In my junior year at Bellarmine College Preparatory I had a Biology class, and we were assigned a term paper, on some subject of our choice. Around that time my pal Bob Minardi and I happened to be walking past a bakery just off campus, and the smell of yeast assailed us on the sidewalk. We were at the age one discovers beer, and couldn't help but think more of the beverage than bread as we inhaled deeply.
Aha! Here was a great idea for a biology project. Let's make beer! We ran the idea by our teacher, a young, liberal, enthusiastic Jesuit, and he thought that sounded like a fine idea.
Now, this was 1966, well before the dawn of the information age, so research was hard work, involving little wooden drawers and suspicious librarians. It was also still illegal to make beer at home, so we were stymied. About all we knew was that we needed water, malt, hops and yeast, but could find absolutely no information about how to make beer, much less a recipe.
We found yeast at the grocery store without any problem of course, and while we were in the baking aisle we stumbled on a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon Malt Extract. So we had some ingredients, but still no recipe. We wrote to the company that made the malt, asking if they could help us out.
In due course, they replied on fancy letterhead, explaining that no, they couldn't help, as Blue Ribbon Malt Extract was intended for baking, and brewing beer at home was of course prohibited by law. Time was running out...
But the very next day after we received that formal reply, a plain envelope with no return address appeared. Inside was a beer recipe!
We borrowed a ceramic pickling vat from a friend of the family, obtained some bottles and a capping press, followed the recipe without any trouble, and brewed up some of the worst tasting beer you can imagine. I can't remember what we did for hops. But it was BEER! We wrote up our procedure, and turned in the paper with a sample of the product. Of course, I hardly need to mention that we got an A.