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rdneckbrew

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So after seeing a couple of these "Prepper" shows I was wondering....if things went to hell would you have the grains and such to keep you in beer for awhile? Is there some other non traditional ingredients or methods you would use to brew?

Also, has anyone tried making a beer without all the modern conveniences?

I myself would be screwed as I have nothing in stock. Right now I just buy what I need for the most current brew.

Lets hear your ideas!
 
My club did a grocery store contest a few months ago. You could only buy ingredients from the local super market.

Everyone was super excited for this contest and most participated. I would like to say the results were great....but they weren't. Only 1 person made something that was drinkable. The rest of us ended up with swill.
 
I'd be more worried about food sources than beer. It's been said that most cities are 2 weeks from starvation if the transportation system broke down and no more food could be delivered. With that said, I live on a grain farm and if I could get my hands on some seed barley (easily done now) I could brew for years. Hops would be the biggest problem for me but there are some growing wild on my place that I could cultivate to produce much more than they do at present.
 
Food would be the first thing I would worry about. Once I had that down( not hard I almost already do) I would move on to wines and Meads. Beer would be gone simply because my grain that I would be growing would be saved for bread and you know stuff that actually keeps me alive and not something I really don't have to have.
 
Diaperload said:
My club did a grocery store contest a few months ago. You could only buy ingredients from the local super market.

Everyone was super excited for this contest and most participated. I would like to say the results were great....but they weren't. Only 1 person made something that was drinkable. The rest of us ended up with swill.

That sounds really interesting. Could you elaborate a bit more? I'd be interested in some of the ideas people came up with and what was the one that actually was drinkable made from.
 
I agree with the above posts....if that scenario occurred; you probably would be making flour with that barley for food instead of mashing is to make beer.

Luxuries like alcohol are a mark that a civilization has sorted itself out a bit.
 
I'd be making beer with some of my grains. It would give me safe drinking water. It would provide a lot of good calories. I'd have something good to trade for other stuff I don't have. Most importantly it would make fighting off hoards of renegade bikers (see Mad Max) much more palatable. :D
 
Food would be the first thing I would worry about. Once I had that down( not hard I almost already do) I would move on to wines and Meads. Beer would be gone simply because my grain that I would be growing would be saved for bread and you know stuff that actually keeps me alive and not something I really don't have to have.

I agree with the above posts....if that scenario occurred; you probably would be making flour with that barley for food instead of mashing is to make beer.

Luxuries like alcohol are a mark that a civilization has sorted itself out a bit.

But beer and wine are NOT luxuaries in an area where water is bad to drink. If the SHTF, then not only is food scarce, but so is water. (and heating sources). Most of us live off a pumped water system, and thus would be in serious trouble to find clean water.

Yeast in beer and in bread do a bit of B vitamin generation that doesn't happen in the grain. The advantage of beer or wine over bread is that you don't heat it post yeast and destroy any of the low temp nutrients that get created. There is a reason why monks in the middle ages lived off beer, particularly in the winter.

That said, recycling the grain for secondary use (bread, animals, etc) would be a necessity.

to the OP's original question? I'd be in deep trouble. I have no reserves of food, grains, or fruit for making anything.
 
But beer and wine are NOT luxuaries in an area where water is bad to drink. If the SHTF, then not only is food scarce, but so is water. (and heating sources). Most of us live off a pumped water system, and thus would be in serious trouble to find clean water.

Yeast in beer and in bread do a bit of B vitamin generation that doesn't happen in the grain. The advantage of beer or wine over bread is that you don't heat it post yeast and destroy any of the low temp nutrients that get created. There is a reason why monks in the middle ages lived off beer, particularly in the winter.

That said, recycling the grain for secondary use (bread, animals, etc) would be a necessity.

to the OP's original question? I'd be in deep trouble. I have no reserves of food, grains, or fruit for making anything.

Making water safe via fermentation is a multi-day process. Having safe drinking water is a requirement within hours. You'll die of dehydration or a water-borne disease while you wait for your beer to be ready.

Besides, having safe drinking water is a simple affair if you boil it.

Lastly, beer is largely lacking in nutrients. Monks lived on beer, but it was part of a fast. The people who say "but it has Vitamin B!" appear to have a poor grasp of nutrition. Yeah its got vitamin B and not much else.

Making beer is a input-and resource-rich process that makes little sense to do if you are fighting to acquire the basics for life. Spending 6 hours to make beer is 6 hours you won't have to harvest food, make potable water, build shelter,etc.
 
To make water potable you need to boil it for a fraction of the time that it takes to make beer and use a fraction of the fuel to do it. When beer/wine was safer was before the idea of waterborn diseases came from bacteria and whatnot. We now know better.
 
I agree with the above posts....if that scenario occurred; you probably would be making flour with that barley for food instead of mashing is to make beer.

Luxuries like alcohol are a mark that a civilization has sorted itself out a bit.

Except that beer was a staple because colonies did not have clean water to drink. Amidst the apaocolypse, are you gonna trust your tap?
 
To make water potable you need to boil it for a fraction of the time that it takes to make beer and use a fraction of the fuel to do it. When beer/wine was safer was before the idea of waterborn diseases came from bacteria and whatnot. We now know better.

True. But kept potable water also spoils faster than a kept beer.
 
Except that beer was a staple because colonies did not have clean water to drink. Amidst the apaocolypse, are you gonna trust your tap?

They drank beer because they figured out through trial and error then didn't get sick drinking beer than drinking non-potable water. They didn't know about that water-borne microbes that caused disease, and that they could be killed by boiling. This was before any understanding of microbiology. The prevailing theory at the time was that rotting meat spontaneous generated maggot larvae....

Had they known boiling effectively sterilized water, they would have done that, doncha think?

I would trust my tap since I'm on a well (the good question is how I would bring the water up). I wouldn't trust a municipal supply, but I wouldn't go out of my way to make beer out of it when I could boil for 15 minutes. Talk about a waste of very precious time.

As an aside, I love the SHTF scenario discussions where certain inconvenience facts/issues are ignored so that the we can convince ourselves that we would still be able to exist at a certain standard of living (like holding on to the ability to make beer).
 
They drank beer because they figured out through trial and error then didn't get sick drinking beer than drinking non-potable water. They didn't know about that water-borne microbes that caused disease, and that they could be killed by boiling. This was before any understanding of microbiology. The prevailing theory at the time was that rotting meat spontaneous generated maggot larvae....

Had they known boiling effectively sterilized water, they would have done that, doncha think?

I do not think it was entirely about potability as much as it was about preservation. Yes, in dire straights potable water is more important than beer but in a scenario where people are stable enough to grow crops of barley and raise animals for slaughter, the preservationist aspect of beer outweights that of water from a stockpile standpoint.

Of course, these days we have the ability to produce potable water and put it in containers for long term storage but those are resource heavy processes.

A wooden barrel of beer would be a LOT easier to produce and keep for long term than would a container of water without chemical or processed sterilization.

Of course, the age old question really is, depite the beer being microbiologically safer to drink ... would it be worth it.
 
Making water safe via fermentation is a multi-day process. Having safe drinking water is a requirement within hours. You'll die of dehydration or a water-borne disease while you wait for your beer to be ready.

Besides, having safe drinking water is a simple affair if you boil it.

Lastly, beer is largely lacking in nutrients. Monks lived on beer, but it was part of a fast. The people who say "but it has Vitamin B!" appear to have a poor grasp of nutrition. Yeah its got vitamin B and not much else.

Making beer is a input-and resource-rich process that makes little sense to do if you are fighting to acquire the basics for life. Spending 6 hours to make beer is 6 hours you won't have to harvest food, make potable water, build shelter,etc.

you have some valid point. We are talking about the short, mid and long range. Long range, you make beer, because if you made it that far, 99% of everyone else has died, an you are on the way out of the calamity (centuries perhaps back to 2013 standards, but still).

Short times(days weeks?), water is probably a better bet. Mid range, however, actaully wines and meads are better bets, because you can't boil. Where is your propane... "I'll use wood" sure you and everone else. In 1700's Franklin invented his more efficent stove in large part because people around Phillidophia PA had to walk more than a day to get fire wood. When you spend your entire day gathering wood, when do you have time to boil the water? That situation of scarce fuel will be coming quickly with a SHTF situation.

Also beer stores better than both grain and water. Grains are more likely to get infested with vermin(insect or mamamals), or with water leakage. This is another reason why beer was made in the middle ages, it was a better way of keeping grains than actual stores. How much vermin and water will be a problem in 20xx is a question, but it should be considered.

As for the B vitamins, the deal there is that you need a source of them, and beer is one of the best (better than bread). Is it the best when other considerations, time, calories, etc? That I'm not sure, and using grain for flour might be a better deal. Again, part of that is the 'time scale'
 
My club did a grocery store contest a few months ago. You could only buy ingredients from the local super market.

Everyone was super excited for this contest and most participated. I would like to say the results were great....but they weren't. Only 1 person made something that was drinkable. The rest of us ended up with swill.


Awesome idea! Yeah I'm sure most of it was swill but when folks are desperate they will drink anything. I also wouldn't mind knowing what was in the one that drinkable.

I agree with food and safe water being priorities. But if you've made it through the worst of it or live in the boonies like some of us do, wouldn't you at some point want to give it a shot?

Also, grain storage these days is a lot easier than it used to be. The same food safe buckets we use for fermentation and bottling can be used to safely store unmilled grains for years.

Boiling the wort would be an issue for those lacking in wood. I myself...my property backs up to huge tracks of forest. I would be set for a bit anyway. Yes it would be a lot of work to make beer over a fire but not impossible. I have used the wood stove in my house numerous times to boil water and make dinner ( we lose power in the winter sometimes).

Again, it would be labor intensive to make and it wouldn't be the first thing on my mind but, I think eventually I would give it a shot.
 
That sounds really interesting. Could you elaborate a bit more? I'd be interested in some of the ideas people came up with and what was the one that actually was drinkable made from.

OK, here's my recipe:

1lb powdered sugar
1 container Carnation Malted Milk
1 cup shredded wheat
2 cup grape nuts
4oz. flaked barley
1 cup corn meal

1 box Tamers Tea

1pkg Fleischman bread yeast

The Carnation Malted Milk was 1 or 2 pounds. I forget. The main ingredient is barley extract.

The Tamers Tea has hops in it. It's towards the bottom of the ingredients list. Other ingredients were lemongrass, lavender, and other stuff

I put the 2 cups of grape nuts on a cookie sheet and baked at 350° for an hour. I was hoping to get some color (didn't work as well as I thought...shoulda baked it longer).

I treated this batch like an extract batch. I steeped the corn meal, barley, baked grape nuts, and shredded wheat in 150° water for 30 min. Brought it to a boil and added the malted milk, powdered sugar, and Tamers Tea. Corn meal went right through my steeping bag.

The grocery store sold flaked barley in bulk so that was a no brainer.

The Tea made the beer taste like lemonade (sort of).

Everybody told me that bread yeast would only go to 3% or so but it took it to 5.5% which amazed me.

The winner (subjective) actually made a drinkable product that I might even classify as decent. He went to the feed store and bought chicken scratch. Then he germinated it. Then baked it it. Then he kinda cheated though by using actual hops (that he grew).

One of the entrants was that South American Chi Chi beer (the beer where you chew corn in your mouth and then spit it out).
 
Nice! That took some shopping and label reading to come up with that I bet.

Germinated chicken scratch? I would have thought that the processing of the feed would have made that impossible. Interesting.
 
I would have to say that i would make a liquid to barter with. it is as easy to produce and does not require any ingredients i cannot grow. i figure if i have a good rifle, reloading supplies, and this ability, they i can make it through a crisis.
 
OK, here's my recipe:

1lb powdered sugar
1 container Carnation Malted Milk
1 cup shredded wheat
2 cup grape nuts
4oz. flaked barley
1 cup corn meal

1 box Tamers Tea

1pkg Fleischman bread yeast

The Carnation Malted Milk was 1 or 2 pounds. I forget. The main ingredient is barley extract.

The Tamers Tea has hops in it. It's towards the bottom of the ingredients list. Other ingredients were lemongrass, lavender, and other stuff

I put the 2 cups of grape nuts on a cookie sheet and baked at 350° for an hour. I was hoping to get some color (didn't work as well as I thought...shoulda baked it longer).

I treated this batch like an extract batch. I steeped the corn meal, barley, baked grape nuts, and shredded wheat in 150° water for 30 min. Brought it to a boil and added the malted milk, powdered sugar, and Tamers Tea. Corn meal went right through my steeping bag.

The grocery store sold flaked barley in bulk so that was a no brainer.

The Tea made the beer taste like lemonade (sort of).

Everybody told me that bread yeast would only go to 3% or so but it took it to 5.5% which amazed me.

The winner (subjective) actually made a drinkable product that I might even classify as decent. He went to the feed store and bought chicken scratch. Then he germinated it. Then baked it it. Then he kinda cheated though by using actual hops (that he grew).

One of the entrants was that South American Chi Chi beer (the beer where you chew corn in your mouth and then spit it out).

I'm lazy enough I probably would have bought a bunch of Malta Goya and a pack of bread yeast.
 
This is an interesting conversation. IF SHTF I'd definitely want to make beer to trade with people for other things. If water was an issue i'd try to "make" my own. I remember in science class in middle school there was a movie we watched (I think it was voyage of the mimi) where people were stranded on an island and they needed water. What they ended up doing is making a structure out of plastic and let the sun cause condensation and then they drained it into buckets or whatever other receptacle they had. It might take you a while to get up to 5 gallons but once you had the setup down I don't think it would be that bad to upkeep. Getting the malt ingredients would be a challenge though. Here in VA we have juniper everywhere so I'd use that for my bittering. You really only need to boil it for about 10-15 minutes to get the bitterness out of it. I do think it would be difficult to make beer in a situation like this but it would be a good way to keep your mind working and keep hope in looking forward to having a tasty brew in a disaster type situation.
 
I have yet to do it but it seems these grains can be dual purpose. You could make beer then bread, biscuits, or just flour.

I just wonder how much of the vitamins and minerals are removed during the mashing process.
 
I have thought about this as well, but not from an ingredient point of view, but from an equipment point of view.

Take all your equipment away, can you still make beer.

What would you need:

Pots: Kiln fired glazed pots.
Hydrometer: Something that floats, mark off through trial and error where you get good results.

Thermometer: Ok here is the tough one, how to make a device that tells me I have hit 152 degrees.
 
I have thought about this as well, but not from an ingredient point of view, but from an equipment point of view.

Take all your equipment away, can you still make beer.

What would you need:

Pots: Kiln fired glazed pots.
Hydrometer: Something that floats, mark off through trial and error where you get good results.

Thermometer: Ok here is the tough one, how to make a device that tells me I have hit 152 degrees.

Centuries before the thermometer, hydrometer or even sanitary procedures people made beer. So do you really need any of those items to make beer? No, does it make the same beer you know today? No but it is still beer and over time without those items you will perfect your process just the same.
 
Centuries before the thermometer, hydrometer or even sanitary procedures people made beer. So do you really need any of those items to make beer? No, does it make the same beer you know today? No but it is still beer and over time without those items you will perfect your process just the same.
I am aware that people made beer in just pots and open fermented it.

But I want a Pale Ale, an IPA, a Stout.
 
I am aware that people made beer in just pots and open fermented it.

But I want a Pale Ale, an IPA, a Stout.

Well this isn't saying that there won't be basic equipment around to use. I am sure there will be hydrometers and thermometers left unbroken, you can just walk down to the local brewery and take what you need if we are talking full on dystopia.

The downfall to these kinds of topics though are the degree to which things went to ****. Is it just a simple economic collapse with some civil unrest, full on civil war, invasion from foreign countries, complete collapse of civilization as we know it or full scale nuclear fallout scenario?

Once those parameters are set this subject becomes easier to answer. If it were full on collapse of society then I would scavenge what I need in any way I could to keep myself and my family alive and damn those who come between me and my goal. If it were civil unrest then I would be a lot more reasonable about how I went about things.
 
The subject of this thread is one that has interested me for several years now. Yes, I love my beer, hell, I'm drinking one now, but in a SHTF scenario, I have decided that I will most likely do without, at least short term. I actually buy and store away cheapo Vodka and Rum. I don't even know how many bottles of Dark Eyes I have stashed away, but I will have enough if I ever need to get into it.
 
The subject of this thread is one that has interested me for several years now. Yes, I love my beer, hell, I'm drinking one now, but in a SHTF scenario, I have decided that I will most likely do without, at least short term. I actually buy and store away cheapo Vodka and Rum. I don't even know how many bottles of Dark Eyes I have stashed away, but I will have enough if I ever need to get into it.

Vodka, Whiskey, Everclear all are useable as both common trade items as well as for medical purposes. I would put Rum right up there with Whiskey in this scenario.

The key when something like this happens is to minimize the number of things you have to carry with you in your bug out bag. Assume that fuel will be very limited so packing it in your car/truck/wheeling rig may not be a realistic option. I built my bugout bag based on what I can carry and maintain a moving average of 20 miles a day on foot, anything over that becomes a liability.
 
I'd think that if it came down to it makin moonshine would be a better option then beer
 
Vodka, Whiskey, Everclear all are useable as both common trade items as well as for medical purposes. I would put Rum right up there with Whiskey in this scenario.

The key when something like this happens is to minimize the number of things you have to carry with you in your bug out bag. Assume that fuel will be very limited so packing it in your car/truck/wheeling rig may not be a realistic option. I built my bugout bag based on what I can carry and maintain a moving average of 20 miles a day on foot, anything over that becomes a liability.

Oh I absolutely agree! I guess it's the optimist in me that makes me stockpile the things that I would consider to be luxury items. Having to bug out is a whole nuther ballgame.

We had a wind storm here several years back, craziest thing I'd seen around here in my 40 something years, and there was widespread power outages for up to 3 weeks in some areas (we were without power for 9 days), but due to planning ahead, and some dumb luck, we never even had to attempt a visit to a store for anything. It was a great learning experience, and really opened my eyes as to what all was involved in being prepared for an emergency, so now, naturally, I go way overboard with being prepared.:D
 
I think as others have pointed out the making drinking water safe is a moot point. We know that the making of beer in centuries past killed the bacteria. Making beer to kill bacteria is not needed. Storing water? Its easy enough to boil up some water to make it safe. Sanitation is always going to be interesting after all for all those bottles.

What about bottle caps? You could make some form of cork I suppose but then we are back to sanitation right? And sealing the bottles?

Yeast is going to be interesting too. Most of us may have yeast banks that are held up by refrigeration. Yes, I'm well aware of wild yeast fermentation but the controlling of that starts to get stretched.

The grain may be the biggest issue however. Its one thing to have access to amber waves of grain and all that but to actually process it? Some of us can malt the stuff but I suspect that if that was feasible we would return to the 1500s to the 1800s for malt issues, IE lots of brown malt.

This does not even go in to the growing of the malt, and getting it to the point of harvesting it.

It is an interesting topic but I think that you would see more mead, spirits or wines being produced with out the easy access to grains that we all enjoy today if we have a SHTF scenario of a zombie type of apocalypse. A less than total civilization collapse then grain becomes more available.

Question is for those of you that are confident in producing your own product, do you know how to grow barley, oats, wheat, and rice?
And do you know how much of that it will take to feed a single person for a year? How much to plant to make up for crop losses?

Not cutting at anyone but there is a lot more to this than most think.
 
I think as others have pointed out the making drinking water safe is a moot point. We know that the making of beer in centuries past killed the bacteria. Making beer to kill bacteria is not needed. Storing water? Its easy enough to boil up some water to make it safe. Sanitation is always going to be interesting after all for all those bottles.

What about bottle caps? You could make some form of cork I suppose but then we are back to sanitation right? And sealing the bottles?

Yeast is going to be interesting too. Most of us may have yeast banks that are held up by refrigeration. Yes, I'm well aware of wild yeast fermentation but the controlling of that starts to get stretched.

The grain may be the biggest issue however. Its one thing to have access to amber waves of grain and all that but to actually process it? Some of us can malt the stuff but I suspect that if that was feasible we would return to the 1500s to the 1800s for malt issues, IE lots of brown malt.

This does not even go in to the growing of the malt, and getting it to the point of harvesting it.

It is an interesting topic but I think that you would see more mead, spirits or wines being produced with out the easy access to grains that we all enjoy today if we have a SHTF scenario of a zombie type of apocalypse. A less than total civilization collapse then grain becomes more available.

Question is for those of you that are confident in producing your own product, do you know how to grow barley, oats, wheat, and rice?
And do you know how much of that it will take to feed a single person for a year? How much to plant to make up for crop losses?

Not cutting at anyone but there is a lot more to this than most think.
In my post-apocalypse universe it's more of a "putting-things back together scenario". Not I am all alone, and have to make beer to survive.

So in that event, perhaps a village, and they are thirsty..

Village chief: "Who knows how to make beer?"
Grossy: "I know how to make beer!!!"
Village chief: "Ok, you get the job, what do you need."
Village chief: "Who knows how to make a kegerator?"
Village chief: "Damn!"
 
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