I recently toured Monticello ( something everyone should do). There was a brewery at the plantation and they said Jefferson brewed with wheat and corn instead of barley because of it's unavailabilty. My question is was the corn used as an adjunct to the wheat or was corn the primary ingredient. I assume he brewed a conventional wheat but I wonder what else he brewed. He was quite innovative to say the least. His passion was wine but he did advocate a national brewery. His beer was very important to him as well.
Yards Brewing in Philadelphia brews a beer based upon one of Jefferson’s recipes. “Thomas Jefferson's Tavern Ale All Ales are not created equal. While Jefferson vehemently opposed a strong central federal government, he apparently had nothing against strong ales like this one. Thomas Jefferson's Tavern Ale is a golden ale with dried fruits and toffee aromas inspired by Jefferson’s original recipe that called for wheat, honey, and rye from his Virginia estate. ABV 8% Available year-round.” Cheers!
Starr Hill outside of Charlottesville, VA also brews a TJ beer. They call theirs Monticello. Much lighter and more of a table beer.
Rye was an extremely important and readily available ingredient. I wonder if the museum meant rye instead of corn.
From my (limited) understanding, beers in that period were, as StoutSeth said, "table beers" or what we would call "session beers." Kinda doubt TJ's beer was 8% abv.
Just had a "Thomas Jefferson" ale at Taps in Brea, CA. Pretty good. 9+%, malty with a hint of hops on the finish.
The fact that "small beers" were common alternatives to potentially polluted water http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer does not preclude the use of stronger beers for festive occasions. And since that was an era when small beers were typically second runnings made after a stronger beer had already been done there's a lot of reason to think that Jefferson's home brewery made beers of that strength. Also there are hand written recipes from that era on record and preserved in archives that, if followed using Colonial era technology, will produce beers of 7-8% or stronger ABV. There is quite an interesting science behind some recreations of "ancient ales." http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Beer-Archaeologist.html?c=y&page=1&device=ipad
Great article - thanks for the link. I've read some about this work piecemeal, but the article is a nice, comprehensive look at Dr. Pat's work. Thanks for sharing.
+1 to what drtth posted. The Colonial brewers (typically brewed at the home) made table strength beers for ‘everyday’ drinking but higher strength beer as well. I attended the recent National Homebrewers Conference that was conducted in Philadelphia. There were two excellent beer history presentations: · Beers of our Founding Fathers - Frank Clark · Colonial Brewing Practices – Bob Grossman Bob Grossman also had 6 homebrewed Colonial era beers available for sampling. From memory: Spruce Ale, Sage Ale, Pumpkin, Parsnip & Walnut Ale, George Washington Small Ale, 1750 Porter, and a Braggot. You will see that one of the beers brewed by Bob Grossman was a small beer (during the Colonial times this would have been from the second runnings). The 1750 Porter was of moderate strength (5-6% ABV IIRC) and the Braggot was of high strength (8% ABV IIRC). It was common for the beers to be made with (or augmented) with ingredients other than malted barley since malted barley was expensive (most of the malted barley was imported from England). Cheers!
Colonial era brewers (which were homebrewers) were an inventive lot. They would use whatever was readily available to them (read: cheap) that could be mashed and turned into beer. Thomas Jefferson would have used corn vs. rye if corn was more readily available at that point in time (and vice versa). Cheers!
I got this http://www.amazon.com/Uncorking-Past-Quest-Alcoholic-Beverages/dp/0520267982 when it was in hardcover only, but don't regret the price, fascinating book. Worth taking a look at, especially now it's in paper cover.
Lots of good information on here. As alluded to above, most beers of the time were brewed using the parti-gyle method, meaning that they made a super rich mash, then used the first runnings to make a "big" beer, the second runnings to make a "table beer" and sometimes the third runnings to make a "small" beer. To the ingredients. People have pointed out that beer in colonial times was made using just about any fermentable that could be got hold of in various combinations. Malted grains were used of course, along with adjunct grains, but so was honey, molasses, pumpkins and squash, sometimes potatoes - any source of starch or sugar would do. The OP was asking whether the wheat or the corn would have been the "primary" or the "adjunct". Given the catch as catch can nature of colonial brewing (not that it wasn't sophisticated - it sometimes was), the idea of primary ingredient might not be as germane as it would be today. But the term adjunct normally implies a source of fermentables that doesn't carry its own conversion enzymes. Wheat can be malted and has as about as much diastatic power as barley (ability to convert starches to sugar). Corn can also be malted, but it has much less diastatic power - it can barely convert its own weight. By that measure, you would likely consider the corn the adjunct, as most likel, the wheat or rye malt is providing diastatic power to convert the corn. Also, the OP said he assumed it was a traditional wheat. Despite what local breweries are producing in Jefferson's name, I don't think we would recognize that beer as anything like a conventional wheat today. They may be using his ingredients, but they are using today's techniques. All malted grains of the time were kilned over a direct fire, so the resulting beers were deep reddish brown to quite dark in color and had a definite smoky quality. They were also boiled in direct fired kettles, so there would have been some kettle caramelization. Also, if it was hopped instead of spiced, it would have been very low in bitterness - most American hops of the time were foraged and picked wild, and the only other option was imported hops which would have been months old and hardly vacuum packed. It quite likely would have had a lactic sourness to it, depending on its age. Finally, it likely would have had modest carbonation, like a cask beer. Last point - I too toured Monticello many years ago. I agree - absolutely fascinating and a must see. That trip was the beginning of my craft beer love affair, but that's another story...
Hey all, Brewing scientist here. There's a really interesting paper on this subject from an MBAA TQ: History of Malting Barley in the United States, 1600 – Present Paul Schwarz (2), Scott Heisel (1), and Richard Horsley (2). 1. American Malting Barley Association, Milwaukee, WI. 2. Institute of Barley and Malt Sciences, Dept. of Plant Sciences, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND.) If you're not an MBAA member, I'll summarize some of the points relevant to Thomas Jefferson. Essentially the colonists had a very hard time getting british 2-row barley to grow well in the states. It did okay in some parts of Canada, but in the colonial area George Washington had this to say in a letter of his spring barley crop, "it has thriven no better than vetches" (vetch is a legume that apparently also didn't grow well in the New World). They did use a lot of imported 2-row malt, at least until the revolution. After the revolution, there was a big lull in domestic barley production - this would have been during Jefferson's prime brewing years. During this period it was very difficult to get malt from the UK (they were a bit sore about the whole war thing, although a few merchants still tried to ship malt over for a premium). Eventually, starting around the early 1800's, they discovered that scottish 6-row varieties grew much better, and domestic barley production began in New York with big malting facilities built in Albany (1823) and Buffalo (1825). Unfortunately, Jefferson died in 1826, so he just missed the beginning of the US malt industry.
There seems to be a lot of interest in Colonial Brewing. Two people I know who brew using the techniques of that era are Frank Clark (based at Williamsburg) and Rich Wagner who is from Philadelphia. I have read where Rich would go to historic places like an old Plantation in Ridley Creek State Park (in PA) and perform a demonstration of brewing in wooden vessels and boiling in a big black kettle in a hearth. I saw photographs of Frank Clark brewing per historical methods in his presentation at the NHC. I am assuming that he conducts brewing demonstrations at Williamsburg periodically. Here is an article which includes an interview with Frank Clark:http://www.catholic.org/hf/home/story.php?id=29878 Cheers!
