Homebrew in the 1960's



This kept me from brewing for three weeks



Unfortunately I haven't posted in a bit and even more unfortunately I haven't brewed in over a month. This has been the longest dry stretch for me in a couple of years without firing up my kettle. Weather, work, and fun have been to blame. I spent three long weekends "helping" Quinn house sit at his aunt and uncles beautiful cabin in the mountains outside of Centennial, WY. It was a nice life, we fed the horses, stared at the cattle, played with five deaf and blind dogs who have retired from ranch life to become house dogs. We moved a lot of snow and drove the bobcat to town for cocktails. It was peaceful.

A couple of months ago when Quinn moved back to Wyoming from Bozeman, MT, he found a gross of bottle caps in the basement of his parents house that his father had purchased in the 1960's when he planned to begin home brewing. Bill never got around to making any homebrew but these interesting cork crown caps survived. In talking to some folks older than me, I learned that pop used to come capped with these in the 1950's and into the early 1960's. Kids would pry off the cork portion to reveal random free pop under the cap of certain brands. Kind of like getting an Indian shooting a star on your Tootsie Pop. Do stores still honor that? Someone should try it sometime. I guess I never thought about what the world before silicon. Anyhoo, I thought these caps were neat and wanted to share them.

My first thought was to use the caps for wine or a traditionally corked beer like saison, but the more I considered how to use the caps, the more I realized that it wouldn't likely impart a corked character and the cork was likely old and dry and not a very sound seal. Also, it would almost be a shame to use them up, so I have settled on trying a few here and there for fun but reserving the majority as a novelty. Yesterday I bottled three of my Brett B Biere de Garde with them and they seemed to work really well. I need to try some on a non-funky beer to determine if the seal is still effective.



Cork lined Crown Caps



I always wonder what it must have been like to homebrew before the advent of homebrew shops. I suppose there wasn't a homebrew shop prior to President Carter legalizing home brewing in the late 1970's, so up until that point people were creative with equipment and likely making mostly extract batches with bread yeast and malt extract. Yuck. My great grandfather's recipe for Prohibition beer survives somewhere but I haven't been able to find it since I was a teenager. I do remember that it called for using bread yeast, a bucket covered in cheese cloth and lighting a match over it to determine when it was ready.



A gross of caps for 85 cents?



Tomorrow I will get back to brewing as I am going to help my friend Megin get back into brewing herself as she has taken a hiatus from the hobby. No idea what we are brewing but I am looking forward to it. On Sunday I am going to the new brew pub in Cheyenne that opened up this week. It is in a beautiful historic building downtown and I will post some pics and a review of that as well.