Grandpa's Beer Recipe

[grizzly2378]

So, turns out my grandpa was a homebrewer too. He passed away the year before I was born, so i never knew him, but my mom gave me a framed copy of a handwritten beer recipe he used sometime back in the 1940s-70s. From what I hear, grandpa was infamous for never divulging everything in his recipes (how to properly make his famous fudge is still a family mystery) and his handwriting is horrible, but here's the gist of what I could decipher:

Grandpa's Beer

1 qt malt
1 pkg hops
1 cake glutinous yeast
1 pkg gelatin
3 cups cane sugar
Boil 90 minutes
Dissolve yeast cake
Ferment for 72 hrs
Bottle

I can only assume he used malt extract of some sort. Cluster hops? Who knows what kind of yeast, possibly just bread yeast? I can't really decipher how big the batch size is from his recipe, maybe 2-3 gallons. Don't know if I could really replicate this, or if I really want to...it kinda looks like a recipe for prison hooch . But, I still thought it was pretty cool regardless. I guess homebrewing runs in the family!

 

[ong]

Yeah, it seems a bit generic! A cool keepsake to have, though.

If you do try to replicate this, be really careful about the old-school strategy of letting the beer mostly ferment, then bottle carbonating with the rest of the original sugar! It's such an imprecise way to carbonate that I'll bet there are a far number of bottle bombs.

 

[compumasta]

You totally should try to reproduce it.


I have a feeling...

 

[sboyajian]

While it might seem generic, this was probably pretty standard for the day. 1940's didn't exactly have the same access to ingredients that we have now. Most beers were quite literally a can of malt, a package of hops, and a crap ton of sugar.

Looks like grandpa was the cool one in his group of friends..