Some buzz around the beer news that the Coney Island / Shmaltz Brewing Company is brewing up a recipe of George Washington’s beer for a charity gig… and a cheater version with roasted malts for those who might want to pretend. Here is the recipe entitled “To Make Small Beer” as set out by the Gothamist:
Take a large Siffer [Sifter] full of Bran Hops to your Taste. Boil these 3 hours then strain out 30 Gall[ons] into a cooler put in 3 Gall[ons] Molasses while the Beer is Scalding hot or rather draw the Melasses (sic) into the cooler & St[r]ain the Beer on it while boiling Hot. let this stand till it is little more than Blood warm then put in a quart of Yea[s]t if the Weather is very Cold cover it over with a Blank[et] & let it Work in the Cooler 24 hours then put it into the Cask—leave the bung open till it is almost don[e] Working—Bottle it that day Week it was Brewed.
The recipe is in the New York Public Library‘s collection and dates from 1757 – when George was still a Loyalist and a couple of years before Jeffery Amherst’s spruce beer from a couple of colonies to the north. Interestingly, each uses 3 gallons of molasses to thirty gallons of brew. The real difference is that George says hop to taste while Jeff boils seven pounds of spruce until the bark comes off. Neither look all that appealing. And I am not sure what George meant by the “Bran Hops.” Is the sentence supposed to be “Take a large Siffer [Sifter] full of Bran Hops to your Taste” or is there a missing punctuation mark so that it would read “full of Bran – Hops to taste”? Or were “bran hops” something that meant something to someone somewhere?
This report suggested that the Washington beer would work out at 11%… hardly small beer. And Amherst states that his beer can be bottled to keep “a great while.” I dunno. Were these desperate beers for desperate times? In a way, maybe they were the predecessors of commodity beer – a means to an end.
[Original comments…]
Max – May 5, 2011 12:26 AM
Three gallons of molasses per thirty gallons of water would come out to a starting gravity of around 1.030. Even if the beer attenuated 100% that still only makes a beer of around 4% abv. I don’t know where they got 11%.
Gary Gillman – May 5, 2011 11:01 AM
The gallon then was the old British gallon, which is still the U.S. gallon, i.e., based on a 16 ounce pint – so 32 oz. per quart, 4 quarts to the gallon of course, so 128 oz. to the gallon, not 160. Did you calculate the 4% ABV based on these figures?
Also, I wonder if the bran (the covering of a cereal grain) might have produced some extract. Probably not since if it has starch there would have been no conversion via barley malt unless they let the bran soak for a while before use, in which case it might have mashed on its own.
I think though the reason bran was used was to give a cereal flavour to the beer – in effect he was doing a “beer concentrate” and then adding it to molasses to get the fermentable capacity.
I wonder what that beer was like? Which Ontario craft brewer will have a go?
Gary
Joe Stange – May 5, 2011 12:32 PM
http://www.thirstypilgrim.com
In the original document “Bran” and “Hops” are on different lines… It’s possible or even likely that a comma between them offers a better reading.
I suppose the sifter would have been used to make flour, and then… what to do with the sifter full of bran (which is what would be left after sifting the flour)? Well hell, why not make some beer with it? Martha, woman, run and fetch 30 gallons from the Potomac!
I suppose Gary is right about fermentables in the cereals. Not much. Maybe if he added it to cold water and heated it to boil (he doesn’t say whether he adds it direct to boiling water), there would be some conversion?
Jeff Alworth – May 5, 2011 1:22 PM
http://beervana.blogspot.com/
I should have known you’d beat me to this story.
Martyn Cornell – May 5, 2011 8:12 PM
http://zythophile@wordpress.com
“Bran hops” may be “brown hops”, I suspect – porter brewers, certainly, used old hops that had gone brown, to give the beer the preservative and bittering qualities still available in older hops, without the aromas only fully available in fresher hops. See, eg, this mention of brown hops from 1767.
Gary Gillman – May 6, 2011 10:57 AM
Here is a similar recipe, for bran beer, from England which gives more information as to extract. Clearly bran has extract that can be converted, possibly it contains enough enzyme to do this if slowly heated to the right temperature.
Gary
clay – May 10, 2011 7:12 PM
I agree, likely a sifter of Bran, Hops to taste, strain back through the sifter onto the molasses. I personally don’t see anything unsanitary about it, the molasses is only 10% so even if it was cold, the resting temp would still be above 70F for the 20+ minutes needed to pasteurize.
@gary it’s irrelevant the size of the gallon used as it’s the same percentage of sugar by volume, so ABV will be the same. I would say this is about a 2.5% to 3% beer aka Small Beer. Keep in mind the yeast used back then was pretty low attenuation too. And, most sifters were about a quart.
Assuming all of that, I would say that most likely the real recipe is:
1 pound of wheat bran (most common kind around then and there)
3 gallons of Molasses
12-16 oz of hops (they had pretty low yield and they took a long time to get from plant to brewery)
29 – 30 gallons of water.
Low attenuation yeast, 5 vials or 4L starter.
That’s 33gal or a full barrel.
Only thing I’d do is reduce the boil to 90, 1oz Cascade at
90, 1oz at flame out, use oat bran and wheat bran, boil the
molasses for 5 min.
Gareth – May 10, 2011 11:26 PM
I read an article about this on Huffington post, they said the term “Bran” was used often back in the 1700s to mean “small flakes”. Maybe the current translation means a sifter full of small hop flakes (just dried hops?)
Looks like that’s all the recipe really calls for then. Hops, molasses and yeast. Bare bones by today’s standards…. But I’m curious. Didn’t know that it was possible to make beer that simple and without various grains.