Beer Recipe - George Washington's Small Beer for his Birthday

Tuesday was George Washington’s birthday.  A lot of people think we don't celebrate it anymore, and instead celebrate "President's Day."  The truth is, these days are two different things, and we celebrate GW's birthday every year, but never on his actual birthday. 

In honor of our first president (and a huge fan of porter), I’ll offer you a brief bit of historical trivia about how Washington’s birthday was made a holiday and how, subsequently, it was made “not a holiday.”  Then, we’ll get down to the beer. 

While the third Monday of February is often called “Presidents’ Day” (or “President’s”, or “Presidents”), the official Federal Holiday is still “George Washington’s Birthday.”  Ironically, because of its designation as always falling on the third Monday of the month, it can never actually fall on President Washington’s actual birthday- or rather, on either of his birthdays.

How does he have two birthdays?  Because of the switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.  Under the Julian Calendar, Washington was born on February 11^th, 1732, but his birthday was retroactively “changed” to be February 22^nd when the US switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.  Since the official holiday of his birthday falls on the third Monday of February, it always falls between February 15^th and February 21^st, so the official holiday has been arranged never to fall on his original Julian birthday or the more modern Gregorian birthday.

Think that’s confusing?  Let’s add some more history and see how convoluted the Federal Government has really made celebrating the father of our country’s birthday.  In 1885, Chester A. Arthur declared February 22^nd to be an official holiday as George Washington’s birthday.  That was fine and good until 1968, when the Uniform Holidays Bill was passed, which changed how Washington’s birthday was officially recognized.  The confusion about the name “President’s Day” stems from the fact that Federal Holidays really only hold sway for Federal Employees and those living in the District of Columbia.  The rest of us abide by our State holidays.  Lots of states, in turn, eliminated one of the holidays in February and deemed the third Monday as “President’s Day” to honor both Washington and Lincoln. 

OK, enough boring history.  This is a beer blog, so let’s talk about what beer Washington would be drinking to celebrate his birthday..

Washington was a huge porter fan, and would probably have been drinking something dark, roasty, and delicious.  He might have even had a tankard or two of his own recipe for small beer, the history of which can be found on the website of the New York Public Library

The text of the recipe is as follows:

To make Small Beer

Take a large Sifter full of Bran Hops to your Taste. — Boil these 3 hours. Then strain out 30 Gallons into a Cooler, put in 3 Gallons Molasses while the Beer is scalding hot or rather drain the molasses into the Cooler & strain the Beer on it while boiling Hot. Let this stand till it is little more than Blood warm. Then put in a quart of Yeast if the weather is very cold, cover it over with a Blanket & let it work in the Cooler 24 hours. Then put it into the Cask — leave the Bung[hole] open till it is almost done working — Bottle it that day Week it was Brewed.

So, Washington liked his molasses porter, as well.  There’s some confusing language in here.  I believe it is probably due to the fact Washington was taking notes for himself, not for others. What are bran hops?  They are probably Bran and hops, since he capitalized hops and they are on the second line of the recipe. 

So, he has a large siffer (or sifter) or bran.  How big is that?  Well, we’ll have to make an educated guess, but it may be moot as far as recipe formulation.  Bran is actually the outer husk of a grain, not the part with the fermentable starches.  It’s a by-product of processing flour or grain into other edible things.  Some would say he intends to boil the outer husk of grain with his hops for three hours.  This is not unreasonable, but if you have a huge amount of them, the bran will put out a lot of headache-inducing tannins.  I would think the bran would be a small amount by volume. 

Since we don’t know for sure what kind of molasses was standard in Washington’s Days as a Colonel, his molasses may have simply been unrefined liquid sugar rather then the thicker, stickier (and stronger-tasting) molasses we get today after refining out all the white sugar we can get.  Anyone who has brewed with modern molasses will tell you the flavor is overwhelming when used in moderation, much less in this extreme volume.  

So, why would George brew with so much molasses?  Through much of the 1700's, there were few malt houses in the states, and malted grain was somewhat hard to come by and was pretty expensive.  Therefore, It was not uncommon in pre-revolutionary America to substitute other adjuncts for grain in beer (such as pumpkin, molasses, or fruit), so it is reasonable that his recipe would involve so much molasses due to the expense of brewing grains at the time.  While this was illegal for commercial breweries at the time, it was perfectly legal for the homebrewers such as Mr. Washington. 

So, if we assume my interpretation of the recipe is reasonably accurate and if we were to make a version of this recipe to brew at home, it might look something like this:

Small Beer

Recipe Type: All-grain (well, sort of)
Batch size: 5 gallons
Volume boiled: 6 gallons
Original Gravity: 1.053
Final Gravity: 1.012
Color: 30 Lovibond
Bitterness: 22.3 IBU
Alcohol: 5.3% ABV (approximately)

Ingredients:.5 lb barley or wheat bran (husks only)

6.25 lbs molasses (not blackstrap – should be lighter)
1.5 oz. fuggles pellets (5% AA) totaling 7.5 AAU, boiled 90 minutes – we won’t boil 3 hours, but will still get good results.
Yeast: London Ale Yeast (White Labs WLP005, Wyeast 1028, or SafAle S-04, or your preference)

Procedure:Pretty much follow George’s recipe.  Dump the bran and hops into the water as soon as you achieve a boil, and let ‘er rip for 90 minutes.  At the very end (I would recommend about 5-10 minutes before the end) stir in your half-gallon of molasses.  Flame out and cool it to 70 F and pitch your yeast.  Small beer was intended to be drunk right away, but if you want to add a little depth, you might try oak-aging the beer for a couple of weeks in secondary.  You may want to use some yeast nutrient, too, since there won’t be much to work with in this beer as far as proteins and enzymes.  Prime and bottle or keg according to your preference, but it should probably have lower carbonation.

Before you take the leap to brew this historic recipe for yourself, please realize I offer no guarantees.  I have not yet brewed this beer, though I keep meaning to.  I even have a full gallon of molasses waiting for me to do it.  It may taste extremely odd due to the heavy use of molasses, and your yeast health will be a big concern without using any malted grain.  When I brew it, I’ll probably add some yeast nutrient and treat it like a mead recipe to make sure I have healthy fermentation.

If you do brew this recipe or one like it, please let me know how it turns out.  I really want to know more about how it would work out, and what kind of results others have had with it.