5 Colonial-Era Drinks You Should Know. Colonial-era Americans era drank from breakfast till bedtime. [Image: American Tract Society v. 4 #102, Old Sturbridge Village] Cast your memory back to grade-school history: Chances are that in between making tricorn hats out of construction paper and learning about George Washington's heroics, you weren't taught that John Adams began each day with a tankard of cider, that the Mayflower was loaded with barrels of beer, or that after the war, Washington traded his sword for a whiskey still. That's because traditional histories don't usually mention that our colonial forefathers (and mothers) swam in a sea of booze from breakfast till bedtime.
Whether they were working, writing, selling goods, getting married, or even fighting, early Americans were often tipsy—their incessant drinking a cultural extension of Old World beliefs that fermented beverages were safer than water. The colonial-era day didn't begin until after a dram of bitters or stiffener of beer. Flip [Photos: Corin Hirsch] Pecan Porter: A Fall Ale Recipe - HomeBrewing.com. Porter quaffed down with a laugh, The gentry have their achin’ livers Water is all right in tea For fish and things that swim in rivers -Traditional Irish Drinking Song Porter is one of many people's favorite style of beer, warming and with a buzz that does not put one to sleep.
Once one has mastered the basic porter, a slightly sweet, nearly hop-less ale, it is time to spice the beer up with an experiment. A nutty pecan flavor goes very well with the chocolat-ey porter’s selection of flavoring malts. This recipe delivers a vigorous ale with a smooth blend of chocolate, malt, and pecan overtones that flow relatively seamlessly together, with only a light touch of hop flavor and around 6% alcohol content. Ingredients for 5 Gallon Batch: Sugars 8 ½ lbs. Directions for brewing: First, allow your flavoring malts and one cup of roasted pecans to soak in 3 gallons of your heated spring water for 20 minutes. Now, boil the wort for 30 minutes, stirring regularly.
Build a Ferm Chamber - BrewGeeks Homebrewing. Fire Mead. Fire Mead Ingredients 1 kg blackberry honey 3 black cardamom pods 6 cloves 2 dried ancho chili peppers 1 cup plain black tea 3 small blood oranges 1 pkg Lalvin EC-1118 Equipment 1 sanitizing vessel lots of sanitizer 1 - 2 x 1 gallon (3.78 L) glass carboy or other fermenting vessel 1 funnel 1 big metal spoon 1 coffee mug 1 brewing pot 1 pair of scissors 1 airlock setup 1 siphon hose, at least 4 ft in length 11 beer bottles and caps (or 5 pressure-capable 750 ml wine bottles and corks) Notes on Ingredients and Equipment Blackberry Honey: Any sweet honey with a nice fruity flavour will do, but blackberry is just sooo good.
Black Cardamom Pods: Other cardamoms can be used as a substitute but they won't give it a nice smoky flavour Blood Oranges: Try to get blood oranges because they have a certain intensity and tang, but any other sweet and sour orange will work great Sanitizing Vessel: This should be solid and large enough to hold all the equipment you need for each step of the brewing process. Home Brewing - Homebrew Kits and Homebrewing Supplies - HomeBrewing.com. Mike Beer - How to Save and Reuse Yeast. Updated 7/10/2012 Update: For the last couple years, I've been "saving" yeast a little differently than previously mentioned on this site.
Both methods work great and save a ton of money on yeast, but I find my new method to be a good way to preserve the quality of the yeast in case you won't be re-pitching it for awhile. Both methods are solid, so choose whatever best fits your brewing schedule/system. Yeast Starter Method (New) A friend of mine in the beer club mentioned using 2-liter plastic bottle blanks/preforms for saving yeast, and he knew someone at a plastic manufacturing plant that gave him a case of their "defects" which just means they didn't quite meet weight & size specifications.
I decided to try it out. Make a large (1500-2000ml with 1 cup DME) yeast starter, chill, and pitch your vial/smack-pack of yeast Allow the starter to ferment out completely. Where to find the Vials? I did a search for these vials online and they can be a little difficult to find. Quick Tips: Beer Recipes and Resources for Homebrewers. All-Grain, Extract, and Partial Mash Recipes. How to make Mead (Honey Wine) **UPDATE 7/01/10** Mead or honey wine is the oldest alcoholic drinks known to man. It is made from honey and water via fermentation with yeast. It may be still, carbonated, or sparkling; it may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet. Unlike beers and cider, meads (being wines) are drunk in small quantities. Therefore, we make them as strong as we can. The amount of alcohol we can make in meads is limited by the capacity of the yeast we add to withstand alcohol. And it is important to understand that yeast cannot live in a solution containing more than 14%of alcohol by volume.
This is the usual amount that will destroy the yeast. Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be brewed with spices, fruits, or grain mash. Mead is independently multicultural. Porterhouse Productions » 2012 4th Annual Traverse City Summer Microbrew & Music Festival. How to Make Beer (Cheaply, Simply): Step-By-Step Guide. This instructables was first published in Popular Mechanics. Yeast is an essential part of the beer process. These fungi feast on sugars, making alcohol as they go. The more yeast cells at work, the better the job they do at making alcohol. In this first step of the beer-making process, the yeast cells get a head start, hungrily dividing and populating as they feast on dry malt extract. Ingredients: 2 quarts water 6 ounces dry malt extract 1 package instant starter wort First, heat the water and malt to a boil for 10 minutes and then cool to 60 degrees F. Sanitize the gallon container with a no-rinse sterilizer or by following the manufacturer's instructions.