If you are serious about drinking cider, then you almost certainly know that US President John Adams also drank cider enthusiastically, and professed to consume a gill a day, before breakfast. Cider was John Adams’ orange juice, and in his day, it was understood that a good quantity of cider, and the Vitamin C that …
Category Archives: Brewing
Benedict Arnold American Wild Ale
Do you consider Benedict Arnold a brilliant general or an evil traitor? Despite what you may have learned in school, the answer to this question is far from simple and highly political. Blessed with almost superhuman energy and endurance, handsome and charismatic, he was a successful apothecary and a seagoing merchant before the war. Unfortunately, …
Man Does Not Live on Beer Alone – 18th Century Cocktails
We all know the Sugar Trade and Rum fueled the Boston and Philadelphia economies in the 1760’s. There is no denying that our founding fathers frequently enjoyed a stiff drink. George Washington owned a distillery that produced rye. Thomas Jefferson treasured his French wines. Even the staid and ultraconservative John Adams had a gill of …
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A New England Beer Run!
On August 15, 1620; the Mayflower and the Speedwell set sail for VIRGINIA. Unfortunately, after only about 200 miles in the rough waters of the north Atlantic, the Speedwell sprang began taking on water and had to turn back. The decision to abandon the Speedwell and transfer many of its passengers onto the Mayflower set …
New Book By Regimental Brewmeister is Out
For the last several years, we have run a very successful program on 18th Century brewing in and around Philadelphia. This year, however, one of my favorite venues hit me with a special request. “… mix things up a bit. Rather than a whole brewing workshop, what if we called it ‘Holiday Spirits with the …
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Beer Recipe — Privateer Abby Triple Ale
In the summer of 1775, George Washington and the fledgling Continental Army was unable to effectively lay siege to British-occupied Boston because the Royal Navy had a firm command of the sea-lanes and the harbor. All George Washington could do was observe the flow of enemy supplies into Boston harbor and wondered if intercepting a …
Beer Recipe: Battle of the Kegs — British Brown Ale
With my focus on 18th Century brewing, don’t generally brew extract beers any more but this was the proverbial deal I could not refuse — FREE MALT. You see there was this guy who was cleaning out his homebrew supplies. I learned about him because I was in the market for an old fashion alcohol …
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Making Whiskey
Whiskey’s origin lies somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 AD when traveling monks migrating across Europe, introduced the distillation practice into Scotland and Ireland. Because of the lack of vineyards in these countries, the monasteries turned to fermenting grain mashes and then distilling them into whiskey. For the next 400 years, whiskey spread throughout the Celtic countries. …
Basic Colonial Brewing #18 — Proof your Whiskey, Sir
When it comes to arcane historical terms for spirits and other alcohol, proof is one of the frustrating ones. In our modern vernacular, with the blessing of modern analytical chemistry as support, we simply think of “proof” as two times the alcohol by volume (ABV). But why is this measure even a thing? After all, …
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Basic Colonial Brewing #17 — Make an 18th Century Toast
“To drink at a table without drinking to the health of someone special, should be considered drinking on the sly, and as an act of incivility.” Throughout history, toasting began after a meal and could last for hours. Toasts would solidify the bonds of groups, not only through the competitive element of drinking, but by …
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Michael Carver -- Historical Interpreter/Reenactor 