the recipe is below and is written exactly how we found it:
hops bitters all ground herbs 7 qts of water all ground herbs 2 oz of hops 1 quart of malt 1 oz of ginseng 1 oz of orange peel 3 oz wild cherry bark
boil down 4 1/2 qts of water after straining them add 1 pound or 7 cups of sugar. add a half a pint of yeast.
let this stand for a night then strain again and ass half a pint of gin. let this stand for 24 hours. then it can be bottled.
My modern take followed by my thoughts on it.
Great Great Grampa's Tonic
1 gallon batch
Ingredients:
2oz hops (variety see below)
1oz Ginseng (fresh, muddled)
1oz Orange peel (fresh, muddled)
.5oz wild cherry bark (toasted dark and crushed)
1 quart of malt (Light DME)
Directions:
Mix the DME into 7 quarts of cold water and bring to boil. When boiling add the remaining ingredients. Boil for 30 minutes. Cool and strain into sanitized fermentor. Cover and shake like hell.
Make a proofed starter with bread yeast to get to the pint of rehydrated yeast volume and pitch into fermentor.(I have no idea how much this will be, you will need to experiment) Primary until krausen drops, then rack to secondary add gin to taste. Then add in appropriate amount of dextrose to prime the bottles and bottle. Bottle condition as normal.
Reasons/guesses as to the recipes and my modern interpretation:
GGGrampa did not have a LHBS to get supplies he most likely gathered the hops, bark and orange peel himself. Wet bark would probably have NOT been used so he probably would have dried it in the oven or toasted it in a pan would be my guess. If we guess using the hop drying formula starting with 3oz of wet bark, then drying and toasting it down would give you about .5 oz. I would toast it dark due to the large amount. Also he probably did not know how to describe muddling the orange peel and ginseng so he called it grinding. Wet would also give you WAY less in the recipe and this just sounds right to me. Also regarding the orange peel I would try to find some orange that have a thin pith, pith does not taste particularly good.
There were ways to get malt extract, which was the most popular way to make beer at that time (If I am guessing the time frame correctly). The most popular was Blue Ribbon and it would be pretty close to modern Light DME.
Now lets think about the hops. The best way to figure this out would be to figure out where GGGrampa was living when he was brewing or at least a decent guess. This may elude to the type of hops he would have had access to. My guess would be Willamette or Cascade as those where the most popular in that timeframe across the country. I can also guess these were fresh, wet hops or dried whole leaf, they may have come with the malt, IDK. For the sake of argument I would side with Cascade because that would probably taste the best in this recipe. I would make 2 batches one with the 2oz dried whole leaf and one with 1/2oz dried whole leaf to simulate the wet hop idea. (Wet hops weigh x5 more than dried hops FYI) There is no benefit from crushing or grinding the hops so I would not. (he probably did not know this and did it anyways.)
The malt was measured by a quart, probably a mason jar. This is going to make a STRONG beer lol. I would guess 3lbs but I would measure it out in a quart jar. Mixing DME in cold water is easier than boiling water, this is why I recommended that technique, you will get less clumps.
We know that GGGrampa starts with 7 quarts of water and boils it down to 4.5 quarts. Assuming a standard boiloff rate of 1 gallon per hour he boiled for 25-30 minutes. This would also make it less offensively bitter and not boil all the flavor from the other ingredients to nothing.
The fermentation time is tricky to. If he made this 1st thing in the morning (eating the oranges for breakfast) and overpitched the yeast it would have had the whole day plus an additional 24 hours to primary which is not out of the realm of feasible.
He then seems to strain the krausen off and add in gin. I am guessing this would have stalled the fermentation but left enough yeast and sugars to carbonate the beer in the bottles. This is a dangerous way to do this so I recommended waiting a little while longer and let the krausen drop. IMO I would actually ferment it out then add in a small amount of gin to taste (start with an oz and add an oz at a time until it tastes good) and add in the correct amount of sugar to bottle condition it, it is way easier to predict the end results this way and you will have less bottle bombs. I will also guess the bottles GGGrampa had were MUCH thicker than the ones we have today.
I recommend omitting the extra sugar, at least for a few batches. 7 cups does not equal a pound and I will guess he played with the amount trying to increase the alcohol content or make it sweeter. I would try to get something that doesn't taste like snake venom before making it stronger!
Judging by the high alcohol content I can guess he used plain old bread yeast, it would have been WAY easier to get than brewers yeast and has a high alcohol tolerance. Oddly the JOAM recipe also calls for orange peel and bread yeast so I just assume this is correct.
Well that is my take on it. GL!
Silly me.
