Strange find

He updated quite a while ago. Turns out it was bad beer. Very anticlimactic.

He shoulda’ embellished and gave us all hope ... He could have been our own Cool Hand Luke.

Sometimes the truth can be such a downer.

I would have been on the phone with the guy, the first week that I found those, just to see what the story was.

Interesting none-the-less.

~r~

Well at least he's alive to tell the tale. Wouldn't look good calling it "Stone Dead Ale", methinks.

I finally have everything assembled, here is the gallery:

http://picasaweb.google.com/kuangmk11/Taub#

I never found a log book, unfortunately. I also never found any books on brewing or wine making other than the "treatise on lager beers". as mentioned earlier it was all pretty horrible looking and smelling, lots of floaters and bugs, some mold, I have never seen dirtier carboys. Oxy clean is a champ and after two rounds all are clean. I only had one casualty, unfortunately it was one of the fancy Bastanchury carboys, but there are 2 others just like it. I ended up with 16 X 5 gallon carboys and 6 X 3 gallon carboys. I did find one single gallon jug that was sealed with a plastic cap and wrapped with tape. One day I will have to try it.

Quite an adventure, and I don't think you can be too dissappointed. You've got a great story to tell and a mouthwatering collection of vintage brewing equipment...

Oh wow...those winemanking instructions came from winearts. How cool. Winearts was a chain in the 60-70's that sold wine making kits, and even though beer making was still illegal in the 70's they for some strange reason carried blue ribbon malt extract (hopped) for, you know, all your baking needs.

Yeah, you got a cool hall that reflects the early days of homebrewing, right in the 70's when Papazian and the early AHC was petitioning the Carter Administration to make homebrewing legalized. He didn't happen to have any of the early mimeographed copies of Zymurgy did he?

Awesome, thanks for sharing.

Wow! Awesome! A lot of effort went into documenting all of that with the pics. Not to mention the cleaning of the carboys!

Thanks so much for sharing all of that, Chester. The pics are so cool! Some are kinda creepy, some are so very interesting, and don't get me started on those beautiful carboys (now that they are clean)! I am SO jealous!

What a wonderful discovery. Thank you so much for sharing.

Looking at the tools, references, and chemicals, this guy really seemed to know what he was doing (for the time). It's amazing how much he knew of the science at a time when the application of that science was illegal.

My offer still stands on the Blue Ribbon paperwork if you're interested in parting with it.

Dave

wow thanks for sharing its pretty cool to have all that history.

That is very cool. I've always enjoyed digging around homes that have been lived and worked in by a single family for decades. Interesting finds can be discovered in places where people have been fixed to a single location for a long time. People who move a lot shed the old interesting stuff.

Damn I want one of those Arrowhead carboys! Very cool find, thanks for sharing.

That collection of glass is amazing! Very cool thread and thanks for keeping us updated. Too bad you didn't find the notes, that would have been the icing on the cake.

If needed, I am willing to drive down and help with the cleanup.

Those carboys are AWESOME! Great find Chester, good photo documentary also. I hope you've filled those time and time again over the last few years!

Some very nice material there. Its a little sad to me, looks like the guy had something happen to him rather suddenly, and nobody to give away his stuff to. I often look in my own basement (that has much more brewing and winemaking crap than he had) and wonder what will happen to it when I croak. The wife knows enough about things to see it goes to a good home.

Those recipes are excellent, I'm going to make malt bread for the next brewclub meeting. Thanks!