called saccharometer, in domestic practice, is not necessary, the process in brewing with wheat bran being sufficiently known to every good housewife, especially to those of labourers in husbandry, as well its that for this purpose nothing of apparatus is needful, but such as ought to be in common use with every cottager in the country. A few pounds per barrel of treacle, or the coarsest Muscovado sugar, would be a cheap improvement as to strength, which indeed might be increased to any degree required.
1823 - Five Thousand Receipts...

This is better. I can tell you the strength. Fifteen ponds per barrel is 1042º. I suspect that the finished beer may have been a little thin.
Barclay Perkins Blog

So I am supposed to be able to make table beer at two pence per gallon of beer from wheat bran that costs four shillings per hundredweight.

There are both short and long hundredweight measures. 100 lbs for the short and 112 lbs for the long.
Twelve pence make a shilling.
So between 4.2 and 4.6 lbs of wheat bran for each gallon of beer.
I planed to make about 1.5 gallons so I needed 6-7 lbs of wheat bran.
I found a store that sold the wheat bran in a bulk bin and attempted to get about 7 lbs between 3 different bags.
I wound up with 6.7 lbs of wheat bran for $5.27.

Just using my stove top so I boiled 3 separate batches of a bit more than 2 lbs each. The first batch I boiled for about 2.5 hours like I had done with the George Washington beer (which used just 1 lb). It was a bit thick when I went to strain it so for the other two boils I added some more water during the boil. I combined the strained "wort" from the three batches and boiled to reduce it down to about 1.5 gallons. I added about 0.2 oz of whole Fuggle hops at the beginning of the boil, then when the volume seemed about right I added another 0.2 oz of whole Fuggle hops for 30 min. I wound up closer to 2 gallons but I was able to discard most of the cold break and have about 1.5 gallons left. The "wort" resembles beer wort.

I wound up with a Brix of 7.0 which is supposed to be about 1.029. I pitched about 1/2 a package of S-04.

I'm a bit skeptical about really having good fermentable sugar and will be somewhat surprised if there is a decent FG and ABV.
Although I have 1/2 a can golden syrup left from the GW beer I really wanted to see if bran by itself could really make beer.

It could be my process is off but I was unable to locate a housewife that was sufficiently familiar with brewing with wheat bran.

[Whamolagan]

So would you try to ferment that at warmer temps? curious how that will taste

[The_Professor]

So would you try to ferment that at warmer temps? curious how that will taste

I'm just gonna do mid 60s.
The hopping should be decent but otherwise no telling how it will taste...

[mashani]

My house brett would ferment it, because it like starch. Bella Saison or 3711 would ferment it for the same reason (they are a sacc var diastaticus mutation of some sort). How much a more "pure" sacc will ferment it, I dunno.

If it doesn't work out, then contamination is the key. Or a pack of Bella Saison. Just sayin.

[The_Professor]

I grabbed a brix on this since I was really curious what was going on.

The gravity appears to be dropping. Brix from 7.0-4.75. Per a calculator that's 1.92 ABV so far. There was some krausen over the top. Not a huge amount.

We'll see, maybe this does make a small beer.

[The_Professor]

Hmmm, so I bottled some of this today.

It would seem to be a bit of success and a bit of failure.

The gravity showed the same as the other day so it is supposedly just under 2.0ABV. That would count as a small beer from wheat bran. The flavor, however, is like licking the bottom of a pot of scorched wheat bran. So there would need to be a modification to get a better flavor.

When I opened the top to bottle it I was prepared to scoop a bit of krausen off the top. There appeared to be a layer of oatmeal over the top instead. As I scooped some of that out it became clear the congealed globs (protein?) were all over in the bran beer. I grabbed some cheese cloth to strain out the bran beer into a few bottles. I was afraid it was going to have a thick body as that was the way it seemed when it was first put into the fermenter and also the way it seemed when I took the gravity a couple days ago. Once strained out of the globs the bran beer has a pretty normal consistency. If it wasn't mucked up with that burnt bran flavor it might not be too bad.

Anyway, I have a few bottles that I'll let sit for a couple weeks then do a pour pic. I'm not holding my breath on the burnt flavor disappearing.

[John Sand]

"The flavor, however, is like licking the bottom of a pot of scorched wheat bran. So there would need to be a modification to get a better flavor."
Well, that made me laugh. You may be right that the burnt flavor will not dissipate. I burned an extract pale over the summer, it hasn't improved. I hope you have better luck.

[The_Professor]

"The flavor, however, is like licking the bottom of a pot of scorched wheat bran. So there would need to be a modification to get a better flavor."
Well, that made me laugh. You may be right that the burnt flavor will not dissipate. I burned an extract pale over the summer, it hasn't improved. I hope you have better luck.

Thanks, John. I may take another run at this with a vague notion what I would be in for. I think a drinkable version of this would be interesting.
In the meantime, I'll see what happens with this batch in a few weeks.