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Recipe: The Farmer’s Yule Ale
Featuring hot stones in the mash, juniper, bog myrtle, and some smoke, this strong farmhouse ale may resemble what the commoners of eastern Norway brewed to celebrate Yule during the Viking Age.
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Let’s be clear: This is (probably) not a historically accurate recipe, since evidence from the time is scanty. Let’s call it speculation based on what we know of the time and of Scandinavian farmhouse brewing traditions.
King Harald Fairhair’s beer probably was similar to a kornøl, and you can read more about that here (and in my book, Historical Brewing Techniques). So, instead, let’s consider what his subjects might have brewed in the 9th and 10th centuries, during the Viking Age.
The most common malt would have been homemade, from barley dried in a sauna and thus lightly brown and lightly smoked—usually with alder, birch, or juniper wood. Brewing kettles don’t appear to have been commonly available before roughly 1600, so commoners, very likely, would have brewed stone beer. (Huge piles of heat-shattered stone can be found under the soil of pretty much every Norwegian farm, dating anywhere from the sixth century to the early 17th.)
There’s no direct evidence for how the stones were used, but it appears likely that in western Norway, brewers used the stones to heat the brewing liquor then poured it into their mash. In the east, however, they apparently mixed their malt and cold water in wooden vessels, then heated that cold mash with hot stones.
When it comes to herbs, our evidence is limited. There are Middle Age finds of Myrica gale in a brewing context, and from Denmark there are finds going back to the Bronze Age. There’s also evidence for Myrica gale from place names and ethnography, and 900 CE seems early for Norwegian commoners to be using hops. Other possibilities include St. John’s wort, yarrow, and—perhaps the most likely—caraway. Juniper seems almost a given.
With all that in mind, let’s place ourselves in lower Telemark in eastern Norway, during the Viking Age, and imagine something like the following ingredients and process.
ALL-GRAIN
Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.087 (20.9°P)
FG: 1.015 (3.8°P)
IBUs: N/A
ABV: 9.6% ABV
Let’s be clear: This is (probably) not a historically accurate recipe, since evidence from the time is scanty. Let’s call it speculation based on what we know of the time and of Scandinavian farmhouse brewing traditions.
King Harald Fairhair’s beer probably was similar to a kornøl, and you can read more about that here (and in my book, Historical Brewing Techniques). So, instead, let’s consider what his subjects might have brewed in the 9th and 10th centuries, during the Viking Age.
The most common malt would have been homemade, from barley dried in a sauna and thus lightly brown and lightly smoked—usually with alder, birch, or juniper wood. Brewing kettles don’t appear to have been commonly available before roughly 1600, so commoners, very likely, would have brewed stone beer. (Huge piles of heat-shattered stone can be found under the soil of pretty much every Norwegian farm, dating anywhere from the sixth century to the early 17th.)
There’s no direct evidence for how the stones were used, but it appears likely that in western Norway, brewers used the stones to heat the brewing liquor then poured it into their mash. In the east, however, they apparently mixed their malt and cold water in wooden vessels, then heated that cold mash with hot stones.
When it comes to herbs, our evidence is limited. There are Middle Age finds of Myrica gale in a brewing context, and from Denmark there are finds going back to the Bronze Age. There’s also evidence for Myrica gale from place names and ethnography, and 900 CE seems early for Norwegian commoners to be using hops. Other possibilities include St. John’s wort, yarrow, and—perhaps the most likely—caraway. Juniper seems almost a given.
With all that in mind, let’s place ourselves in lower Telemark in eastern Norway, during the Viking Age, and imagine something like the following ingredients and process.
ALL-GRAIN
Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.087 (20.9°P)
FG: 1.015 (3.8°P)
IBUs: N/A
ABV: 9.6% ABV
[PAYWALL]
MALT/GRAIN BILL
13.1 lb (5.9 kg) pale ale
2.5 lb (1.1 kg) Munich
14 oz (397 g) alder-smoked malt
ADDITIONS SCHEDULE
2.3 oz (65 g) Myrica gale (bog myrtle)
3–4 fresh juniper branches
YEAST
Your favorite kveik
DIRECTIONS
Mill the grains and mix with about 8 gallons (30 liters) of unheated water in a wooden tub, or in a kettle sturdy enough to withstand fiery-hot stones. Heat the hot stones in a fire, then carefully, using large tongs, add them to the tub one by one. (Be sure to choose hard, dense stones and wear eye protection; for more tips, see For Those About to Rock.) After adding each stone, stir to avoid burning the mash, and wait a little while before adding another one. Ideally, you want to go slowly through a typical multistep mash, spending an hour within 140–158°F (60–70°C). Finally, add enough stones to bring the mash to a boil.
Prepare a lauter tun by placing a few juniper branches in the bottom, with the Myrica gale on top of those. Transfer the mash to the lauter tun and let it rest a while, then run off into a heat-resistant fermentor or intermediary vessel, topping off with water as necessary. Cool the wort to about 99°F (37°C), then pitch the kveik. Ferment for about 24 hours, then—if possible—rack to a barrel. After a day or two, bung (or close) the barrel. Open and serve on the winter solstice or Christmas Eve.
BREWER’S NOTES
The malt bill is an attempt to simulate the taste of sauna-dried malts. This is a big beer, but for Yule you need proper stuff—and in later times a beer was considered proper stuff if the volume of malt was roughly the same as the volume of wort extracted. We estimate 3.3 lb of grain per gallon (395 g per liter). Feel free to add other herbs or spices, such as caraway, if you think them appropriate.
