How did one make Prohibition homebrew?

[Fletch]

OK. Let's say it's 1930 and I have acquired a can of this stuff:

I also have a couple big old glass carboys, purchased under the pretext that I want to make my own root beer; a cool cellar with a hidey hole or two; and a reliable supply of water (probably hard, if it matters).

How far away am I from making homebrew with the supplies and raw materials available in that day?
What's it going to taste like? How strong will it be? How strong can it be?
Most importantly, what will it take for the feds to catch on and muscle me downtown?

 

[LizzieMaine]

You'd write to the address on the malt can for their Free Recipe Book. You'd get a nice printed booklet back telling you how to use malt syrup for baking and such. About a week letter you'd get a plain brown envelope with no return address containing a mimeographed sheet with the recipe for making beer. About two weeks later they'd be taking you to the hospital after one of the glass jugs exploded in your face while you were checking on it.

 

[1961MJS]

Hi

If memory serves, you could brew for personal use, but selling it was bad, very bad.

Later

 

[Flicka]

I've made home brew - or rather, my ex and his friend did when we were young. It's not hard, and they used yeast, dried malt extract and hops, as well as sugar/syrup and whatever they wanted for flavouring. One of the better brews was a darker beer where they swapped part of the sugar for lingonberry jam. Another pretty good had juniper berries for flavouring.

You boil the malt etc into a dark sort of base (in Swedish it's "vört" but I have no idea what it's called in English) and let it cool, then add it to the water and yeast and wait for it to ferment. You''ll need plenty of glass bottles, because after you strain away the yeast, you bottle it and add extra sugar in order to give it "fizz". Takes a couple of weeks, but it's not like you need anything fancy or like it's massively hard. Strength depends on the ratio of sweetener/yeast and fermentation time.

Yes, if this was the Prohibition you'd all be lining up to go into business with me!

ETA: It can taste any way you want it too, basically, depending on the recipe. You can make pale American style beer (what my mother calls "baby wee" ) or dark, thick beer. Neither is more difficult. The hardest thing is making sure there are no traces of yeast left, because otherwise it tastes urk! And you can get it pretty strong - running it up to 7-8% or even higher isn't that hard. Not that I ever would, ahem, because that's illegal.

 

[Noirblack]

With that can you have the basic ingredients you need. This is basically a home brew "dump and stir" kit that is still available today. Assuming the amounts are still the same as today's guidelines, you just boil up some water on the stovetop, add the malt and boil it for a few minutes, then dump it into your primary fermenter along with cold water for a grand total of about 5 gallons.

Once the mixture is cool enough you add your yeast. I don't know if brewer's yeast was illegal in during prohibition. I can't see how it could have been - it would have been like making bacteria illegal. I imagine that you could buy the yeast where you bought the malt. Budweiser is a lager, so you'd need a specific lager yeast. Worst case scenario you could use bread yeast, but the flavour would be pretty lame. If it were me and I couldn't get brewer's yeast, I'd just leave the lid off the primary fermenter for a day or two and let wild yeast in. This is how some beers in Belgium are made. The yeast will have a large impact on the flavour.

Put the primary fermenter in the coolest location you can (since this is a lager). Let it ferment out. This will only take three or four days. Once it stops gassing off CO2 it's basically fermented.

Then siphon the liquid into your carboy. You siphon it so it leaves behind all the residue that has settled to the bottom of the primary fermenter. Let it sit for up to a week in a cool place.

Then it is bottling time. Siphon the liquid back into the cleaned out primary fermenter, leaving more gunk behind in the carboy. Add a bit of sugar (about quarter cup) dissolved in water into the liquid. You need to do this because the yeast needs a bit more food to produce CO2 to carbonate within the beer within the bottles.

You have enough for about 60 bottles of beer. Siphon into the bottles and then cap them. Put this in a cool place for about a month and then it should be ready to drink. There will be some yeast residue in the bottom of each bottle, so you pour the beer slowly into a glass, leaving the yeast behind.

Cleanliness is very important when home brewing. Anything that touches the beer needs to be clean. Nowadays there are solutions made specifically for this.

You final product is going to be from 4 to 5 % alcohol. What determines this is the amount of sugar the yeast consumes from the malt. If you wanted more kick to it you could just add in more sugar at the beginning for the yeast to consume, but a higher alcohol content in a lager wouldn't make sense.

Home brewing is easy once you get the hang of it.

Home brewing beer was actually illegal in the US until the late 1970s according to the American Homebrewers Association:

The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, enacting prohibition in 1919, made homebrewing in the U.S. illegal. The 21st Amendment repealed prohibition in 1933, however, the implementing legislation that went with the repeal of prohibition mistakenly left out the legalization of home beer making (home wine making was legalized at that time).

On October 14, 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed H.R. 1337, which contained an amendment sponsored by Senator Alan Cranston creating an exemption from taxation for beer brewed at home for personal or family use. This exemption went into effect in February 1979.

 

[Flicka]

Home brewing here is illegal if the result is alcoholic, so all recipes say how to make non-alcoholic beer and add "you could add xxx amount of sugar here but that would be illegal". So we... I mean, they... naturally did not.

The Egyptians actually made weak beer from bread dissolved in water. I bet it wasn't much like Bud!

 

[Noirblack]

:beer:

Yes, always be careful to avoid the possibility of intoxication

 

[Stanley Doble]

You can buy home beer making kits that look the same as the can on the billboard. They come with yeast and instructions. Home brewing is a popular hobby. Brewing beer from malt syrup would be very much the same today as it was back then although there is a lot more modern equipment available.

People made their own wine from grapes too. You could buy the grapes and press them, or buy the fresh grape juice. An Italian friend told me his family always made their own wine and still does. The old timers put the juice in the carboy, add the yeast, and the result is whatever God sends. The more modern method involves hydrometers, Brix testing, adding sugar or other substances because the juice is not the same every year, it depends on the weather .

This is the wine that is on the table in a carafe at meal times.

There are also recipes for making your own liquor. They mostly depend on getting your hands on some grain alcohol. Grain alcohol was made for industrial uses such as making vanilla, lemon and other extracts for baking, for making perfume, after shave and similar toiletries, and for making liniment and patent medicines.

If you knew the right people you could get a 5 gallon can of alcohol, dilute it with water, add the appropriate flavor and color to produce your own gin, whiskey, brandy, etc. Gin was the easiest and most popular for bootleggers. There are recipes in old books for bartenders and hotel keepers that were published 30 or 40 years before prohibition. 5 gallons of alcohol would make 25 gallons of 40 proof liquor.

 

[Fletch]

I don't know if brewer's yeast was illegal in during prohibition. I can't see how it could have been - it would have been like making bacteria illegal. I imagine that you could buy the yeast where you bought the malt. Budweiser is a lager, so you'd need a specific lager yeast.

Anheuser-Busch had you covered.

 

[Noirblack]

Whoa! That is a lot of yeast! When I used dry yeast the amount you would put in was pretty small. It was bigger than a sugar packet - maybe equivalent to 2 or 3 sugar packets. Then I got into liquid yeast and that made the beer much tastier.

 

[kiwilrdg]

About two weeks later they'd be taking you to the hospital after one of the glass jugs exploded in your face while you were checking on it.

Not a problem, if you read the instructions. You shouldn't ferment beer in a sealed container without a vent

My grandmother taught me how she made beer during prohibition with grain, or with malt extract. She used the tub of an old (even old then) wringer washing machine to ferment it in. As long as the foam is on top there is a barrier to prevent contamination with wild yeast. I use a pail with a fermentation lock (because I have one). The procedure is really a lot like making old style carbonated sodas except the fermentation is long enough to have more kick.
She also taught me how to make potato mash and a still with pots and pans and a large bowl that could be disassembled when you are done so there was no trace of a still (except the jar of ethanol).

Those products were available before prohibition as well. Malt syrup can also be used for baking, flavoring drinks, making various malt sodas, and even as an apatite stimulator for sick children and animals. Yeast is kneaded for bread making (pun intended). The extra benefit of the ability to make beer is a side benefit.

 

[anon`]

Carboys don't explode, ever, even if you don't have an airlock or other vent. The pressure from fermentation will blow the stopper long before the glass is even close to danger. Bottle bombs, on the other hand...

Anyway, you wouldn't even necessarily need malt extract, if you have a couple extra kettles and burners. And at it's most basic level, malting grain isn't even that difficult, though making specialty grains is probably beyond your average bear.

But let's say you lack the space, equipment, time, or effort to head down the all grain route. You'd do it just like we do today: get your malt extract (which, as far as I know, works more or less as has been suggested), boil a bunch of water with your hops, add the extract at some point, maybe add some extra hops, then cool it all down to around 60ºF. Then you stick it in some kind of more-or-less closed container, along with a cup or so of yeast slurry, and let it ferment. Even in an open container, vigorous fermentation will kill any bacteria that lands in the brewing beer. (Though indeed, Belgian and California steam ales both rely on infection from natural yeast and bacteria for their characteristic flavor profiles.) Four to six weeks later, you have warm, flat beer.

Take that warm, flat beer and carefully (to avoid oxygenating it) mix it with a small amount of water, into which you have dissolved some kind of simpe sugar (corn starch works well, as does table sugar and a variety of other simply carbohydrates), and then proceed to fill bottles. Or casks. Whatever. Cap them off and let sit for at least another week or two.

Beery goodness awaits! And it'll probably taste fairly decent, as well.

 

[jamespowers]

My father used to make cherry jack. You get a five gallon crock, a large can of cherries, sugar and yeast. Put them together with water and let it sit for a few weeks---adding sugar along the way to the desired strength. When it stops bubbling then you can strain it through cheese cloth and bottle or jar it up.
It is pretty darned strong. I think you could run your car on it if you don't have one of those newfangled converter things.

 

[David Conwill]

You boil the malt etc into a dark sort of base (in Swedish it's "vört" but I have no idea what it's called in English)

In English it's called wort.

I love cognates!

 

[Retro_GI_Jane]

My father used to make cherry jack. You get a five gallon crock, a large can of cherries, sugar and yeast. Put them together with water and let it sit for a few weeks---adding sugar along the way to the desired strength. When it stops bubbling then you can strain it through cheese cloth and bottle or jar it up.
It is pretty darned strong. I think you could run your car on it if you don't have one of those newfangled converter things.

This sounds quite good actually. My husband is already making some blackberry wine, I might have to have him give a go on the cherries when he's done bottling this batch.

 

[jamespowers]

This sounds quite good actually. My husband is already making some blackberry wine, I might have to have him give a go on the cherries when he's done bottling this batch.

let me know how it turns out.

 

[kiwilrdg]

My father used to make cherry jack. You get a five gallon crock, a large can of cherries, sugar and yeast. Put them together with water and let it sit for a few weeks---adding sugar along the way to the desired strength. When it stops bubbling then you can strain it through cheese cloth and bottle or jar it up.
It is pretty darned strong. I think you could run your car on it if you don't have one of those newfangled converter things.

To get strong enough alcohol to run a car you would need to do a bit more. About 12-15% alcohol is the highest that you will get with just fermentation, and that is with special yeast. You would need to either distill the result or remove some water by freezing it and skimming off the ice crystals to get a strong enough mix to run a car.

Of course the wonderful flavor of the fruit means you would not want to even think about putting something like that in an engine.

 

[jamespowers]

To get strong enough alcohol to run a car you would need to do a bit more. About 12-15% alcohol is the highest that you will get with just fermentation, and that is with special yeast. You would need to either distill the result or remove some water by freezing it and skimming off the ice crystals to get a strong enough mix to run a car.

Of course the wonderful flavor of the fruit means you would not want to even think about putting something like that in an engine.

I have no idea how he did it but it was strong. 12-15% is like beer. This was much worse than that. Perhaps it sat around long enough for water to evaporate.

 

[Fletch]

12-15% is strong for beer - altho there are much stronger.

 

[kiwilrdg]

The strength would be like wine, which it is unless you fortify it or concentrate it. I have always heard that jacks were either distilled, concentrated by freezing, or fortified with straight alcohol.

Acohol will evaporate more readily than water. (or strong alcohol will absorb water from the air.)

Don't forget that proof is 2X the percentage of alcohol.

Fruity alcohol drinks always seem like they are more powerful than they are because they are so easy to drink the alcohol hits you before you realize how much you drank.