Authentic Ingredients (circa 1933)

[bengineer]

My in laws used to own a large brewery in Louisville way back in the day, which naturally interested me. I managed to nab some recipes from some long lost stacks of paper and want to replicate the recipes, but it's proving more trouble than I imagined.
They call for "American Malt" along side Carahell malt and Caramel (as well as Canadian Carmel) malts; and "American Hops" along side Saaz. I don't think they were just using whatever they could find (else they probably wouldn't specify the other malts and hops).
Does anyone know what "American Malt" and "American Hops" might be referring to?
Thanks!

 

[bierhaus15]

Hey, nice find. Chances are, "American malt" and "American hops" would have referred to a standard, domestic pale malt (possibly 6-row or a combination thereof) and the hops would have most likely been Cluster. The use of caramel malts is appropriate for the period, since they started coming into wide scale use by the 1920-30's. Do you have the actual brewery log with all the figures? If you do, it is possible to reproduce this in its entirety.

Also, interesting that the recipe is from 1933. Prohibition was repealed on 5 December of that year, so they were either brewing beer while it was illegal, or just after it became legal again.

 

[Revvy]

Bierhaus is right, Cluster is one of the earliest "American" Hops. I use it in my 1903 Kentucky Common.

Cluster--Domestic--All Purpose

Cluster is the oldest variety grown in the U.S. Origin of the rootstock is uncertain. Until the late 1970s, it was one of only a few varieties growing in the U.S. Excellent general purpose hop with medium and well-balanced bittering potential. This hop leaves no undesirable aroma properties. Good for dark beers with roasty and chocolaty aromas. Alpha acids content is 5.5-8.5%, aroma is a strong floral. It has Bittering with good flavor. Storage stability of the alpha acids is among the best in the world. The variety grows with good vigor and cone production.

If you look through the links and things folks have posted in my Beer History Links Thread, you will find I'm sure more information.

In fact if you start at THIS post, Airbornguy has been posting stuff from a 1930's New York Brewer's Journal over the last few days. One thing mentioned in the journal was that that brewery used Rahr and Sons Malts....Which is still in business.

 

[Pappers_]

My in laws used to own a large brewery in Louisville way back in the day, which naturally interested me. I managed to nab some recipes from some long lost stacks of paper and want to replicate the recipes, but it's proving more trouble than I imagined.
They call for "American Malt" along side Carahell malt and Caramel (as well as Canadian Carmel) malts; and "American Hops" along side Saaz. I don't think they were just using whatever they could find (else they probably wouldn't specify the other malts and hops).
Does anyone know what "American Malt" and "American Hops" might be referring to?
Thanks!

Hi and welcome to HBT. If you've not read it yet, Maureen Ogle's book Ambitious Brew gives a sense of the development of American lager leading up to prohibition and afterwards. It sounds like your recipe is prior to what she calls the 'bland food' era when today's typical lagers were developed.

I'd go with Revvy 's idea on the cluster hops, too.

 

[bengineer]

Thanks everyone. After scouring for authentic (or at least what are claimed to be authentic) pre, and shortly post-prohabition era recipes, it overwhelmingly seems that you're right on the money. 6 Row malt & Cluster hops seem to be very popular for the era.
I've got another bump in the road that maybe someone has insight for. The recipe doesn't say what size a batch is, so I'm a bit lost as to where to start to scale down to 5 gallons. I've been playing with beer calculators (********.com) to try to get an OG/FG of the original recipe to yield somewhere in the 4.5 to 5.5% ABV range. But unless the calculators are wrong, I'm missing something.
The recipe calls for 3250 pounds of American (6-row, assuming 1.035 gravity points) and 330 pounds of Carahell malt (assuming 1.034 GP). - to me this sounds like a HUGE batch; if 8 or 9 pounds of grain yield 5 gallons, 3580 pounds of grain should yield 1000, maybe 1500 gallons? However when I screw with the calculator, I get down to around 65 gallons before I get ABV numbers in the 4.5 to 5.5% range. Any one know if these calculators are only good for a few gallons, perhaps they diverge wildly beyond a few dozen gallons?

 

[terrapinj]

instead of guessing the batch size you could just work off of proportions

3250# 6-row = 90.8% (3250/3580=.9078)
330# carahell = 9.2% (330/3580 = .0921)