Potatoes are native to the Americas and were first brought to Europe by the Spanish Conquistadors during the mid-16th century.  The English buccaneer, Sir Walter Raleigh, is known to have gifted them to Queen Elizabeth as an American delicacy. Since then, potatoes have become a staple food source for many people all over the world.  We eat them mashed, as fries, and as baked potatoes. Potatoes are frequently distilled to become vodka of course.  The story of how “French Fries” came to American inspired me to make them into an excellent Kartoffelferienbier.

While we see potatoes as a food staple, in the late 1500s, it was viewed with suspicion.  In France, it was fed to pigs but considered suspect for human consumption. Superstition held that it was poisonous or caused leprosy.  The fact that potatoes grow underground, and not from seeds but from chunks of the tuber, also darkened its reputation. Potatoes weren’t sold or grown in any great volume.  This would all change when James Hemings presented his recipe for pommes frit at Le Hôtel de Langeac site on Paris’ Champs-Élysées to a certain US Diplomat, future President, and his patron – Thomas Jefferson.

The Confederation Congress had recalled John Jay from diplomatic duties in France. In his place they sent Thomas Jefferson to serve as the third Minister Plenipotentiary assisting Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Sailing with Jefferson was Martha, his daughter, and a nineteen-year-old enslaved house servant named James Hemings.  Jefferson’s intent, although he didn’t say so publicly, was to have James master the French “art of cookery” and then bring French recipes and cooking styles back to Monticello when Jefferson’s foreign assignment was up. As soon as Jefferson got settled in Paris, he enrolled James in a three-year apprenticeship to learn classic French cuisine.

By 1787, Hemings was apprenticing for the master chef de cuisine at Château de Chantilly, the country estate of Louis-Joseph de Bourbon (prince de Condé), where sometimes even French kings used to drop in for lunch. And by 1788, Hemings was chef de cuisine for Thomas Jefferson in his Champs-Élysées townhouse and its ever-constant flow of diplomatic guests. No recipes or menus exist from the dinner parties Jefferson hosted. But it’s very likely that, along with Hemings’s learned dishes of crème brulée, meringues, French-style crème Chantilly, macaroni and cheese, was a dish served as “pommes de terre frites àcru, en petites tranches” (“potatoes deep-fried while raw, in small cuttings”). In other words—French fried potatoes.

According to legend, Louis XVI began wearing potato blossoms pinned to his coat, and Marie Antoinette wore a garland of these blossoms.  It was scandalous as the potato was commonly thought to be poisonous. Louis even had potatoes served at the royal court and Hemmings managed, thought his association with Jefferson, to get the recipe.

When Jefferson was recalled back to America, on the eve of the French Revolution, he brought with him his four charges, a harpsichord, eighty-six crates of books, wine, seedlings and various kitchen utensils, and over 150 recipes of collected French dishes —including the Royal recipe for presumably one for pommes de terre frites àcru, en petites tranches.

Now almost any food that contains sugars and starches can be fermented to become beer. Potatoes, especially sweet potatoes, have naturally high sugar content and enough natural amylase enzymes to convert their own starches to sugars in much the same was as malted barley.  So rather than fry the potatoes, we will ferment them into a nice Märzen style ale.

• 3.25 lb two-row malt
• 2.5 lb Munich or Pils malt
• 6.5 lb Peeled and crushed raw potatoes at room temperature
• 2 oz East Kent Goldings hops
• German Ale yeast

Directions:

• Make a thick grain mash at temperature of about 156°F (69°C) using the least amount of water possible, but avoid lumps and dry spots.  Allow to mash for at least 30 min.
• Macerate the peeled potatoes. Then pour the potato mash into the grain bed and mix the grain and potatoes evenly for maximum exposure of both to all starches in the mash.
• Top the grain/potato bed with about an inch of water at about 172°F (78°C) and allow the mash to continue for at least 30 minutes (longer is better).
• Lauder and sparge the wort into a brew kettle and bring to a boil.
• Add bittering hops 15 minutes into boil. Add aroma hops 10 minutes before the end of the boil.
• Chill and ferment 5 days then rack to secondary. The secondary should be completed in two weeks.
• Bottle condition at least 2 weeks.

Original Gravity: 1.048
Final Gravity: ~1.010 (will depend on yeast)
ABV: 5%
Boil Time: 60 minutes

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