17th Century beer (and ale)

Two quick and dirty resources:

http://www.benfranklin300.org/etc_article_ale.htm

http://byo.com/hops/item/479-colonial-ale

And two books that may help:

http://www.amazon.com/Beer-America-Years-1587-1840-Settling-Nation/dp/0937381659

http://www.amazon.com/Every-Home-Distillery-Technology-Chesapeake-ebook/dp/B006GPCSTO/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421508574&sr=1-2&keywords=17th century brewing

 

There are no recipes, and no real brewing information in "Beer in America: The Early Years". It can be entertaining though.

 

Check out the Durden Park Beer Circle and their very small publication "Old British Beers and How to Brew them", there is a downloadable pdf on-line. There is a beer from 1577 (referenced in the back) in there which may be the closest you'll get to a beer recipe. Plus I'm thinking that due to malt technology then (which there wasn't and even the word technology didn't exist) the malt would have been amber>brown in color and you'll have a brew of a very dark color.

If you can find Bickerdyke's "Curiousities of Ale & Beer" (1886) you may find some old recipes form that time. That's a tough book to find and it may cost a pretty penny as it's out of print.

I did thumb through my copy of "The Historical Companion of House-Brewing" (Clive La Pensee) and yes, most of the recipes are from the 19th C., they had one recipe from Germany called "Mum"with some herbs of questionable uses, like burnet, betony, penny royal and Cardus Benedictus. You may want to research them a lot more deeper in a authorotative guide, some of them could be harmful in quantities.

Let us know what you find!

 

A good contact for Colonial era brewing is Bob Grossman. Below is something I posted in a previous thread:


“A person you should contact with you questions is Bob Grossman. He gave a presentation at the 2013 NHC entitled: Colonial Brewing Practices and Beers with the Influences of Historical British Styles.

Bob is a VERY accomplished homebrewer and at the presentation he provided samples of 6 historical beers he brewed: Sage Ale, Parsnip,Pumpkin, & Walnut Ale, 1750 Porter, George Washington’s Small Beer, Benjamin Franklin’s Spruce Beer, and Master Webb’s Braggot. All 6 of the beers were tasty and well brewed; my favorite was the 1750 Porter. He brewed all of these beers with present day ingredients (e.g., present day malts and present day yeasts). He did make his own Essentia Bina (Essentia Bina is made from sugar boiled until thick and syrupy and black and extremely bitter) to make the 1750 Porter.

Bob Grossman is an enthusiastic beer historian. He brought in as a ‘show & tell’ part of his presentation a BIG stack of historical books that he owns and you would have thought you were at a farmer’s market with the amount of sage, parsnip and other ingredients that he grew in his garden (and that he brews with). He offered his garden good to the audience to take home with them.

The last chart of the presentation provided contact information: [email protected]

Cheers!

 

The Bickerdyke book is free on archive.org

https://archive.org/details/cu31924029894759

 

http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/beer
http://immaculatebrewery.com/the-original-american-homebrews-pt-1/
http://immaculatebrewery.com/the-original-american-homebrews-pt-2/
http://immaculatebrewery.com/the-original-american-homebrews-pt-3/