OfficerMitchel
Active Member
First, a little history. Both my parents grew up in depression era America, my mom on a farm in northern Kansas, my father in Dayton, Ohio. Both learned home brewing and home wine making from early childhood. Dad met Mom when he was in the Air Force, and because of base regs, and a much better standard of living than they were used to, homebrewing went by the wayside for a long time. After Dad retired, they settled in Kansas near some of Mom's relatives, and began homebrewing once again. I was starting high school around this time, and the smell of fermentation is one of my strongest memories from that time.
It should be noted that they continued to use depression era recipes and methods even into the seventies. One improvement my dad used when brewing wine was to use a punctured balloon as an air lock instead of just covering the bottle's opening with muslin. Mom continued to us whatever grains were cheapest, oven malted them and brewed in an open crock covered with a muslin cloth. She also used sourdough "hooch" for yeast.
After graduating high school, I followed in Dad's footsteps and joined the Air Force, where I traveled the world (literally) and met many interesting brews. My days of homebrew were over, as far as I was concerned.
A few years before my own retirement, my father died of cancer, and my mother moved in with me. With her came that same old stoneware crock, and she made up a few homebrews (mostly just as way to keep busy and relive some of her childhood). This crowd should have no trouble believing that they weren't very tasty. Then one day, I came home from the base package store (picking up my favorite Irish whiskey) with a Mr. Beer kit in the little brown keg, with a Bewitched Red Ale. Mom was amazed that this claimed to make beer. After reading (and discarding) the instructions, she set out to try it, and we both liked the results.
continued in Pt 2
It should be noted that they continued to use depression era recipes and methods even into the seventies. One improvement my dad used when brewing wine was to use a punctured balloon as an air lock instead of just covering the bottle's opening with muslin. Mom continued to us whatever grains were cheapest, oven malted them and brewed in an open crock covered with a muslin cloth. She also used sourdough "hooch" for yeast.
After graduating high school, I followed in Dad's footsteps and joined the Air Force, where I traveled the world (literally) and met many interesting brews. My days of homebrew were over, as far as I was concerned.
A few years before my own retirement, my father died of cancer, and my mother moved in with me. With her came that same old stoneware crock, and she made up a few homebrews (mostly just as way to keep busy and relive some of her childhood). This crowd should have no trouble believing that they weren't very tasty. Then one day, I came home from the base package store (picking up my favorite Irish whiskey) with a Mr. Beer kit in the little brown keg, with a Bewitched Red Ale. Mom was amazed that this claimed to make beer. After reading (and discarding) the instructions, she set out to try it, and we both liked the results.
continued in Pt 2
