A: Here we go, welcome back to Le Gourmet TV, so today, we’re going to do something a little bit different, we’ re going to go back in time with Ed, and we’re at Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto, and they’ve set up a working brewery 00:00:11 1860’s?

B: 00:00:12

A: So I’d, what if you tell us a little about a, about this process of brewing beer in the 1860’s.

B: Okay, so it’s a, it’s a very simple two vessel brewing system which consists of a mash tun which is right here and a copper kettle. The mash tun also is made of coppeer and you can see the wood slats on the outside to help insulate the mash tun so that you keep the mash out of consistent temperature and right now we are mashing.

A: I can smell it, it’s fantatic.

B: Yah.

A: So every, every brewery that I’ve ever been in is shining stainless steel.

B: Yes, that’s true.

A: So this is right back to wood and copper on an extremely small scale.

B: Yes.

A: 1860’s brewering technology kind of seems to me like home growing technology today.

B: Absolutely, like I said before, they’re brewing techniques have changed very little over the years, it’s just gotten more automated.

A: Okay.

B: I mean, nowadays, in larger, absolutely, I mean back then also as the brewery got larger, we would have more vessels added, we would have something called the hot liquor tank which is just basically a vessel that would keep hot water available longer and you’d also have a lauter tun, and what you would do, you would a, when you’re finished mashing, you’d damp it in the lauter tun and would help separate the greens from wort. And I wouldn’t really help you extend the brewing day, we would just allow you to brew multiple batches in a day.

A: In a day?

B: Yes.

A: So how many batches are you brewering here in a day or in a week, or.

B: We do one batch per day, we’re brewing three times a week right now.

A: Three times a week?

B: Yes.

A: So you go from the wood mash tun into your copper.

B: Kettle.

A: Kettle.

B: And that’s where we boil the wort which is the unfermented beer.

A: 00:01:53.

B: And that’s when we add our hops, and the reason why we add the hops during the boil is because we’re trying to extract the oil from the hops, and you know oil and water don’t really mix so what we do is we bring it to a vigorous boil, 00:02:10.

A: Okay.

B: And then after an hour boil it goes into this vessel here which is a cooling 00:02:16 and this piece here is called a hop 00:02:21.

A: Okay

B: And this separates the hops out of the wort.

A: So this just catches.

B: This would separate the hop from

A: From the wort.

B: Yah, you don’t want that fermenting. And in the 19th century, apparently they would lay 00:02:40 and what we’re doing is we’re laying some cheesecloth.

A: Cheesecloth.

B: Yah.

A: So this is just a copper bottom, and you just pour a very thin skim of beer out 00:02:50

B: That’s the whole idea 00:02:51. The wort will cool a lot faster when it’s thin 00:02:54 when it stick in the kettle in.

A: Okay. And it just pours off 00:002:58.

B: And then depending on which a cask you’re using, I’ll be using this one here today, you just pull out this peg and will slowly trickle into the cask. And we fermented in the top cask here.

A: Okay.

B: And after a week, there are the yeast settles to the bottom of it, and then we rack it the yeast into the bottom one where we serve it from the bottom cask.

A: So you’re pitching this directly into this.

B: That’s correct.

A: This wooden barrel.

B: Yah, so if you ever have our beers, the first thing you’ll notice there, they’re very oaky, those these are brand new barrels and the beer does pick up a lot the oak.

A: Are these 00:03:31 on the insides?

B: No they’re not.

A: They’re 00:03:33

B: They’re 00:03:34, yah

A: And then you, so then you rack it off.

B: Yah, and hopefully leave these behind because the pegs are a little bit higher.

A: Higher. So what’d styles of beer you build?