- 12 oz. bran
- 2 oz. hops
- 1½ lb. demerara sugar
- 1 dessert spoonful black treacle
- ¼ oz. citric acid – yeast – nutrient
Boil hops in a quart of water for fifteen minutes and strain into fermenting vessel. Boil bran for half an hour in half a gallon of water and allow to soak in the hot water after boiling for a further half hour. Strain into fermenting vessel and add treacle, sugar and citric acid. Make up to two gallons with boiling water, stirring until sugar and treacle are dissolved. Allow to cool to 65°-70°F and then add yeast and nutrient.
Cover and allow to ferment as directed for other beers.
- 2 oz. hops
- 1 lb. black treacle
- 1 lb. white sugar
- ⅞ oz. citric acid – yeast – nutrient
Boil hops in quart water for fifteen minutes. Strain into fermenting vessel, and add citric acid, sugar and treacle and make up to two gallons with boiling water. Stir well to ensure sugar and treacle are dissolved and then allow to cool to 65°-70°F. Add yeast and nutrient, cover as directed for other beers and allow to ferment as advised for these. This may be made as either a sparkling or draught beer.
- 3 oz. hops
- 1½ lb. demerara sugar
- 1 tablespoonful black treacle
- ¼ oz. citric acid (or juice 2 lemons) – yeast – nutrient
Boil hops in a quart of water for fifteen minutes. Strain into fermenting vessel and add citric acid, sugar and treacle and make up to two gallons with boiling water, stirring till all dissolves. Allow to cool to 65°-70°F and add yeast and nutrient.
Cover as directed for other beers and leave to ferment in the manner advised for these.
This beer may be made as a draught beer or sparkling variety.
- 1 gallon young stinging nettle tops
- 2 oz. hops½ oz. root ginger
- 2 lb. dark malt extract
- 1½ lb. demerara sugar
- ¼ oz. citric acid (or juice two lemons) – yeast – nutrient
- 2 gallons water
Wash nettle tops and allow to drain for a few minutes. Put them into boiler with hops, malt and root ginger and boil for fifteen minutes. Put sugar and citric acid into fermenting vessel and strain the boiling liquid on to it, stirring until all sugar is dissolved.
Allow to cool to 65°-70°F then add yeast and nutrient, cover as already directed and leave to ferment in the way recommended for other beers. This may be sparkling or of draught variety. For directions for making either way see beer recipes in other chapters.
Definitely a refresher beer.
- 2½ tablespoonsful spruce essence
- 1 lb. sugar
- 1 lb. pale malt extract
- ⅛ oz. citric acid or juice of 1 lemon – yeast – nutrient
- 2 gallons water
Put malt and sugar in boiler and add half a gallon of water, bring to boil and simmer for five minutes. Pour into fermenting vessel and add citric acid and spruce essence. Allow to cool to 65°-70°F and add yeast and nutrient. Cover as directed for other beers and allow to ferment as for these. This is best made as draught beer, therefore merely allow fermentation to go on until beer goes ‘flat’, and then bottle.
Best if kept for at least two weeks.
Spruce essence is available from any chemist.
The recipes in this short chapter make what are popularly called ‘mock beers’, and that is precisely what they are. The fact that they are called beers at all is probably because they are too low in alcohol to be called wines and that where one recipe calls for the use of hops another needs some malt. In some recipes both malt and hops are used in smaller amounts than those used for true beers.
Like all aspects of home wine making and beer brewing, the making of mock beers is becoming more popular every day. Messing about in the cellar, kitchen or outhouse, knocking up all sorts of alcoholic drinks has taken such a hold on the country that I shall not be surprised to find a bottle of something fermenting under the seat of my train one morning, or to see a fermentation lock sticking out of my neighbor’s brief case.
If the trend continues, and I can safely predict that it will because we are no longer working in the dark with only hearsay and near-witchcraft to guide us, there will be hardly a household in the country not making some sort of beverage from low alcohol beers to strong beers and high alcohol wines fit for royalty.
The type of yeast is not important in these recipes, but do not use fresh baker’s yeast as this is likely to 87 impart a ‘yeasty’ flavor, or bakehouse mustiness to the beer. A good dried yeast in granulated form is useful. Do not use expensive wine yeast as this would be wasteful because the characteristics imparted to wines by good quality wine yeasts would be lost in these beers.
