There are a number of interesting historical references on the web for brewing beer. They come from books that are old enough that the copyright has lapsed, and as a result the books have come into the public domain. So we're talking about books that are 100 years old, or more. I found that some of them had interesting info, or interesting illustrations, but unless you're primarily interested in the history of brewing you're better off getting a book that was published in this century.
Some of these old books have been converted into electronic versions by Google or similar projects. If you want, you can also buy the paperback versions of some old brewing books on Amazon. For example, you can get various re-published books by by Marcus Lafayette Byrn on Amazon, such as The Complete Practical Brewer; Or, Plain, Accurate, And Thorough Instructions In The Art Of Brewing Ale, Beer, And Porter; Including The Process Of Brewing Beer, Ginger Pop, Sasparilla-Beer, Mead...
You can also find electronic versions of various works Marcus Lafayette Byrn and other authors for free. The quality varies. You can usually download them in a variety of formats. but Project Gutenberg has the most options. Most of the books originated in the US Public Library or University library systems, so you'll often find library marks in the scans.
Project Gutenberg books:
A Treatise on the Brewing of Beer by E. Hughes
The London and Country Brewer by Anonymous
The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened by Kenelm Digby. Includes recipes for mead and metheglin.
The American Practical Brewer and Tanner by Joseph Coppinger
Google books:
The Complete Practical Brewer by Marcus Lafayette Byrn
The town and country brewery book: or, Every man his own brewer By W. Brande, originally published in 1830
The brewer's analyst: a systematic handbook of analysis relating to brewing by R. Douglas Bailey, originally published in 1907, this book details how to analyze beer using archaic instruments.
The theory and practice of modern brewing: A re-written and much enlarged by Frank Faulkner originally published in 1888
Brewing by Alfred Chaston Chapman. The cover illustration is a 'vertical refrigerator' AKA wort chiller.
A Practical Treatise On Brewing, Based On Chemical And Economical Principles : With Formulæ for Public Brewers, And Instructions for Private Families by William Black, Practical Brewer
OnRead books:
The Theory And Practice of Brewing by John Adams. Due to fonts and typography a century ago, the letter "s" was printed differently when it appeared at the beginning or middle of a word, instead of at the end. The OCR engine does not take this into account, so you'll see lots of words like "fiences" rather than "sciences".
Laboratory Studies for Brewing Students, a Systematic Course of Practical Work in the Scientific Principles Underlying the Processes of Malting And Brewing by Adrian J Brown
The Brewer's Analyst: a Systematic Handbook of Analysis Relating to Brewing And Malting by R. Douglas Bailey
A Text-book of the Science of Brewing by Edward Ralph Moritz , George Harris Morris. Illustrations are missing
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
BU:GU Ratios
If you're like me you didn't do all the research needed to understand all factors of brewing before you started brewing your first beers. I understood that the sweetness of malted barley in my beer needed to be offset by the bitterness of hops (for most beers) but I was relying on the recipe or the kit to take care of that little detail. Next, I started out looking at recipes that were 'clones' of beers I liked, and then sort of drifted into looking at the ingredients and thinking "Yeah, that would be tasty!" Eventually, I stared building my own recipes, stared looking at more of the math, started caring more about yeast pitch rates, water chemistry and all the other little details that go in to making a great beer. But the BU:GU ratio wasn't on my radar until recently. I'm now trying to figure out how the BU:GU Ratio can help me. Several of the brewing software programs calculate BU:GU values, but I haven't seen one that relates the number to anything meaningful.
The BU:GU Ratio is determined by dividing the number of IBUs in a beer by the number of points of original gravity to provide a rough estimate of the balance between hop bitterness compared to the malt sweetness. The idea originated in Ray Daniel’s book 'Designing Great Beers'. According to the book it is...
To calculate, take the part of the OG after the decimal, and divide it into the IBUs. 0.5 is balanced, values under that are more malty, values above are hoppier. If you have a beer with 1.050 OG and 25 IBU, you're BU:GU balanced assuming that your IBU calculations are correct, which is a guess that Tinseth, Rager, Garetz and Daniels can't seem to agree on.
Chart of BU:GU Ratios The yellow section in the middle is balanced, gold and orange are progressively more malty, light and dark green are progressively more hoppy. It wouldn't be hard to create an IPA that is 'off the chart' but we're concentrating on the midpoint here.
The BU:GU Ratio is an attempt to quantify how balanced a beer is, but dark malts, estery yeasts, spices and sourness will throw off the perceived balance, and you can't factor all that into an equation. And what about different levels of attenuation? Maltodextrin will throw off the sweetness compared to measured gravity. Some styles will always be out of balance according to the basic BU:GU calculation. Does that make them bad? The BU:GU idea has some merit, but looking at the taste and bitterness of different beers, I'm thinking "Ray, what are you talking about, man?"
Not surprisingly, the average BU:GU ratios vary widely by style, so Daniels lists the average BU:GU ratio for some popular styles. Now things finally come together. Rather than looking at an 'absolute' measure of balance, we can look at the relative BU:GU ratio for the style.
_______________
[1] Ray Daniels, Designing Great Beers
[2] Ray Daniels, Designing Great Beers
The BU:GU Ratio is determined by dividing the number of IBUs in a beer by the number of points of original gravity to provide a rough estimate of the balance between hop bitterness compared to the malt sweetness. The idea originated in Ray Daniel’s book 'Designing Great Beers'. According to the book it is...
"The ratio of bitterness units to gravity units for a specific beer or group of beers. International bitterness units (IBU) are used for for bitterness and gravity units (GU) are used for the gravity component."[1]
To calculate, take the part of the OG after the decimal, and divide it into the IBUs. 0.5 is balanced, values under that are more malty, values above are hoppier. If you have a beer with 1.050 OG and 25 IBU, you're BU:GU balanced assuming that your IBU calculations are correct, which is a guess that Tinseth, Rager, Garetz and Daniels can't seem to agree on.
Chart of BU:GU Ratios The yellow section in the middle is balanced, gold and orange are progressively more malty, light and dark green are progressively more hoppy. It wouldn't be hard to create an IPA that is 'off the chart' but we're concentrating on the midpoint here.
The BU:GU Ratio is an attempt to quantify how balanced a beer is, but dark malts, estery yeasts, spices and sourness will throw off the perceived balance, and you can't factor all that into an equation. And what about different levels of attenuation? Maltodextrin will throw off the sweetness compared to measured gravity. Some styles will always be out of balance according to the basic BU:GU calculation. Does that make them bad? The BU:GU idea has some merit, but looking at the taste and bitterness of different beers, I'm thinking "Ray, what are you talking about, man?"
Not surprisingly, the average BU:GU ratios vary widely by style, so Daniels lists the average BU:GU ratio for some popular styles. Now things finally come together. Rather than looking at an 'absolute' measure of balance, we can look at the relative BU:GU ratio for the style.
"For most beers and beer styles, the resulting ratio has a value between 0.3 and 1.0."[2]So now (drumroll) I can dial in the relative sweetness to style, whether I'm on the high side or the low side of the gravity for that style. Or I can do the same thing for a specific recipe. I could scale it up to an 'imperial' version and keep the relative BU:GU balance in line. For a given style, all I need now is a chart of those reference numbers. Designing Great Beers gives me a few numbers from NHC Second Round entries for starters, you're on your own for the rest of them.
Style BU:GU Average Dusseldorf Alt 0.70 Kolsh 0.53 Barley Wine 0.53-1.83 Ordinary Bitter 1.28 Special Bitter 0.58-1.07 ESB 0.50-2.05 Pale Ale 0.58-1.12 English IPA 0.61-1.64 Bock 0.27-0.45 Maibock 0.29-0.53 Doppelbock 0.21-0.36 Eisbock 0.22-0.36 Mild 0.50-0.72 English Brown 0.50-0.70 American Brown 0.95 Old Ale 0.45-0.70 Bohemian Pilsner 0.75-0.85 German Pilsner 0.68-0.80 Dortmunder/Export 0.40-0.60 Munich Helles 0.38-0.48 Brown Porter 0.55-0.72 Robust Porter 0.61-0.93 Scottish 60/Light 0.30-0.55 Scottish 70/Heavy 0.30-0.50 Scottish 80/Export 0.30-0.50 Scottish 90/Strong 0.35-0.40 Classic Stout 0.80-1.20 Foreign Stout 0.90 Sweet Stout 0.30-0.50 Imperial Stout 0.90 Vienna 0.45-0.50 Marzen/Oktoberfest 0.42-0.48 Berliner Weisse 0.14-0.18 Weizen 0.21-0.32 Dunkel Weizen 0.21-0.29 Wiezen Bock 0.20-0.23 American Wheat 0.16-0.34
_______________
[1] Ray Daniels, Designing Great Beers
[2] Ray Daniels, Designing Great Beers
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