This is a time of year for taking part in traditions--the past--and for remembering the good and the bad. I just poured myself a beer that I bottled in a bottle that my father used for homebrewing back in the '80s. Anyone else have homebrewing family connections to the past? Or other homebrewing traditions, other than brewing traditions generally, worth a thought at this time of year?
No homebrewing but my grandfather worked for Miller Brewing briefly in the late 1950's. He told me scary stories about rodents and lack of sanitation. Never saw him drink anything but Bud.
When I was in high school (about 1964) my grandfather gave me his cast-iron capper that he had used during prohibition to bottle homemade fruit wines. I made root beer at that time. I home brewed beer from about 1971 to the mid 80s using that capper. I still have it. Early on, the cheapest homebrew we made used 2 cans of Blue Ribbon dark malt extract (about $1.25 a can), bottling sugar, yeast, and caps for 20 quarts: about $0.25 a quart, a little cheaper than Eastside beer returnables. Michael Nesmith's LP "Tantamount to Treason" album cover reverse side has a homebrew recipe with the comment, "It misses as often as it hits."
When I moved back to upstate NY I bought a house with two old gnarly apple trees. Likely 50 years old. Shortly after began to work on getting the trees healthy. Then pressing apples for cider, both hard and juice. It used to be a bit of a party until it was a lot of work. Now it's jut a few buddies, year after year, who say good bye to fall and welcome winter. Bust out the mill. They bring their ugly apples and beers. We press 10 to 15 gallons. Talk about the year. Talk about chicks. Weather. Work. Not exactly brewing but that is it for tradition. Upstate New York is apple country and as far I am concerned it is my right to make hard cider from my own apples. Fine with me.
My grandfather was a homebrewer but I never knew that until I started brewing and my aunt told me about it. He died when I was about 15 years old, and it was 40 years later that I was told about the brewing, so I was too young to partake in whatever he produced and not able to learn from him. My aunt looked all over the old family home for his recipes but never was able to find them. He was second generation German-American, so I can only guess that he brewed lagers that were based on German beers. Actually, the way I got started was a hand-me-up kind of thing. My daughter married a homebrewer, then he got her started, then they both gifted me with the equipment and a kit to get me started. So the knowledge flowed upward, and they were there to answer my questions whenever I had some problem when brewing a batch. (This was before I joined BA or I would have been here asking the rookie questions. )
Got my first kit from the attic of my folks place. Still do not know the history behind it, but it has made me a homebrewer, got me to work in the field as a side gig, and also looking to eventually open up shop for myself. So there's that.
I was pressing apples in 1980. Used to make 50 gallons a year, but got boring so quit that. Great and great great grandfathers were eith home brewers or workers at a brewery. Brother and sons started brewing in the late 90s but have now quit. Daughter seems most interested in my brewing notebooks.
My grandfather used to make wine, long before I started homebrewing beer. My Dad always tells me about his "dandelion wine." Sounds atrocious. My grandfather's brother also made wine. I had the privilege of drinking his blackberry wine when I was about 15. I can remember walking into his house and seeing probably a dozen carboys full of wines in various stages. It was damn tasty. Thought maybe it was being able to drink with my elders that endeared me to it, hard to say.
I'm really the only family fermenter in recent history, outside of my older brother's one and only attempt at dandelion wine .I helped pick the dandelions and diligently recorked the bottle the fermentation took place in, picking the cork off the basement floor every day, never thinking twice about the proximity of the cat litter box. But then my brother disappeared with the bottle and I never got to try it. Story goes that it mostly ended up as vomit in the back of an orange VW bug. I'd like to believe that the Sicilian grandfather I never met made wine in his cellar, but it's revisionist history at play, stimulated by the cinema and the fact that he shared the same name as an Italian grape variety.
My post above is how I got started brewing beer, but these two stories about making dandelion wine made me remember my efforts (which I prefer to forget) at making wine. I made a couple 1-gallon batches that were not good at all, then I read somewhere that you can make wine out of dandelions. So I tried that. Without a recipe or any research about doing it, I picked a bunch of dandelions including the greens. Oh, was that stuff ever bad! Unfortunately I gave away a couple bottles before I tasted it, but I never heard anything back from either person. (My friends are polite.) There ought to be a law that dandelion wine should always be called dandelion flower wine.
I have no homebrewing connections from ‘back in the day’ but I have posted the below story a couple of times: “My father’s beer of choice when I was a kid was Piels Genuine Draft in 16 ounce returnable bottles. I have no specifics on how much a case of Piles cost then but I am sure that it was one of the cheapest beers available. When my mother was out of sight he would ask me if I wanted a “swig” of beer. Lifting a 16 ounce heavy duty bottle with beer was a bit of a heavy lift when I was young but I would take a “swig”. My father made me the man I am of today!” I have a relatively new homebrewing tradition I can share: About 10 years ago my wife and I were vacationing in the Adirondacks and we decided to eat lunch at a brewpub at Lake George Village. It was a nice end of summer day and we requested to eat lunch on the outdoor deck. The top of the deck was a wooden trellis system with hop bines growing over the top. My wife thought this was so cool. At a later time she discussed this place with my sister who has an excellent memory for presents. The following year she drop shipped a hop rhizome to my wife as a birthday present. The hop rhizome came from Gardeners.com and all that it said on the packaging is hop rhizome so I do not know the variety. The first year the plant was rather small with only a few hop cones. The second year more cones and even more the third. That third year was 2013 and in June of that year I attended the National Homebrewers Conference in Philly. I had the opportunity to meet Stan Hieronymus there and we discussed many homebrewing topics (brewing a Grodziskie, dry hopping, etc.) but importantly for this story about brewing with wet hops. With his tips in hand later that September I brewed my first wet hopped beer and my friend Gary helped me. As I was boiling the wort he harvested the hop cones. I branded that beer (an APA with wet hops added at the end of boil) as Gary’s Harvest Ale. I have been brewing this batch annually and Gary has consistently came over to be my hop harvester. Merry Christmas everybody! And Cheers to beer & brewing traditions! P.S. I will now start brewing a batch of Tmavý Ležák(Czech Dark Lager). @rotsaruch @invertalon
Not really a hand-me-down or a hand-me-up, but actually a hand-me-sideways! LOL. I picked up homebrewing from my brother-in-law, who gifted me an old 6.5 gallon glass carboy some 20 years ago. I'm still proudly using that carboy and recently used it to brew my first lager. I was hoping some of my offspring would be interested... they sure as hell like what I brew, but sadly, none have showed interest in beer brewing, but my son J has certainly expressed interest in wine making, so I guess that still counts. Cheers!
Nice thread! Interesting how many people have brewing in the family... My dad was homebrewing in the 70s and 80s and is still going. I'm currently brewing on a 30l Burco Cygnet boiler that he handed down after upgrading to something bigger.
My dad brewed when I was a kid in the early 80's. My brother and I made rootbeer with champagne yeast which made us feel so grown up. I have my dad's stand bottle capper that still works great, his hydrometer, old recipe books (mostly wine, as he did beer from liquid extract), and a glass towel bar that he used to use as a stir rod. I didn't have the heart to toss it out when we were clearing out the house when they downsized.
