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The Ghost in the Machine
Within the dusty depths of the Brussels’ City Archives, Peter Bouckaert squints in the dim light at a yellowed parcel of parchment. The hooks and crowns of ornamental calligraphy clamor for his attention. He holds the Brewer’s Guild document up to a dust-filled ray of sunlight and discovers a date: 1554. Heart racing, he flips through the document, piecing together fragments of the old Flemish, until he finds it: the oldest recipe for black ale sold on the streets of Brussels in the Middle Ages. He is exultant. Reading further, Peter discovers a reference to an even older document dating from September 27, 1447. However, no amount of sleuthing can uncover this text, mysteriously titled “The Book of the Rose”.
Peter returns to New Belgium with the recipe for black beer simmering in his mind. What he doesn’t know, and what we soon discover, is that he has returned with a ghost.
Something always goes awry when we brew 1554.
There is nothing ungainly about the malt bill: pale, caramel, Munich, chocolate, and black patent malts. These are all moved pneumatically from our malt building into the hopper on top of the mill in one of our two brewhouses. Milling, the process by which the kernels of malted barley are popped open, exposing their sweet starchy centers, is always problematic when we brew 1554.
Lautering is long and hard. Tiny, glutinous particles gum up the screens in the bottom of the lauter tun when we brew 1554, slowing and sometimes stopping the flow of wort. Large, revolving rakes plow through the bed of mash, creating channels through which the wort can journey out of the vessel. This is what saves us from perdition when we lauter 1554.
After lautering, the wort is transferred to the Merlin. Maybe it’s too straightforward- or maybe the ghost is intimidated. We don’t have problems with the boil. The Merlin is a very special, highly efficient and energy conserving kettle. Two round vessels are stacked on top of each other; the top vessel contains a cone shaped like a giant sorcerer's hat with an internal steam-jacket, and the bottom vessel is round. The wort spins around in the bottom vessel and then is pumped up and over the top of the witch’s hat. The witch is rather hotheaded, so the wort boils immediately, releasing unwanted aromas, thoroughly dissolving hop oils, and fusing protein particles. These particles are then forced into the middle of the whirlpool, where they fall out of solution, and are removed from the wort. This whole process takes about half the time as a traditional kettle.
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