148 / 220
Chapter XVI
The Beer Family—Hozv to Make
Your Own Home Supply and
When to Drink It
Beer,one of the most ancient of all brews and unquestion
ably the most wholesome and refreshing of all alcoholic
beverages, is also one of the most ubiquitous, if I may use
that word in the sense that beer accommodates itself to
virtually any food, at any time of day, at any meal,and in
doors or outdoors.
Like champagne, it tends to promote conviviality; but,
unlike the champagne drinker, the beer drinker is not so
quickly inebriated—and need not become so, unless he over-
imbibes, which is true of any liquor. Butfew ever have the
capacity to over-indulge in beer, and so it is really one of the
most temperate of beverages, outside of water, and not even
excluding the caffeine containing coffees or teas containing
acids which we daily absorb without a thought of their
possible injurious effects upon our systems.
To make beer at home is a rather "smelly" job and I
would not recommend it to one who lives in an apartment
house. This is a beverage which requires, almost,the owner
ship of your own home or, at least, residence in a home
without other families that might be annoyed.
But as you probably might like to try some recipes—I'll
give only afew—Ishall not disappoint you in that aspiration.
Here is a family recipe which has done noble service for
our family over a period of more than a century and, if
followed to the letter, you will never have a sorry brew:
Ingredients necessary:
5 tablespoons of large barley
4 ounces of hops
1 quart of dark corn syrup (if white syrup is used add
2 tablespoons of burnt sugar) }4 cake of yeast.
Apparatus necessary:
2 dozen beer bottles
5 gallon stone crock
148