Brew It Yourself

Background
Beermaking is one of the oldest arts known to man. Man, it is now believed, was brewing beer at the same time as he was learning the rudiments of making bread, for any number of grains which were used to make bread could easily have been transformed into beerlike drinks through the natural process of fermentation. Our earliest evidence indicates that barley malt was used in brewing by the Mesopotamians around 6000 B.C. The Egyptians were known to have practiced the art quite avidly around 2000 B.C. They are believed to have introduced spices and herbs--forerunners of the present-day hops--into their beer to counteract the sweet taste of the malts. From Egypt the Greeks carried the art to Europe, and the Romans learned about beerduring their conquest of Greece. It is believed that beer was introduced to England by the Roman armies. Hops came into use in Europe as the main herb to complement the malt flavor, and the use of this bitter herb soon spread to England. Besides adding flavor to the beer, hops also acted as a preservative. The consumption of beer in England during the Middle Ages must have been enormous. Historical documents of the Duke of Lancaster indicate that he provided each of the ladies-in-waiting at his court with eight gallons of beer a week!
The importance of beer to the early colonizers of America is evidenced when the Mayflower, by an accident of navigation, landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts instead of its intended destination of Virginia. In the Pilgrim Journal we read, "For we could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beere."1 Beer was stocked on long ocean voyages because it tended to retain its freshness, due to the preservative qualities of the hops, whereas water soon spoiled. Beer also provided the vitamins and minerals needed to fight diseases such as scurvy, which plagued ocean voyages. Early colonial governments recognized the healthful qualities of beer. The Virginia Assembly sent a proclamation to new colonists urging them to bring malt with them to "Brewe and drink beere, until their bodies werehardened to the drinking of water." William Penn opened the first commercial brewery in Pennsylvania and George Washington maintained a brewery on his estate at Mount Vernon, where he was known as a master brewer of fine beers.
In the century following the Revolutionary War, a brewhouse was an essential part of the American household and brewing was encouraged by the government. In 1789 James Madison made a motion before the United States House of Representatives that the low duty of eight cents a barrel be placed on malt liquors, so that "this low rate will be such an encouragement as to induce the manufacture of beer in every state of the Union." A specific example of legislation to foster beer drinking in the early days of the republic is found in the Massachusetts Act of 1789, which states that "the wholesome qualities of malt liquors greatly recommend them to general use, as an important means of preserving the health of the citizens of this commonwealth, and of preventing the pernicious effect of spirituous liquors."
Around 1840 the types of beer brewed in this country began to change. Up until that time, the predominant brew was the traditional British-type ale, a strong, heavy, rather bitter drink with a high alcohol content, averaging around eight percent by weight, or higher. With the influx of German immigrants around the middle of the nineteenth century, however, a lighter, much milder beer began to be made here. The Germansset up breweries that made the lighter, milder, bottom-fermenting lagers typical of regions such as Bavaria. After the turn of the century, American tastes favored an even lighter beer.
One good reason for this tendency toward lightness is that the United States has a much warmer climate than Europe and we need a beer that will quench thirst, a beer that can be quaffed in fair quantities, without leaving us drunk in the process. Prohibition was also a factor in our turning to lighter beer. During this period, beer and wine, along with hard liquor, were prohibited, and breweries were forced to turn out a brew called "near beer," a very light beverage that contained less than one half of one percent alcohol by weight. Fortunately for those who prefer real beer, Prohibition ended with the enactment of the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933. After a long thirteen years ten months nineteen days seventeen hours and thirty-two and one half minutes, Americans could again step up to a bar for a real beer.
I had a discussion recently with an executive of one of the major brewing firms concerning the lightness of American beer. He told me something interesting about the trend to very light, dry beer following World War II. At that time, he said, women throughout the country began drinking beer. Many men were in military service, and with the pay scales at a rather meager level, they had only a limited amount of money to spend on dates when they could get a weekend pass. Mostcouples could just afford hot dogs and a pitcher of beer on their evenings of wining and dining. For the first time, women drank beer regularly, but they objected to the bitter taste. To make beer more enjoyable to women, then, it became the custom to dilute a pitcher of beer with a glass of ice water, to weaken the taste. After the war, beer became available at the local supermarket, where it was bought for home consumption, instead of at the local tavern. Since it was the women who did the buying, the breweries catered to their taste for the weaker, blander beer they had become accustomed to drinking during the war.
This is certainly a plausible explanation for the popularity in this country of ultra-light beers. We have found, however, that women do not object to the rich, strong taste of beer, only to its bitterness. All the women who have sampled the beer recipes in this book have preferred them to the bland commercial beer. They also appreciate the nonfattening quality of home-brewed beer.
American beers average about 3.5 percent alcohol by weight, although some regional beers and ales go as high as 5.5 percent. (An alcohol content of 3.5 percent by weight means that 3.5 percent of the total weight of the beer is pure alcohol.) They are mostly light in color, very dry, and contain a relatively high degree of carbonation. These characteristics give them their very good thirst-quenching qualities. To attain the dryness common to beer produced in this country, brewerieshave had to use other grains along with the barley malt in brewing, since barley used alone will give beer a richer, heavier taste. The two most common additional grains are corn and rice, which can also be used by themselves to produce beer. When Columbus first arrived in the New World, he noted that the Indians used corn to brew a drink similar to beer. In Japan today, rice is used to brew sake, a drink which we know as rice wine but which is more correctly identified as a noncarbonated rice beer.
In Northern Europe, barley malt is almost exclusively the basic grain in brewing. This gives European beer a richer, malty taste and adds a certain heaviness to it, but it makes it slightly less desirable as a thirst-quencher. The Germans in particular turn out a highly malted beer that has a characteristic sweetness. This sweetness is countered with a higher hop content, which adds bitterness to the brew. Among the most delicious beers available commercially are some of these German imports, known as "Sunday sipping beers"; also, beers imported from Denmark and Holland. These, incidentally, are the pilsner beers that were considered so light around the middle of the last century, so you can imagine the strength of the brews they were drinking in those days! The term "pilsner," which is used to describe the lighter beers, comes from Pilsen, a town in Czechoslovakia, where the Pilsen brewery has been in continuous operation for over eight hundred years. I've sampled some of their beer and itis delicious, with a rich but mellow taste. One reason for this taste is that the hops grown in Czechoslovakia and in Bavaria have a mellow flavor not generally found in hops grown in other regions of the world. Many American brewers, in fact, import these hops to use as a blend in brewing their beers. Some of the foreign breweries also use a greater amount of malt in their beers, which adds to the body. With some of the recipes in this book, you can virtually duplicate the flavor of the imported beers if your taste is for the heavier varieties of brew, and at a considerable saving in cost.
It should be noted that the strength of a beer's flavor is not necessarily due to its high alcohol content. At the risk of incurring the wrath of American tourists to Europe who protest to the contrary, continental brews average around five to six percent of alcohol by weight --half again as much as standard American beers, yet far less than the eight to fourteen percent claimed by our more avid quaffers of the continental brews. A word of advice: Your first inclination may be to increase the alcohol content of the beer recipes given in this book, because, "After all, this is the reason for brewing my own beer--to get a more potent brew." Don't stray too far from the recommended level of ingredients, however. There is a definite decrease in the taste and overall quality of beer when the alcohol content goes beyond six percent. The recipes in this book will produce between 4.7 and 6 percent alcohol, and this is a sufficient amount to complement the taste. The drinking patternsof the British are reflected in a beer whose alcohol content has been kept within reasonable limits. In England, unlike here, there is a wide choice of popular brews, from the mild and relatively weak pale ales to the strong stouts and porters. The alcohol content ranges from three percent for the lighter ales to nine percent for the heavier stouts. Yet the most popular drink among the British is light ale, for the simple reason that beer drinkers like the taste of beer and therefore like to drink large quantities without becoming intoxicated.
Copyright © 1971, 1973 by Leigh P. Beadle