Brewing dawn of
civilisation
beer
|
|
Introduction |
Do a Google on "Ode to Ninkasi" or "Hymn to Ninkasi" and you
will find
lots of info, including the test of the actual hymn/poem 'brew manual.
I won't repeat the info here, but what I have decided from the reading
is: |
1. Use 250g unsulphured sultanas mashed in a food processor
(="the wine") as yeast source |
2. Add honey, great source of fermentables (="the sweet
thing") |
3. Do a boil of the bread wort, adding some low alpha hops.
I know hops
were not used then, but they DID bitter the beer with skirret (ain't
seen no skirret recently) so hops will do, hopefully no hop flavor will
be evident. |
4. Some Joe White Pilsener malt, crushed, will be added to
the bappir
loaves, the ancients did the same thing (OK, not with JW malt :) ) |
First Steep |
This morning I grabbed a few kilos of the unmalted barley,
poured it
from one bucket to another for a while, trying to get rid of straw etc
(the barley of the Schooner variety is pretty full of stem material,
straw, incl some corns still attached to a length of straw) |
 |
I then rubbed handfuls from one bucket into the next, trying
to break
the last corns from the stem, then ran rainwater into the bucket and
swirled the grains around, carefully swirled the straw/unviable corns
(hardly any) out the bucket & refilled with water, swirled etc
until the water was pretty much free of straw, then put the lid on the
bucket and placed it in my cellarette. |
I will now let it steep for a while, then rub the grains into
another
bucket and add more clean steeping water, then repeat that until the
grains are sprouted and rubbed to shreds. |
 |
The grains swell up enormously during the steeping! |
|
The grains shown above started to smell so I chucked them on
the compost heap! In Aug 2006 I tried again. This time I used bottled
springwater as a pure water and did not cover the grains with the water |
After only 3.5 days steeping, this is the result |
 |
On the grains on the left side can be seen not just rootlets but the embryonic stem, the acrospire. The acrospire is about 1/4 the length of the grain, so another couple of days will have it at 3/4 when I will form the grain into the loaves and bake for a long time in a low oven. A scoop of JW malt, crushed will be added to the above as mentioned earlier in this blog. |