There's more to campus beer than frat boys

The recently-reported discovery of an on-campus brewery at the +College of William & Mary highlights a point that we've forgotten, a little bit. Yes, it's cute to make jokes about having beer on campus, but where there are people, there is beer. This is a fact of civilization. What was difficult was making good beer. It not only took time, but also resources that most smaller places didn't have. Maltsters were rare in the country, but they could make a living in cities, larger communities and even on plantations, if the plantation owner was rich enough and liked beer that much. Anyone can make a passable cider, but colonists who liked beer had trouble getting good brews.
What's exciting about the discovery is that we might get additional insight into the recipes they were using. A good beer recipe, like a good maltster, was, if not rare-ish, less common than we would like. Brewers wrote to one another about their processes and occasionally some of the ingredient lists survive, but actual recipes including malt bills (what kinds of malts were used) are pretty rare.

For example, here is Washington's beer recipe (as reported by the +American Homebrewers Association association):

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 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 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.

George Washington's Infamous Small Beer Recipe

When old breweries are found, lots of times they just scrape around in the vessels or bottles, and analyze whatever they find. Increasingly, though, homebrewers and/or professional brewers will try and make the stuff they find.

Comments

Away we go

In a very, very technical sense, this was the first photo taken for the book. When +The History Press agreed to publish my book , I was a little worried about getting the right photos. But not quite as worried as they were at first. You see, Eastern Shore Beer was to be a pretty book, as well as an informative one. I got something like 32 color pages for a photo insert and was responsible for the cover and back cover art. When they asked if I thought I could get photos I said, "Kind of." There were three problems as I saw it. First of all, beer hasn't been all that well-documented on the Eastern Shore. Certainly, it hasn't been treasured until recently, so the archives that aren't bare, aren't well marked. Secondly, there weren't the kinds of high-profile prohibition busts in the 20s as there were in metropolitan areas, therefore there were no photos of colorful characters in bowlers smirking for the camera after destroying a beer barrel.

Homebrewers getting younger, girlier

Young women have really only stopped brewing for the last 200 years or so. Homebrewing news stories (most recently, " Not Every Homebrewer Has a Beard ") increasingly emphasize the fact that women are brewing, which is funny because it highlights a generational, rather than a gender gap. Stereotypically, the oldsters who assign trend stories in newspapers truly are locked into a perception of gender roles that has only barely been true for the last 200(ish) years, especially when it comes to beer. Women brewed until industrialization made it too profitable a potential business for men to ignore. They ladies returned to homebrewing throughout Prohibition, making beer (and liquor and wine) at home to keep the family wet. The real newsflash is, stories about women crossing gender lines are more about establishment bias than about the real world. Women 'Discover' Brewing Expertise is about knowledge and passion. It's not so much that women continue to ...

Fan Fiction

Groupo Modelo write-offs cost AbInBev $6 billion this year. It lost another $1 billion anyway, even with the Word Cup. This is a tinfoil hat observation, but one that's fun to make. Like all kooky theories, it begins with demonstrable facts and descends into the gap between madness and unlikelihood. Craft beer now has 8 percent of the market and think they can make it to 20 over the next decade. Budweiser's parent company, even bolstered by the World Cup, reported losses of more than $1 billion already this year even though revenue increased. Much of that has to do with them purchasing companies that don't run at the famous AbInBev margins, but, to be fair, the revenue boost was because of Brazil. There won't be a World Cup next year, but there also is no craft beer revolution in South America. Or in Africa. Or Russia. There also is no NFL advertising expense in those countries. Last week, Budweiser made an uncharacteristically frank indictment of the NFL. It w...

The State of the Beer

Search This Blog