Any old school brewing stories?

I've got a brewing story from another generation. My grandmother told me a few weeks ago about when my great uncle used to brew back in the fifties.

My great aunt had applied for Postmaster General of the small town in southeast Oklahoma where they lived. Back in those days, and maybe still now, it was a pretty big deal. They would even send people down from Washington, D.C. to interview you at your home. So the interview is going fine and is almost over when she starts hearing pops and breaking glass from the garage. Sure enough, Uncle James's brew had turned into bottle bombs! She did end up getting the job, though.

Unfortunately, my Uncle James died a few years ago. I'd love to have had the chance to pick his brain about what he brewed and what the brewing process was like in those days. There wasn't a LHBS (and still isn't) in Bethel, Oklahoma back then.

Anyone else have any cool stories or even info from the old days of home brewing? It was really cool for me to find out that I had a fellow home brewer in the family.

bethel oklahoma... that as backwoods as my hometown, pawhuska ok. i went to college in tahlequah and one weekend we decided to take backroads to dallas. i think we drove through there.

One of my roommates in college grew up on a small farm in New York. Seems Grampa was a moonshiner back in the 1930's. In 1972, he and his dad were digging a foundation for a new barn and discovered three barrels in what had been a root cellar. They were full and smelled like alcohol, so they had some tested. About 170 proof, no methanol and lead free. Very smooth, but not to be drunk near open flame!

No old brewers in my family that I know of, although it wouldn't surprise me as most of us are from the rural Southeast. I remember walking some timberland we own with my father when I was around 12 and we came across a very old rusted out still that had been turned into swiss cheese by the feds (or so we assumed).

Used to do some business with an old farmer years ago who had been in WWII as infantry and had been part of the invasion of Italy. He said the only way to go into combat was drunk so to that end they had filled up the spare fuel tank on their tank with commandered Italian brandy. He also made strawberry wine in his barn which was god awful but effective.

My maternal grandfather used to grown his own grapes and make his own wine, sweetened with honey. He stopped making wine after breaking his back in the mid 1980's, but he had a root cellar full of aging batches that we eventually polished off about 4 years ago.

He, unfortunaltely, passed away about 6 years ago, and I was given all of his gear. I never got to ask him many questions about his wine making, because he was far from lucid by the time I started making my own beverages (alzheimers had set in, and me being away in college and home visiting rarely made me one of the first people he stopped recognizing and responding to.)

Anyway, most of his equipment was not very useful to me as a beer maker; 1 gallon crock-pot type ceramic containers with cobbled together blow-off airlocks. However, it is an interesting collection of stuff. You can get a sense of what his life was like at different times based on the equipment.

Specifically, his blow-offs used small glass medicine bottles to hold the bubble-water. Most of these bottles still had the perscription labels attached, dosage info, who it was for, when it was filled. Looking through those small bottles showed me that one of my aunts had a terrible history of respiratory problems as a child and I never knew anything about it.

So.. not real stories from him, but the gear is like a small window into his life as a wine maker and a father.

-walker

Yeah, that's cool, Walker. That's what I was talking about, a window into brewing in another generation, which is also a connection between us and our ancestors.

subwyking - Yeah, it makes sense that you would have. It's pretty well line up with Tahlequah longitudinally. I bet that was a heck of a road trip. I think Bethel might actually be a bit more backwoods than Pawhuska, but I could be wrong. Isn't that in Nowata Co?

David- Aged forty years or so? That's pretty cool. The only moonshine I've ever had was only aged about a year, and it was not smooth.

Well, My Dad has fond memories as a kid on the Praries, Northern Saskatchewan to be exact, of his Dad and Uncle brewing beer and having to help (poor him!). Later on he remembers pilfering out of his Dad's supply and once his Dad had a gathering and ran out of beer so his Dad snuck down to his brothers house and wheeled a keg back. His brother came home with a few friends and when he went to serve some beer found the keg missing. Went driectly to my Grandpa's house. haha. Knew he didn't have to look far.

My Dad told me that moonshiners were pretty comman in the area. Some Cousin used to make shine and I guess the Wife was boiling the mash etc on the stove with a friend when the cooling tubes plugged up and the still exploded. The sides of the house were all bulged out like a big winabego! They ended up in the hospital for a month. After that, just about every moonshiner in the area used some kind of safer double boiler system. My Dad wasn't quite sure what that meant, but their were no more explosions after that. Most of the moonshiner brewed in a small cabin off their land for safety and "legal" reasons.

My Mom remembers her Dad making "root beer" when they lived in Delta (farm country near Vancouver) though Grandma said he made regular beer too. My Mom remembers waking up many times to exploding bottles. "Beer's ready!"

Unfortunatley both my Grandapa's had passed away before I even new they brewed beer, so I never got to ask how they did it.

I'm guessing that the amounts to use for priming were not a commonly known thing back then. Seem's I hear a lot of stories about exploding bottles during old time brewing.

billybrew said:

subwyking - Yeah, it makes sense that you would have. It's pretty well line up with Tahlequah longitudinally. I bet that was a heck of a road trip. I think Bethel might actually be a bit more backwoods than Pawhuska, but I could be wrong. Isn't that in Nowata Co?

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nah, its in osage county. population is a thriving 3500.

This story isn't from My Family(I have a old carboy, and demiJohn from My family{Maybe I will post Pictures somday})
(, but I could ask,{Have 1 or 2 new generation ones})

I Was going to the store, and asking the man at the store Copper parts(Hydrogen sufide problem), and he asked why, and I said this Might sound funny but My wine has a odd smell.

Anyways He said Don't worry about it
My Dad used to Have a distill back during Prohibition, but when It caught the Garage on Fire He had to Watch it burn down, because if he called the Fire department He would of been in trouble

My grandfather Alexi came from Greece (as a baby) with his family around 1915-1920. They moved to East Moline Ill. and lived near the Mississippi. I always heard stories about how he and his brothers couldn't take baths for weeks because their father was using the tub to hold whiskey and a moonshine version of ouzo. I guess they had to make ends meet, being new to the country.
So when my dad got me a beer making kit for Christmas, I shared some of the first fruits with Papa Lexy. He's almost 90, can't hear worth a dang, but still has a great long term memory and one of the quickest verbal wits around. When I told him I made the beer myself, he was stoked and immediately asked: "did any bottles explode?"
He told me how, as kids, they would make root beer in great big barrels in the back yard. Said it was the cheapest way to get something sweet to drink. Sounds highly unsanitary. But then again, he's lasted 90 years so far, so who am I to judge?

Both of my grandfathers made prohibition beer. One of them had a still as well. The beer was made in crocks and the crocks are still in the family. The still was an old copper was tub and mom still has that as well.

The old thread is revitalized!

My mom told me she used to watch her dad and uncle make beer and they would float an egg in it to see if it was ready. I guess it was a diy hydrometer. Unfortunately, they are both dead so I can't ask them.

I had quite a few brewers in my family when I was younger they used those bottles from the water cooler that somehow ended up in there possession. My one uncle made the best wine from everything you can think of, he even made a great wine from frozen grape juice. He stopped making wine when he thought he lost his touch. My cousin and I would sneak in and when he wasn't there and put wine in our bottle and top his off with water. I wish I knew how he made that wine it sure was good.

vanman250