Historical Brewing Techniques

Lars Marius Garshol is a Norwegian software engineer that travels the world to learn more about beer. Garshol spent five years researching various aspects of brewing at remote farmhouses throughout Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. He is the author of LarsBlog, a blog devoted to sharing his discoveries and travels as he researches the lost art of brewing in northern Europe, Historical Brewing Techniques: The Lost Art of Farmhouse Brewing, and a book on Lithuanian beer. He lives with his wife and children in Rælingen, Norway.

Until six or seven years ago, the borders of European brewing were tidy, well-understood, and well-documented—or so we English-speakers thought. That was when Lars Marius Garshol started publishing incredible stories about farmhouse brewing traditions in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Suddenly the brewing world seemed a lot bigger than anyone imagined. It's not an exaggeration to say that Historical Brewing Techniques is the most important book on brewing in at least twenty years.

• Table of Contents1 Understanding farmhouse ale1.1 The world of yesterday 1.2 Kaupanger: First meeting with the tradition 2 History 353 Malt 473.1 Stjørdal: malt-making hot spot 3.2 The types of grain 3.3 Barley varieties 3.4 Maskin, portrait of a barley variety 3.5 How the grain was grown 3.6 Steeping and sprouting 3.7 Drying methods 3.7.1 Very pale, unsmoked malts 3.7.2 Lightly smoked, hot-dried malts 3.7.3 Heavily smoked malts 3.7.4 Caramel malts 3.7.5 Strong, uneven heat 3.7.6 Undried malts 4 Yeast 954.1 Voss: Discovering kveik 4.2 First lab analysis 4.3 Yeast, wild and domesticated 4.4 The yeast revolution 4.5 Yeast on the farms 4.6 Origins of the yeast 4.7 Yeast species 4.8 The family tree of yeast 4.9 Kveik, what we know 4.10 The non-kveik farmhouse yeasts 4.11 Bread yeast 4.12 Dying out 4.13 Kveik renaissance 4.14 The word “kveik” 5 Brewing process 1555.1 Hornindal, Norway 5.2 Stone beer 5.3 Raw ale5.4 Boiled ale 5.5 The mash boiled 5.6 Complex mashes 5.7 Keptinis 5.8 The great stove 5.9 Vsekhsvyatskoye, Russia 5.10 Understanding oven-based beers 5.11 The mash fermented 5.12 The evolution of brewing processes 6 Beer in the life on the farm 2176.1 Harvest ale 6.2 Ritual beer 6.3 Superstition 6.4 Brewers or brewsters? 6.5 Equipment 6.6 Preparations 6.7 Grinding 6.8 Water 6.9 Carbonation 6.10 Oppskåke 6.11 Cellaring 6.12 Drinking vessels 6.13 Serving beer 6.14 Beer flaws 7 Spices and adjuncts 2777.1 Hops 7.2 Juniper 7.3 Sweet gale 7.4 Grand wormwood 7.5 Caraway 7.6 St John's Wort 7.7 Bitter orange peel 7.8 Yarrow 7.9 Tansy 7.10 Bay laurel7.11 Wild rosemary 7.12 Heather 7.13 Others 7.14 Adjuncts 7.14.1 Potatoes 7.14.2 Bran 7.14.3 Carrots 7.14.4 Peas 7.14.5 Honey 7.14.6 Other adjuncts 7.15 Filter materials 7.15.1 Straw 7.15.2 Alder sticks 7.15.3 Other 8 The drink problem8.1 Small beer 8.2 Rostdrikke 8.3 Kvass 8.4 Birch sap beer 8.5 Juniper berry beer 8.6 Mead 8.7 Sugar beer 9 Brewing like a farmer9.1 Carbonation 9.2 Working with kveik 9.3 Working with farmhouse yeast 9.4 Brewing with juniper 9.5 Making your own malts 10 Styles and how to brew them10.1 What is farmhouse ale?10.2 Recipes 10.3 Raw ales 10.3.1 Brewing raw ales 10.3.2 Kornøl 10.3.3 Sahti 10.3.4 Island koduõlu 10.3.5 Kaimiškas 10.3.6 Danish landøl 10.4 Dark, smoky ales 10.4.1 Stjørdalsøl 10.4.2 Gotlandsdricke 10.4.3 Landøl from south Funen 10.5 Brown boiled beers 10.5.1 Heimabrygg 10.5.2 Telemark, Norway 10.5.3 Hallingdal 10.5.4 Swedish farmhouse ale: Öxabäck 10.6 Oven beers 10.6.1 Seto koduõlu 10.6.2 Oven-mashed Russian farmhouse ale 10.6.3 Chuvashian farmhouse ale 10.6.4 Sur 10.6.5 Keptinis 10.7 Fermented mash 10.7.1 Luumäki-style 10.7.2 Vanylven-style 10.8 Stone beer 10.9 Other regions 10.9.1 Corn ale 10.9.2 English farmhouse ale 10.9.3 Welsh farmhouse ale 10.9.4 Westphalian farmhouse ale 10.9.5 Aludi 10.9.6 Oat beer 11 Today and tomorrow11.1 Baltic time capsule11.2 The Baltics today 11.3 Status in the west 11.4 Farmhouse ale in the 21st century 11.5 Into the future 12 Acknowledgements13 Bibliography13.1 Archive sources13.2 The database 13.3 Published sources 13.4 Unpublished sources13.5 Interview sources