Let's Brew!

Brewing Some History: A Prohibition-Style Beer
by Andrew Koontz

It was over five years ago that my wife Laurie and I began brewing our own beer. I remember well the halcyon days of perhaps the first five brews where the results left quite a bit to be desired…but, hey, we learned a lot. We'd sample our efforts and ponder what went right and what went wrong. The beers we liked we'd share with our friends. And, of course, the extended family was curious about our new hobby. So we'd bring them homebrews to try.

Now, Laurie's stepfather Ed had been a homebrewer in his youth, so we were particularly interested in his thoughts on our beer. On one of our visits, we brought along some ale, and I carefully poured him a pint to sample. If he noticed its deep amber hue, he made no mention of it. And if he admired its foamy head, there was no sign. He drained his glass in an instant and asked sharply "How'd you make it?" We began to explain selecting the right grains, choosing the freshest hops, the boil… Ed shook his head. "You don't have to do that," he said. "What you need is sugar, a pound of raisins, a grated potato, a can of hops…" This was his trusty old homebrew recipe, passed down to him by his grandmother, Luanna. But now it was Laurie's and my turn to shake our heads, schooled as we were by the likes of Charlie Papazian and Greg Noonan in the virtues of malted barley.

Clearly, Ed took an entirely different view on the subject of beer from Laurie and me. For us, quality and freshness were the priority. Cost was at best a minor consideration. With Ed, a paragon of New England thrift, cost was the only consideration. Ed saw our beer as a costly and overly time-consuming product. And for our part, we just thought his grandmother Luanna's homebrew recipe would produce crappy beer.

But time, as every homebrewer knows, has a mellowing effect. Over the years, Ed has been known to enjoy a few of our brews, and his grumbling about cost and time spent has faded. But he has continued to insist that all we really needed to do was take sugar, potatoes, raisins, etc. It finally dawned on Laurie and me that what Ed really wanted was to try his old homebrew again. And not having the equipment to do it himself, he wanted us to brew his old recipe. For our part, we saw an opportunity to brew some history: Mrs. Luanna Thorn's homebrew recipe dated at least to Prohibition, and was very likely older. So Laurie and I told Ed to write it down, and we'd get around to it one day. So Ed sat down and wrote it out from memory.

The recipe was a snap to brew. What does it take to pour 5 gallons of water into a food grade bucket, dump in the sugar and raisins, grate a potato, and stir in a can of hopped malt extract until everything dissolves? Well, not much. We topped it all off with dry active bread yeast (we used Fleischmann's), and if the whole operation took us longer than ten minutes, I'd be surprised. We sealed the bucket with a fermentation lock. The primary ferment was fast and very thorough, finishing at a specific gravity of nearly 1.002. We didn't bother with a secondary fermentation, and bottled it right up. It was as good as it was ever going to get in less than three weeks.

So, how did it taste? In a word…interesting. The finished beer is very light, both in color and in body. Hop flavor, aroma, and bitterness are, of course, near non-existent. The raisins give the beer a distinctive flavor that is not unpleasant. But the refined sugar contributes a definite coarseness to the taste. However, for all its obvious faults, the beer isn't at all bad. Served real cold, it is a decent lawnmower beer. And it was certainly good enough to shove a six-pack of the stuff into our carry-on luggage for a recent flight down to Florida, so that Ed could sample his old homebrew.

Upon our arrival at Ed and Laurie's mother's home in Daytona Beach, Florida, Ed immediately snatched up one of the brews and downed it, warm, out of the bottle. Verdict? It sure tasted like his old beer, the old-homebrewer said. Laurie and I preferred to wait for three bottles to chill. Then we poured us each a beer, and Ed, Laurie, and I raised our glasses to Mrs. Luanna Thorn and a century-old homebrew tradition.

Grandmother Luanna's Prohibition-Style Beer

5 gallon recipe

2½ lbs. granulated sugar
1½ lbs. hopped malt extract
½ lb. raisins
1 large potato, grated
1 pkg. dry active bread yeast
¾ cup priming sugar

Pour 5 gallons of filtered water into a food-grade bucket. Add sugar, hopped malt extract, raisins, and grated potato. Mix vigorously to oxygenate the wort, and fully dissolve the sugar and extract. Stir in dry yeast, and seal the bucket with a fermentation lock. Fermentation will be rapid. When the krauesen head falls, the beer is ready for bottling. Rack the beer off of the spent raisins and trub into a bottling bucket.

If you are interested in a bit of historical accuracy, siphon the beer into quart bottles, and prime with a level teaspoon of sugar per bottle. Otherwise, mix the ¾ cup of priming sugar into the still beer and bottle normally. Allow a week or so for conditioning. Serve cold…real cold.