REMEMBERING WHEN: The home-brewed beer
By Keith Schell
Long before home brewing kits became popular, there were always do-it-yourselfers determined to brew their own adult beverages, aiming to have a little fun and save some money on beer or other alcoholic spirits. Many years ago, my grandma on my mother’s side had an aunt and uncle who brewed their own beer. When Grandma, Grandpa, and the kids visited them in the far north for a week of summer vacation, brewing their own beer became part of the grand social event of the week.
Our mother recalls the big potato pot on the stove cooking the barley, and the happy conversations in the kitchen surrounded by family as the women worked and gossiped while the men sat around the kitchen table telling tall tales and occasionally taste-testing the barley concoction. Meanwhile, the kids played underfoot as the big potato pot bubbled on the stove. When it was finally finished, they would put the freshly made beer into washed-out ginger ale bottles, capping them with corks, and store the beer for a few weeks to carbonate.
After supper, Grandma’s aunt would go into their previously stored reserves and get out enough ‘barley pops’ for the grown-ups to enjoy as they socialized for the evening. Because the contents of the stored bottles were under pressure, the foam would often come pouring out of the top when they were uncorked, and the corks would sometimes pop off with such force that they almost bounced off the ceiling!
To manage this, they usually dug out a large pot from the cupboard with a handle on one side and a spout on the other, setting it on the table to pour the pressurized contents into after opening the bottles. This way, they could save as much beer as possible for drinking that night.
However, the contents were usually under such pressure that if they opened the bottles too far away from the pot, the foam would spill out and end up all over the place before they could get it into the pot, similar to opening a champagne bottle. Everyone had to move quickly to get as much beer into the pot as they could. The men-folk in the family could move pretty fast when they were trying to save their beer! Once all the bottles for the evening were emptied into the pot, they would then evenly dole out the contents into everyone’s glasses. As much a social occasion as anything else, the week of vacation and visitation was always a happy time for kinfolk to catch up, reconnect, and share a few homemade pints together.
A good friend of mine once told me a story about his own father and a buddy brewing their own beer on an old hotplate in the family basement. Wanting to have a little fun and save money, they followed all the directions they had for brewing beer. When they deemed it ready for bottling, they capped it in old beer bottles washed out from previous weekends of socializing and stored it in the basement to let it properly age.
They were supposed to let it carbonate for two or three weeks, but one Sunday, maybe a week in, they were completely out of beer, and all the beer stores were closed on Sundays back then. They decided they could no longer wait for their concoction to properly age and made the decision to drink their handiwork right then and there.
With the anticipation of master brewers sampling a fresh new batch, they held a couple of bottles over the kitchen sink to catch the spillage and proceeded to open them. As the foam rushed out of the top, they quickly took a sampling sip of their new barley creation. By all accounts, it tasted horrible! But when you’re poor, you eat your mistakes, if you know what I mean, and following the philosophy of ‘waste not, want not,’ they toasted each other and proceeded to down the remainder of their skunky-tasting beer. Since it didn’t make them sick, they considered it a success! Hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? And since one beer is never enough to quench the thirst of the serious beer drinker, they opened up all of their homemade witches’ brew over the kitchen sink, toasted each other, braced themselves, and quaffed their horrible-tasting home-brewed beer until it was finally all gone.
More recently, my late best friend once tried brewing his own beer, buying a home brewing kit and doing everything from scratch. While the end result tasted a little skunky but was certainly drinkable, the time and effort he spent making it did not really justify the results. In his opinion, you would have to be a serious hobbyist and devote significant time and effort to make it worth your while. While it was fun to try once, it was just easier and less time-consuming for him to go to the beer store and simply buy whatever brand he wanted.
Some current-day adult alcohol aficionados will keep trying to brew their own home beverages in an attempt to have a little fun and save a little money, but honestly, I don’t think that any of the major brewers and the emerging microbrewery industries in the country are going to have much to worry about.
But hey, it’s always fun to have a hobby!
Cheers!