George Washington's Porter

Most of us have already seen this recipe.

Please note that I am hoping to simply re-create the beer exactly as George's was; I am not interested in comments like "this would make the beer taste better". If George's beer tasted bad by modern standards, then I want this batch of beer to taste bad by modern standards. Translating his recipe, here's what I've come up with for a five gallon batch:

Grain: "A large sifter full of bran". I'm going to use 2.5# of 6-Row. From what I've read, this is most likely what type of grain they had. The amount is a pure guess, but in line with how much grain is typically in my extract porter.

Molasses: "put in 3 Gallons Molasses". I know this part is about right. A gallon of molasses weighs around 12#; his recipe called for 3 gallons [36#] for a 30 gallon batch, so dividing the batch size by six gives me 6# of molasses.

Hops: "Hops to your Taste". I think around 2 ounces of hops would put me where "my taste" is for a normal five gallon batch, but as you'll read below, I am going to replicate George's three hour boil...sigh. So, given the crazy long boil, I'm going to need more. How much more, though? 4 ounces? 8 ounces? Could use some advice on this front. Also, what type of hops is the question...I think centennial and cascade would work well, but what type of hops do y'all think GW used? Any information as to what type of modern hops would best replicate the types of hops that GW used?

Yeast: "Then put in a quart of Yeast". I'm probably going to go with Nottingham, the most basic yeast I can think of.

Procedure: Here's where things get interesting. I want to nearly replicate his exact procedure, meaning that I will boil the grain and hops for THREE hours and then "drain the molasses into the Cooler & strain the Beer on it while boiling Hot." I'm going to use a bottling bucket instead of his "cooler". I will deviate a little from his procedure by using a wort chiller instead of his "nature", and ferment like I normally would - a week in primary, a week in secondary, and then bottle. They'll be opened on the 4th of July.

So, summarizing the advice I'm looking for:
1) 2.5# of six-row seem about right?
2) How much and what type of hops for a three hour boil?
3) Nottingham yeast make sense?

Should be a fun experience, regardless of how the product turns out.

I don't have a whole lot of advice, but I'm excited to see how this turns out.

I would figure a low aa% hop for the beginning of the boil, so the 3 hours doesn't make out extremely bitter. Maybe even do first wort hop. Probably wouldn't need any other hops until the end of the boil. Not sure if he would have had the typical american citrusy hops though. Really not sure. Interested to see how this comes out for you!

I wouldn't suggest adding boiling wort to a plastic bucket.

Chapa: Sounds like it makes sense.

TacoBrew: Good point. Will pour the boiling wort over the molasses in another brew pot to chill, then into the bottling bucket for fermentation.

I ran some of the figures thru Beersmith and came up with this:

3lbs 6 row
6 lbs molasses
2.5 oz Cluster hop pellets - 180 min (Cluster is an old American variety)

OG - 1.059
IBU - 65
SRM - 34

This sounds like a fun experiment. Please post back and let us know how it turns out.

Thanks for posting, Johnnybob. I was unaware of the history of cluster hops; they're certainly the ones I'll use in this. Brew day is tomorrow!

GW probably used an English variety of hops not American.

A while ago I saw a recipe credited to GW looking very much like this one calling
for Hallertauer hops. I can't say for sure if this is it. It was called something
like "General George's Potent Potable".

Clusters were THE American hop before prohibition. They were commercially cultivated as early as the mid 1600s, so it seems that clusters would have been the hop of choice for GW. However, he may have imported fuggles or goldings since he was a rich old white guy and imported stuff seems to be what old rich white guys like best. Not that it matters much, since they are strictly a bittering addition. I love historical beer, this should be a cool experiment. I have heard that GW's small beer ends up being quite minerally due to the iron content of the molasses.

I've put off brewing this, as I have been getting into fairly deep research. The recipe was written in 1757. During the Revolution (specifically, in response to the Port Act in Boston), Washington and others boycotted British beer products, leading me to believe that up until that point, he was likely using imported hops - thus referencing imported hops in his 1757 recipe. So, I'm likely to go with the oldest English hops available: Fuggles and Goldings.

As far as the grains...I've still got some research to do. I hope to get this thing brewed over the weekend.

From the article:this recipe.
"Then put it into the Cask - leave the Bung[hole] open till it is almost done working"

Click to expand...

Are you going to add some wood chips? Presumably Washington would have had plenty of access to Virgina-made hogsheads.

Perhaps even whiskey-soaked oak chips?

There was a grist mill and distillery on-site at Mount Vernon:
www.mountvernon.org/visit/plan/index.cfm/pid/356/

I'm going to add this to my list of things to brew as well.

Some minor tweaks though - 5.5# Molasses, 3# 6-Row, 1oz Cluster @60min, .5oz Cluster @15min, 8oz rye-whiskey soaked oak cubes @ 30 days in secondary, and WLP005 for the yeast.

I'm having a hard time sourcing the cluster hops. Grrr. Apparently they're not as easy to come by as they were in the pre-1920's era.

ao125 said:

I'm having a hard time sourcing the cluster hops. Grrr. Apparently they're not as easy to come by as they were in the pre-1920's era.

Click to expand...

northern brewer had them last time I checked

hadabar said:

northern brewer had them last time I checked

Click to expand...

Sorry - meant "locally-sourced". I usually just drive here and pick things up:
http://www.mdhb.com/

That said, I put in an order for some medium-toast oak cubes and some cluster hops.

Good points on the oak chips, but not the whiskey part. The recipe was written in 1757; the distillery wasn't built until 1797. Although, I suppose it is completely possible he might have been using used oak barrels that were previously used for storing whiskey.

Let's go back for a second... According to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Vernon

The site had been a working tobacco plantation known as "Little Hunting Creek Plantation" so they would have most definitely had oak hogshead barrels around. (I think we can agree on that)

The three Zyrtec I took this morning to deal with the oak pollen could have told me that much...

Having lived and worked in Old Town, Alexandria VA, I'd also have to wonder if they came from one of the many taverns from around that time... in which case, they would have been whiskey barrels. (even though Gadsby's tavern wasn't around until after the recipe was allegedly written, but there were indeed others)

Alternately, they could have come from one of the ships at port in Alexandria - in which case it could possibly have been wood sourced in god only knows where... West Indies? England? Bermuda? Barbados?

Either way - I'm going to do mine up with medium-toast oak chips soaked in either rye-whiskey or possibly rum.

Just noting that I'm reading along with much interest and can't wait to hear how this comes.

I am wondering about the name though... specifically the "Porter" part. Is it still a porter if over 50% of the fermentables aren't coming from grain? It seems more like a Braggot or Bochet except that it's not made with honey.

As far as the oak barrels go...I'm going to go with using some whiskey soaked medium oak chips in secondary. I might be wrong here, that he might have used new barrels that never had whiskey in them. But I like whiskey...and GW liked whiskey...so I'm going to use some whiskey. According to this link, "The Scots and the Irish who immigrated to the colonies in the mid 1700's...brought the skill of distilling fermented mash made from grains - not any specific grains mind you, but from any grains that were available. In Pennsylvania and Maryland, that primarily meant rye." Once again, it is possible GW was using imports...but I can't really find anything on what types of casks he used in 1757. I'm going to go with using rye whiskey in some medium oak chips during primary fermentation, as I doubt he had a 30 gallon glass carboy for a secondary.

Also, check out [provided to me courtesy of Revvy]. The brewer confirms what I've seen on other sites and in this thread, that brown malt was probably the single malt used in the recipe. Reading up on other threads, they estimated 4 pounds 2 ounces of grain for a five gallon batch from a colonial sifter.

As far as calling it a porter...yeah, it might not be one. I'll probably just call it small beer, like GW did...even if it might not meet our definition of beer (a fermented alcoholic beverage brewed from malt and flavored with hops.

So, I think I'm near a final recipe!

4.125# Brown Malt
Goldings & Fuggles Hops
Nottingham Yeast
6# Molasses
Rye whiskey soaked medium oak chips

The only questions I have left:
1) How much of each variety of hops should I use? Keep in mind this is a three hour boil!
2) What should the hop addition schedule look like for a three hour boil? I know they didn't separate hops into bittering/flavoring/aroma at the time, so I'll just blend the two varieties together and use the blend throughout the boil. Is it likely they used a continuous hop schedule - a little bit of hops added throughout the boil?

INWarner413 said:

So, I think I'm near a final recipe!

4.125# Brown Malt
Goldings & Fuggles Hops
Nottingham Yeast
6# Molasses
Rye whiskey soaked medium oak chips

Click to expand...

Nice... let me know how the Brown malt works. I think I'm going to stick with the 6-row, but that's all part of the fun.

That said, how much water do you need in order to wind up with 5 gal at the end of 3 hours?

I'm starting my soak w/ medium toast oak cubes (8oz - 4 for this, 4 for a porter I'll do later on)



There is a Catoctin Rye Whiskey that is local, but it was a bit more expensive than Bulleit - and I use Bulleit a lot when I'm making chocolate-bourbon-pecan pies.

http://catoctincreekdistilling.com/products/mosbys

Do not use modern brown malt. It is an entirely different creature than the brown malt available in 1757 (or indeed until quite recently), in that is lacks enzymatic power to even convert itself. Use instead the darkest base malt you can source; I tend to use Mild Malt as the base malt in my historical recipes.

Also note that it is probable that the casks used in beer production were lined with brewer's pitch, which precludes flavor introduction by bare wood. Also, American oak is a different creature than English or other European oaks; a new medium-toast American oak cask will probably be overwhelmingly powerful.

I've brewed this recipe, though I disagree on certain interpretations, notably the presence of malt at all. In old cookery receipts, "bran X" generally means "the whole seed/flower/whatsit". So when I brewed it I used whole hops flowers and molasses exclusively.

I was not impressed with the result.

However, taken in historical context, it was palatable for soldiers on the sharp edge of the frontier (the date coincides with Lt Col Washington's deployment to Fort Duquesne in what is now Pittsburgh, PA). On the frontier you brewed with what you had and drank that rather than drink water (ew!). Colonists used everything from molasses to pumpkin to the pressings of corn stalks (sound familiar?) as malt substitutes.

I look forward to reading your results!

Cheers,

Bob

Cluster hops just arrived - I feel good about brewing this next weekend.

El_Exorcisto said:

However, he may have imported fuggles or goldings since he was a rich old white guy and imported stuff seems to be what old rich white guys like.

Click to expand...

From what I have read about Washington, he and most of the founding.... old white guys, prefered to buy American made and grown products as a form of protest.(i.e. the Boston hop party, or tea, or whatever it was)

First I would like to say that I am very interested in how this turns out. Second, I have a question… Well, maybe more of a pondering- Do you think that today’s molasses is the same animal as molasses circa 1750? Molasses is the byproduct (waste) from the refinement of sugar cane into sugar. I’m thinking that the process that we use today produces a different product because there is less waste… So would today’s molasses be stronger (more concentrated)?

I had completely forgotten about this.
I have the yeast, hops, and oak cubes just waiting.

Did you make this yet?? Anyone know about the process then? We are currently thinking about having a cabin weekend and making beer from the creek water and using an open wood flame. I thought something similar to this recipe would be cool to try.

It has been brewed and mostly consumed! It is a bitter son of a gun, that's for sure. It has really benefited from aging. At 3 weeks, it was bad. At 6 weeks, it was pretty good. Probably not going to be brewing this again unless it's for a specific event, but it was fascinating to brew like the 1st President did [or instructed his slaves to do].

INWarner413 said:

It has been brewed and mostly consumed! It is a bitter son of a gun, that's for sure. It has really benefited from aging. At 3 weeks, it was bad. At 6 weeks, it was pretty good. Probably not going to be brewing this again unless it's for a specific event, but it was fascinating to brew like the 1st President did [or instructed his slaves to do].

Click to expand...

What was your final recipe?

So... did anyone brew this?

I've tried a few of these lately, like General Washington's Tavern Porter from Yard's and Washington's Porter from Williamsburg Alewerks and... well... they were not good.

Please forgive me reviving an old post but I'm curious. especially as I have been enjoying Yards Washington's Tavern Porter recently:

Has anyone tried cloning the Yards product?

I did look and din't see anything but maybe I was looking in the wrong place.

Thanks!