"Having therefor ground eight bushels of good malt upon our quern, where the toll is saved, she adds unto it half a bushel of wheat meal and so much of oats small ground, and so tempers or mixes them with the malt, that you cannot easily discern the one from the other, otherwise these later would cluster, fall into lumps, and thereby become unprofitable. The first liquor which is full eighty gallons according to the proportion of our furnace, she makes boiling hot, and then pours it softly into the malt, where it rests (but without stirring) until her second liquor be almost ready to boil. This done, she lets her mash run till the malt is left without liquor, or at least the greater part of the moisture, which she perceives by the state and soft issue thereof, and by this time her second liquor in the furnace is ready to seethe, which is put also to the malt as the first wort also again into the furnace, whereunto she adds two pounds of the best English hops, and so lets them seethe together two hours in the summer, or 1 1/2 hours in winter, which gives it an excellent color and continuance without impeachment or any excess tartness. But before she puts her first wort into the furnace, or mingles it with the hops, she takes out an eight- or nine-gallon vessel full, which she seals up tight, and allows no air to get to it until it becomes yellow, and this she reserves by itself for further use, as shall appear later, calling it Brackwort or Charwort, and as she says it adds also to the color of the drink, whereby it yields only amber or fine gold in hue to the eye. By this time also her second wort is let run, and the first being taken out of the furnace and placed to cool, she returns the middle wort into the furnace, where it is stricken over, or from whence it is taken again.
"When she has mashed also the last liquor (and set the second to cool by the first) she lets it run and then seethes it again with a pound and a half of new hops or perhaps two pounds depending on the quality of the hops, and when it has steeped in summer two hours, and in winter an hour and a half, she strikes it also and reserves it to mix with the rest when it is time to do so. Finally, when she sets her drink together, she adds to her brackwort or charwort half an ounce of arras and half a quarter of an ounce of finely powdered bay laurel berries, and then puts these into her wort with a handful of wheat flour, she proceeds in such usual order as common brewing requires. Some instead of arras and bay add so much long pepper only, but in her opinion and my liking it is not as good as the first, and hereof we make three hogsheads of god beer, such (I mean) as is meet for the poor men as I am to live withall whose small maintenance (for what great thing is forty pounds a year all told able to perform?) may endure no deeper cut, the charges of which grow in this manner.
"I value my malt at ten shillings, my wood at four shillings which I buy, my hops at twenty pence, the spice at two pence, servants wages two shillings sixpence, both meat and drink, and the wearing of my vessel at twenty pence, so that for my twenty shillings I have ten score gallons of beer or more, notwithstanding the loss in seething. The continuance of the drink is always determined by the quantity of the hops, so that being well hopped it lasts longer. For it feeds on the hops and holds out so long as the force of the same endures, which being extinguished the drink must be spent or else it dies and becomes of no value."
---Harrison, cited in Renfrow; text cleaned up and "modernized" for readability.
160 gallons water, boiling
1/2 bushel wheat meal
1/2 bushel oats, ground
3-1/2 to 4 lbs English hops
Boil 80 gallons of water, then pour onto the grains. Begin boiling another 80 gallons of water. When this is almost to a boil, drain wort from grains. Reserve 8 gallons of first wort; add two pounds of English hops to the remainder, then boil 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Pour second batch of watr onto grains. Allow to steep, then drain second wort. Add 1-1/2 to 2 lbs hops to the second wort and boil 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Strain hops from both worts then combine.
1 lb flaked wheat
1/2 lb flaked oats
1-3/4 oz Fuggles or E.K. Goldings hops
I used a British pale malt; 5 lb I've roasted to a nice amber (350F for 15 minutes), and another 1 lb of which I've roasted to brown (350F for 20 minutes), to account for the vagaries of the medieval malting process (per Grossman). I mixed the grains in my mash tun (a Gott cooler), then brought 3-1/2 gallons of water to a boil. Just as it came to a boil, I struck the grains with this water, and started another 3-1/2 gallons heating. As this second water reached a boil, I drained the liquid from the grains. When all the liquid has been removed (as much as will flow out), I struck the grains with the second batch of water. To the first wort, I added 1 oz English hops, then brought to a boil for 90 minutes. I repeated the draining and boiling process with the second batch of water/wort, using 3/4 oz hops. When both worts cooled, I racked them to the primary fermenter and pitched a yeast starter (a blend of various English/British ale yeasts).
I originally redacted this recipe in 2003, and revisited it in 2005; re-reading it, a twofold flash of insight hit me: Harrison was writing down his recipe as his wife dictated it to him, complete with verbal "backtracking," and they're batch sparging!! The first realization helped fully clear up the somewhat jumbled directions in the original, and the second enabled me to fully and clearly visualize the process.
A note on the measurements, as used in my recipe:
Per Russ Rowlett, the director of the Center for Mathematics and Science Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:
A "hogshad" was a volume of liquid of various amounts, depending on the liquid in question:
Ale: 48 gallons
Beer: 54 gallons
Cider: 60 gallons
Wine: 63 gallons
The American bushel is based on the old English "Winchester" bushel, which dates from ca. 1300, and is equivalent to 8 gallons. By comparison, the bushel used in England today is the Imperial Bushel, and was set in 1824. The USDA and FDA regulate the "standard" amounts of the bushel, and list the following "bushels":
Malt: 38 lbs
Wheat: 60 lbs
Oats: 32 lbs
The pound as it is known today (avoirdupois) wa also set around 1300 by English merchants (adopting the avoirdupois pound of 16 oz used by European merchants), while the "other" pound (troy) "quickly became highly specialized, used only for precious metals and pharmaceuticals."
Harrison, W., The Description of England, 1577 (quoted in Renfrow, below)
Renfrow, Cindy, A Sip Through Time: A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes, 1994
Rowlett, Russ, "A Dictionary of Units of Measurement", http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/index.html, 2003