George Washington's Beer

On a beer roll here... From N.P.R. comes a copy of George Washington's Beer recipe: bq. Ever wonder what the Founding Fathers drank? Using recipes favored by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Yards, a Philadelphia-based brewer, is recreating their beers of choice and offering them for sale in six-packs. Rachel Buchman of member station WHYY reports. Read Washington's recipe for beer. bq. George Washington's Beer Recipe bq. To Make Small Beer: bq. Take a large siffer full of bran hops to your taste-boil these 3 hours. Then strain our 30 gall[o]n into a cooler put in 3 gall[o]n molasses while the beer is scalding hot or rather draw the molasses into the cooler. Strain the beer on it while boiling hot, let this stand till it is little more than blood warm. Then put in a quart of ye[a]st if the weather is very cold cover it over with a blank[et] let it work in the cask-Leave the bung open till it is almost done working-Bottle it that day week it was brewed." Couple of nits... I don't know what a siffer is - got to be a unit of measurement. Anyway, you would not want to boil this for three hours - it needs to be steeped at various temperatures so that the enzymes occurring naturally in the barley or bran will be activated and will convert the starch in the seeds to sugar. These enzymes can be denatured (broken) if heated to boiling and starch doesn't ferment. What was probably the case is that they used Decoction-Brewing. The art of measuring temperature is a very very recent one and accurate thermometers did not exist in Washington's day. What a brewer did was to boil water in a smaller container and then pour it into a larger container that was already filled with grain and room-temperature water. If you kept the ratio of the two containers to a proper one, the introduction of the boiling water would raise the overall temperature to the point where the enzymes activated. You would then hold this pot for three hours before continuing. Everything else looks great. The couple gallons of molasses would give it a bunch more alcohol without too much cost. The article said that this would be about 11% - that is actually about as high as you can get without resorting to specialty yeasts - a standard Saccharomyces cerevisiae will die off around 10% to 12%. Maybe try this at home someday...