<story><title>Recreating Medieval English Ales (1998)</title><url>https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pwp/tofi/medieval_english_ale.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Bradlinc</author><text>I think this is a worthy try but I am skeptical if it tastes anything like medieval beer. I imagine the malt is significantly different. Are we still using the same barley varieties as we did hundreds of years ago? Were they able to malt as efficiently? I also think the yeast would have been very different. Which he touches on. Even if you had the exact yeast you would need to know pitching rates. That said, what he created most likely tastes a lot better than what they had in the 1300s.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TrueSlacker0</author><text>Using commercially malted barley was the first huge red flag in the article. I would expect Malting the barley would be hugely different from place to place with such limited options. I didn&amp;#x27;t see the article mention it at all.&lt;p&gt;Pitching rates don&amp;#x27;t effect the final flavor all that much. Pitching too little is a problem as it will take longer to ferment, giving wild yeast more time to sour&amp;#x2F;ruin the beer. But pitching too much yeast would not really result in much change in flavor in this case.</text></comment>
<story><title>Recreating Medieval English Ales (1998)</title><url>https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pwp/tofi/medieval_english_ale.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Bradlinc</author><text>I think this is a worthy try but I am skeptical if it tastes anything like medieval beer. I imagine the malt is significantly different. Are we still using the same barley varieties as we did hundreds of years ago? Were they able to malt as efficiently? I also think the yeast would have been very different. Which he touches on. Even if you had the exact yeast you would need to know pitching rates. That said, what he created most likely tastes a lot better than what they had in the 1300s.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jaredhallen</author><text>The malt definitely had less diastatic power, which is its ability to convert the starches to sugars during mash. They may have had some tricks of the trade, or they may have just ended up with less conversion. If it was the latter, you could manipulate your mash to emulate, but without knowing the goal you&amp;#x27;d just be guessing. And the yeast, you&amp;#x27;re absolutely correct. And that&amp;#x27;s one of the biggest contributing factors in the finished product, especially with no hops involved.</text></comment>