44 years ago, when I first got into the business of promoting the timeless virtues of better beer (when the availability of superior beer could hardly be taken for granted), a key point quickly emerged.
If you wish to sell better beer to consumers, you first must teach consumers why better beer matters.
I’ll always liken this process to the regimen facing elementary school teachers, because whether they like it or not, the very same lessons must be taught to different batches of 2nd graders, year in and year out.
It’s true with better beer, too.
There’ll always be potential adherents walking through the metaphorical door who are vaguely receptive to better beer, but unaware of its meaning. They need instruction, encouragement and cajoling, along with reasons to understand and believe.
Helping them learn is an exercise best achieved by means of accurate information, because facts matter and can assist in the decision-making process. And, while it might seem counter-intuitive, those arrivals seemingly least equipped with facts usually are the easiest ones to assist.
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Customers are approaching. They appear tentative and uncertain. You greet them with a smile.
“Hi, it’s my first time here.”
“Thanks for coming. What can I do for you?”
“I know this is a ‘beer place,’ except I don’t like beer at all. What else do you have to drink?”
“We have wine and spirits, even alcohol-free tropical kiwi civet seltzer, but if you don’t mind my asking, which beers have you tasted and didn’t care for?”
“Oh, I’ve tried them all – Coors Banquet, Michelob Ultra, PBR, Bud Light, whatever. They’re all nasty.”
“Agreed. They are awful. But here’s a wee taste of a beer style we call ‘anything that isn’t gimpy golden-colored fizzy lager.’ We have many examples of it on draft.”
A timid taste is taken, orchestral rumblings swell, and the clouds grandly part.
“Wow, this is beer? This tastes like bananas/coffee/citrus/pumpernickel. I had no idea beer could be like this.”
“Yes, it can be like this. Let’s go find one for you.”
—
Today, kindly allow me to pontificate about a beer news item that I find to be misleading and ultimately pointless, namely the Father of Our Country’s pre-revolutionary homebrew recipe.
What sort of beer was it?
Does this matter?
Should we pander, or teach?
A common topic of discussion during educational chats with newbies and seasoned beer drinkers alike, particularly those interested in history, customarily goes something like this: How did beer taste before a particular point in time?
- Before Elon Musk
- Before Prohibition
- Before the arrival of substantial numbers of German immigrants to the New World
- Before the development of the microscope
- Before the use of hops as a preservative and flavoring agent
Entire books and lengthy careers have been devoted to the consideration of “what did beer taste like back then?”, and I can do no more than skim the surface at today’s column length.
However, my overarching summary of a glib answer is that beer tends not to taste as it did “before” these and other historical developments. Just as each snowflake is different, no single batch of beer has ever been exactly the same, and as raw materials, techniques and historical epochs have evolved, flux is a constant.
Serve it cold enough, and you won’t be able to taste the differences (or the beer) anyway.
Hip Hops: Cold beer conversation (a little truth, a little frustration)
However, we can readily specify one fundamental difference between beers as they’ve been brewed these past few hundred years, a distinction capable of providing beer drinkers with generally reliable and utilitarian means of cracking the code: fermentation temperature, and the strains of yeasts that work best at different fermentation temperatures.
Historically, ales are fermented at warmer temperatures, and lagers at cooler temperatures. Warm fermentation tends to result in fermentation by-products, which are flavors and aromas sought after in particular ale styles.
Conversely, cool fermentation mutes or eliminates these by-products, yielding a “cleaner” palate found in lagers.
In general terms, the history of beer can be viewed as comprising two eras: BL (before lager brewing) and AL (after lager brewing). Ales harken back to BL, brewing’s localized and eclectic roots over millennia.
Lager brewing came about more recently, AL (say, since the late 1700s), and reflects the gradual application of the scientific method to the brewing process. In modern times, whether one is brewing ales or lagers, science enables consistency from batch to batch.
Ales and lagers are two branches of the same tree. One grouping is not “better” than the other. Rather, they are different, each boasting styles and sub-styles that reflect the diversity of geography, agriculture and human experience.
Knowing that English Best Bitter (an ale) and Bavarian Doppelbock (a lager) each have their own histories and characteristics provides information that helps better beer drinkers decide what qualities they prefer.
Unless, of course, timid expedience mucks up the lesson.
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Allow me to explain why I’m annoyed by this “lager revival” of George Washington’s 1757 ale recipe, and find it misleading. It’s a simple, everyday ale being touted as interesting and important, then senselessly recast as a lager, which isn’t the same thing at all.
To me, the conceptual switcheroo blatantly panders to consumers by “appealing to modern tastes,” engendering the sort of vapid anti-educational cosplay that can only create confusion.
Let’s begin with the original breathless headline: George Washington’s 1757 beer recipe revived ahead of America’s 250th anniversary, by Jarrett Wright (at WHAS)
The subheading is reasonably accurate: “The original recipe calls for bran hops, molasses, water and yeast, producing a beverage with relatively low alcohol content.”
But the most important aspect of the recipe is omitted: the yeast, and by extension, the fermentation temperature. Let’s go through it in greater detail, with the original text in italics.
NEW YORK — A beer recipe handwritten by George Washington over 250 years ago is getting a modern revival as the United States prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
For background, George Washington owned a plantation, defined as “a large agricultural estate dedicated to producing high-value cash crops for export to Europe.”
Sidestepping a discussion of slavery as the integral component of plantation labor, let’s focus on something that periodically confounds religious moralists of the sort who content that Biblical wine had no alcohol: Why do farmers concoct alcoholic beverages in the first place?
Farmers grow crops for personal consumption, but more importantly, to sell them. Alcohol is a preservative; it’s a means of preserving the crop’s nutrient and cash values. Bourbon aficionados understand it; a small-time farmer in the hills raising corn eats a little bit of it but makes the rest into whisky, a finished product suitable to swap for a pig or a cast iron bathtub.
Washington’s handwritten recipe, titled “To Make Small Beer,” appears in a military journal now housed in the New York Public Library’s collections. Historians say “small beer” was a low-alcohol beverage commonly consumed during the colonial era. According to George Washington’s Mount Vernon, the recipe was likely written around 1757 while Washington was stationed at Fort Loudon and may have served as a regular drink for troops.
“Small beer” produced in this context wouldn’t have been intended as a beverage for aging, with the lower alcoholic content implying immediate (“present”) use as refreshment that also contained a few calories as a nutritional supplement. And, because the water was boiled to make small beer, it was sterilized, and thus safe for drinking.
The original recipe calls for bran, hops, molasses, water and yeast, producing a beverage with relatively low alcohol content. Historians note that small beer was widely consumed in the 18th century and even perhaps an occasional substitute for water among troops.
It was likely more than an “occasional” substitute. Historians have found daily rations of beverage alcohol of many types and strengths to be a military tradition since ancient times.
The New York Public Library has partnered with New York City-based Talea Beer Company to recreate a beverage inspired by Washington’s recipe. The project is part of the library’s “250 Years: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” programming commemorating the nation’s semiquincentennial.
At this juncture, the train’s derailment is underway, as reflected in these words: “Inspired by Washington’s recipe.”
I can accept that small beer brewed today according to Washington’s notes might not be the sort of concoction calculated to inculcate caterwauling costumery.
However, there is a precedent in the Poor Richard’s Ale project dating to Benjamin Franklin’s tercentennial in 2006, in that the original ingredients and founding intent are capable of being honored realistically, if altered slightly to reflect contemporary realities.
Hip Hops: NABC’s Old Lightning Rod is ready for Ben Franklin’s 320th birthday (17 Jan. ’26)
Poor Richard’s Ale was a recipe that remained somewhat true to the raw materials, using modern ale yeast strains and ramped up a bit in terms of strength, keeping intact the fundamental intent.
It is true that for all the importance we place in tradition when it comes to brewing, it has always been an adaptive, elastic pursuit. Post-Colonial brewing that followed Franklin’s (and Washington’s) time changed, too; during the earliest days of European settlement in America, brewers used whatever raw materials they had to do their job. As more customary malts and hops became available, beer recipes were refitted to accommodate the new circumstances.
Then the Central Europeans arrived in earnest beginning in the 1840s, and the brewing world turned upside down with the lager revolution. Ale brewing was relegated to the fringes, but even then, brewers from Germany were compelled to adjust to six-row barley.
The point: Washington’s 1757 ale recipe has nothing whatever to do with lager brewing.
But…
Rather than simply reproducing the historic beverage, Talea worked with the library to create a contemporary interpretation called Liberty Lager. According to the brewery, the beer was designed to honor Washington’s original recipe while appealing to modern tastes.
Now we’ve derailed. One thing we can be reasonably certain about is that George Washington’s recipe for present-use, small beer yielded what we know as ale, a beer fermented at warm temperatures, as opposed to a lager, a beer fermented at cool temperatures.
Lager brewing did not arrive in the United States to any appreciable degree until the period just prior to the American Civil War. This is because advances in lager brewing expertise in Germany and Central Europe coincided with immigration patterns from these areas, meaning that when America exploded from the gate after the war’s conclusion, lager suited the scale and tenor of the times, and became the preferred fuel for growth.
But none of these circumstances existed during Washington’s time.
Converting his small beer from an ale into a lager contradicts the entire reason for the exercise and stands to mislead countless samplers into thinking that lager was being consumed at Valley Forge. Besides, Anchor Brewing’s legendary Liberty Ale should have dibs on the usage.
ABC New York reported that Talea also produced a limited batch that more closely followed Washington’s original formula, while Liberty Lager serves as the version intended for broader public consumption.
So, the “limited” batch remains somewhat authentic, and useful as an educational tool, while the “broader public consumption” involves a beer focusing on a descriptor and a process (lager) that was meaningless when Washington recorded his recipe.
It’s as if we’d nonsensically seek to recreate the feed supplied to Civil War cavalry horses in terms of its octane.
So, yet again, better beer surrenders, ceding the field of play to the pretenders, with hokum and cosplay invited to rule the day.
Perhaps at some point the better beer biz might gaze longingly into any available full-length mirror and ask itself how and why incessantly invoked inauthenticity came to be the magical solution to cyclical disinterest.
Because: When authenticity is gone, exactly what is left to provide a foundation of greater understanding, for beer or anything else that makes life worth living?
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In closing, a few topical links, beginning with our besieged friend Kirk up north.
From Kirk Bangstad, owner of Wisconsin’s Minocqua Brewing Company (Facebook)
The dust has settled from last night’s mayhem, where I spent an hour before being intentionally intimidated by the Secret Service and FBI posting warnings on our two largest social channels–Facebook and Substack–that I might be detained and that people shouldn’t believe a word of what might be reported about me unless it came from my own representatives.
Local beer people discuss local beer issues.
From cheers to tears: LBF talks to Apocalypse Brew’s Leah Dienes and other experts about the soft state of the craft beer industry, by Olivia Estright (Louisville Business First)
Over the past two years, the brewery industry has been leveling off on a national and local level. Since last fall, Louisville has seen several breweries close taprooms or production facilities as a whole.
Beer can be made from a great many things. But just because you can, doesn’t mean…
It’s bottoms up with new ‘chip beer’ at Bruges chippy, by Colin Clapson (Flanders News)
“The initiative came about as a result of the potato crisis. We’d discussed the problem with our potato farmer. We already have our own beer, so I went to our brewer and asked him to make one with potatoes, and he was up for it. Potatoes are actually already being used to make certain types of vodka.”
And, America’s entrenched swillocracy remains beholden to a MAGA of its very own: Make America Gag Again. But the funniest part to me is how easily this horrendous product’s name can be corrected and made accurate: KRAPPLE.
Keystone Light Responds to Busch Light Apple with “Kapple” Ahead of America’s 250th Celebration at The Beer Connoisseur
KRAPPLE
Keystone Light is taking things a notch higher with Kapple – a light beer with a hint of apple flavor and a clean, crisp finish.
Previously at Hip Hops:
Hip Hops: A foamy Budvar tutorial with the “Beer Pope” at Vienna’s fabled Schweizerhaus
Roger Baylor is an entrepreneur, educator, and innovator with 44 years of beer business experience in metropolitan Louisville as a bartender, package store clerk, brewery owner, restaurateur, writer, traveler, polemicist, homebrewing club founder, tour operator and all-purpose contrarian.
As a co-owner (1990 – 2018) of New Albanian Brewing Company Pizzeria & Public House in New Albany, Indiana – founded in 1987, 1992, 2002 and 2009 – Roger played a seminal role in metro Louisville’s contemporary beer renaissance. He was beer director at Pints&union in New Albany from 2018 through 2023.
Roger’s “Hip Hops” columns on beer-related subjects have been a fixture since 2005 in Food & Dining Magazine, where he currently serves as associate editor and contributor. He is a former columnist at both the New Albany Tribune and LEO Weekly, and founder of the NA Confidential blog (2004 – 2020). Visit RogerBaylor.com for more.
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