Episode 59 Beer! That Good Civilized Drink - Cider is for Rubes

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Listen to "059 Beer - That Good Civilized Drink, Cider is for Rubes!" on Spreaker.


Link to the Episode: 

Thank goodness, grain based beer is back on the menu, and Brewsters (women) and Brewers (men) are at work over the mash tuns.  Barrells are being made, so that they can be rolled out at the right time.

Commerce has increased so trade also helps the beer quality. A few people are ordering beer from the home country, but that is often folly, as it almost always arrives foul - or possibly gets drunk along the way.  Much more reliable is the shipping of malt (the sprouted and toasted grain - almost always barley if you’re going to go to all the trouble of shipping it) and the shipping of hops.  

But in America’s possibly first brainstorm in jumping over tradition to get to the desired result - Molasses Beer is born.  Far faster to make than the multi-step grain stuff, but based on both recorded complaints, and the amount of additional flavoring used - it can’t have been good.

The handwritten “small beer” recipe from George Washington 
using bran and molasses
The lack of any hops makes this a beer to be drunk
as soon as it stopped “working”

The typed version, for those of us (me) who don't easily read 18th century cursive

Amelia Simmons - that 1st American printed cookbook author, offers a version that might keep a bit longer, and attempts to deal with the minerally/burnt taste molasses would contribute.  One step up from bran-molasses beer - which was all waste products from other emerging commercial processes.

A typical recipe for Molasses Beer
This is from Amelia Simmons’ 1796 cookbook


This recipe will not change particularly, going into the 19th century, except to have the flavorings augmented.  These recipes demonstrate that any sort of grain based brewing of beer had clearly left the home kitchen in the Colonies / America

From Mary Randolph’s 1838 
A Virginia Housewife, or Methodical Cook



From Eliza Leslie’s 1837 
Directions for Cookery


So beer was on the rise as an industry - and there was good beer to be had.  As England got cranky about sending good stuff to the colonies, and taxing them for what appeared to be little to no purpose - along with the strangle hold on purchase prices for many goods, the Colonials became serious about creating American hops and American beers.

A little space for Sam Adams.

Here’s his well known beer associated portrait:
How every beer drinking American has known him since 1989
Casual shirtsleeve guy.

The John Singleton Copely portrait
That he would likely prefer - as befitting his dignity


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