A Brew For Hazard 'COCK ALE'

[greybeard]

COCK ALE

In a 100-year-old book on brewing we came across the following recipe for a fearsome brew, “Cock Ale”:

“Take 10 gallons of ale and a large cock, the older the better; parboil the cock, flay him, and stamp him in a stone mortar until his bones are broken (you must draw and gut him when you flay him), then put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put to it five pounds of raisins of the sun, stoned; some blades of mace, and a few cloves; put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has been working, put the bag and ale together into a vessel In a week or nine days bottle it up; fill the bottle just above the neck, and give it the same time to ripen as other ale.”

The following is from a book 'Beers & Stouts' authored by C.J.J. Berry.

Rather amusedly, and entirely by way of experiment, it was decided to try this, on a one-gallon quantity.
Astonishingly, it made excellent ale, nourishing and strong-flavoured, of the “barley wine” type.

Many years later we heard of the old West Country practice of putting a joint of meat into a barrel of cider—where it disappeared— in order to produce a really strong brew. And that it had been discovered that there was in fact a good scientific basis for this, in that it greatly increased the protein content of the brew! So it’s worth trying.

All you need are some pieces of cooked chicken, and a few chicken bones, all well crushed or minced (about a tenth of the eatable portion of the bird), half a pound of raisins, a very little mace, and one (or, if you like, two) cloves. Soak these for 24 hours in half a bottle of your strongest white country wine.
Then make one gallon of beer as described in our malt extract section using 1 lb. malt extract, 1 oz. hops, + lb. Demerara sugar, 1 gallon water, yeast and nutrient. Add the whole of your cock mixture to the fermenting must, to the fermenting wort at the end of the second day. Fermentation will last six or seven days longer than usual and the ale should be matured at least a month in bottle.

Daryl.

[bigbob]

Geez Daryl that solves all my problems, now I can have a feed and a drink at the same time!

[Gringa Bows]

What a brew,dont think i'de try it though....

[hazard]

Actually I thought you were giving me a dig! "A Brew For Hazard 'COCK ALE'" uuummm an ambiguous means of consumption though but I reckon I would be game to give it a try in the hands of an experienced brewer

Hazard

[muntries]

I brew a fair bit of beer and probably yes the meat would provide nutrients for the yeast to help metabolise the fermentable sugars but usually there is a fair amount of proteins in the grain anyway (unless it's extract malt) to aid fermentation. I would be more worried about cross contamination from the chook, although they do use some bacteria's in beer to add a sour flavour (a couple of barley wines and Belgian farmhouse beers) so maybe it adds some favourable contamination into the ale too. I'll let you drink that one Daryl.

[Bent Stick]

Sounds awesome I hit the boss up for the Christmas party; but he wasn't keen on being flayed, flogged and stomped, oh well guess it's the same ol brews for the Christmas party again this year.

[TomMcDonald]

As my girlfriend would say: 'a few cloves of what?'. Hehe