Tudor brewing at Kentwell Hall
Tudor brewing at Kentwell Hall
My name is Luke Forrester and I started brewing in the 1530s. I am a Tudor brewer at Kentwell Hall, near Sudbury in Suffolk and, together with the other brewer Dirk Wiseman, for the last 15 years we have been producing ales for those who live or work there.
Kentwell Hall is privately owned by Patrick and Judith Phillips, who purchased it as a bit of a ruin in 1971. Since then, repairs and restorations have been funded by opening the house to the public and staging various events. Some of their major events are Tudor re-enactments, of which there are five each year, ranging from four to ten days long. Over 250 folk in Tudor dress can be present at the longer events which are held each June and August. These are everyday folk, and include cooks, bakers, dairy, weavers, potters, basket makers, foundry workers, smiths, felters, dyers, alchemists, gardeners, merchants, musicians, players, needlewomen, herbalists, gentry, vagabonds, archers, and of course brewers.
During the re-enactments the manor functions as a working community – the cooks really prepare our midday meal of pottage, the dairy produces the butter and cheese, the bakery produces common loaves, and we produce ale to be drunk.
For all the re-enactors, authenticity is very important. The clothes we wear have to be hand stitched, not machine stitched, and their colours and styles are dictated by our social position and the year that we are portraying. Everything we use must be correct for the period, including our implements for eating and drinking. We even try to speak in the style of the time! We therefore try to brew as authentically as possible under the constraints we have.
The brewery is located in the moat house, which is thought to be the oldest building on the manor, having been built around the year 1500. It has an authentic gravity system with a large copper which is heated from a wood fire underneath. There are also a wooden mash tun, cooling tray, various fermentation tuns, buckets, etc. It is quite a challenge to produce a good ale in an authentic way which can be brewed and drunk within the time-frame of an event.
However, for the last three years we have been using kveik yeast which has been a game changer! We can pitch it at a much higher temperature and being tolerant of temperature changes is very important when fermenting in an open tun in a big building with open windows which gets cold at night! But more importantly, it rips through the wort and fermentation is very fast, so is soon drinkable. Whilst the yeast arguably isn’t authentic, it has allowed us to produce a perfectly drinkable ale by the fourth or fifth day of an event. With two fermentation tuns we can now produce and drink three separate brews in a ten day event. This means that visitors can see and smell the ale fermenting and, although we’re not supposed to, I allow visitors who genuinely want to try it to have a taste. It’s always very rewarding when they are pleasantly surprised how good it is.
Typically we produce a small ale or beer. This would have been an everyday drink for workers and gentry alike, but for workers it was paid as part of the wage. The average ration per worker per day was in the region of six to eight pints! However, they might have shared this with the rest of their family. Once babies were weaned they would also have drunk it. Also, the goodness of the grain in the ale provided vital nutrition, especially in the lean months when food was scarce. There has been a lot of debate about how strong it would have been, but general consensus puts it a bit under 3%ABV and that is what we normally brew, although I have occasionally brewed closer to around 5%.
Hops were around in Tudor times, and the Flemish, who were immigrating to England and setting up their own breweries, brought hops with them. It was said that hops made the Dutch fat and lazy, and there was perhaps a concern that workers would fall asleep after a few pints of beer, whereas ale would invigorate them. Hops eventually came into widespread use in Tudor times mainly as they are a preservative. Beer would last much longer than ale if stored correctly, but we have no reason to make our ale last longer as it was typically drunk very fresh, even before fermentation was finished, so we normally brew unhoped ale. In an open fermenter it will only keep for a few days after fermentation and it would be a waste of resources to put it in casks and store it. We therefore skim the yeast off the surface on day 3 or 4 and give it to the bakers to use in their breadmaking and then draw the ale straight from the fermenters with jugs to be distributed and drunk. In any big house with a brewery you will often find it next to a bakery for this reason.
The ale will then keep good for 2 or 3 days before starting to turn, but it is usually all drunk by then! Sometimes we flavour it with herbs or flowers, but this was more common I think in the low countries where they used flavouring herbs called gruit. In the past we have used yarrow, rosemary, lemon balm, elderflower, alecost, blackberries, ale hoof (a ground ivy) and lavender amongst others.
Hygiene is always a matter of some concern and presents a challenge. We use boiling water and scrubbing brushes to clean our tuns but no strong chemicals as the brewery drains run straight into the moat and could harm the fish in there! We cover the fermentation tuns with loose fitting wooden lids to keep debris out, but flies can be a worry at times. To help with that we put feverfew flowers on the tuns as the smell is supposed to drive flies away. We also hang sprigs of elder from the rafters as the smell is meant to attract the flies, therefore keeping them away from the tuns.
Temperature control is also tricky. When heating the water for the mash the conventional way to test it is for the brewer to dip his finger in the water and see if he can do three quick revolutions. The strike temperature wants to be around 75 celcius and I’ve tried the finger test when I’ve secretly used a thermometer to check it is correct as there is no way I could bear to make three revolutions with my finger! But now I know that if I can just bear to flick my finger through the water then its hot enough!
We normally aim to mash for at least an hour. Another challenge we face is that visitors reasonably want to see everything, so we are constantly lifting the lid off during the mash, which causes it to cooler quicker. So every so often we drain some of the wort, return it to the copper to heat back up, and run it back into the tun.
After the mash, all the wort is run into the cooling tray which we use as an underback and sparge with more water from the copper. The bottom of the copper is domed and we have to be careful not to drain so much water that the crown of the dome is exposed, as the fire could burn through the copper, so we use a measuring stick to monitor the depth at all times.
The wort is then run from the cooling tray into buckets and returned to the copper for a good rolling boil for an hour or two. During this stage we add hops or herbs to the copper if desired, and all the spent grain in the mash tun is removed. At the end of the boil the wort is then run through the now empty mash tun and into the cooling tray, again monitoring the depth in the copper. Due to the large surface area it cools quite quickly and is then bucketed into one of the fermentations tuns, the yeast is added and the wooden lid fitted. By the following morning we expect a good head of yeast to signify that fermentation is well under way.
In reality we cannot brew enough to give to all the participants and once word is out that we have a good brew ready to drink we have them turning up with big jugs to take a good quantity back to their stations. We are already in the planning stage for when we are next there in Easter 2025. We plan to add a third fermentation tun for even more brewing, and also upgrade some of the existing equipment with new lids. We also intend to purchase some small barrels so that we can store and condition some of our beers between events so that we have something ready to drink from the start of an event.
Hopefully we'll see some of you there!
Paul Canham aka Luke Forrester