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Raise
Your Mug to
Virginia’s Lagers and Ales
Deep in the
bowels of the New York Public Library’s manuscript
collection, there is a notebook penned by George
Washington. In it he set down a recipe for his
“small beer,” the type brewed in many
18th-century colonial homes, including Mt. Vernon:
“Take a large Siffer [Sifter] full of Bran Hops to
your Taste. Boil these 3 hours then strain out 30
Gall[ons] into a cooler put in 3 Gall[ons] Molasses
while the Beer is Scalding hot or rather draw the
Melasses into the cooler & St[r]ain the Beer on
it while boiling Hot. let this stand till it is
little more than Blood warm then put in a quart of
Yea[s]t if the Weather is very Cold cover it over
with a Blank[et] & let it Work in the Cooler 24
hours then put it into the Cask -- leave the bung
open till it is almost don[e] Working -- Bottle it
that day Week it was Brewed.” (beerhistory.com)
By the time Washington scribbled his recipe, brewers
had been producing malt liquors for more than 6,000
years. Beer in its simplest form is fermented grain
-- evidence of its use is found in the ancient
Fertile Crescent civilizations of Mesopotamia and
Egypt. Some anthropologists have even argued that
beer, rather than bread, was the force behind the
development of civilization. In A History of the
World in 6 Glasses, author Tom Standage theorizes
that the long life of stored grains allowed nomadic
hunter-gatherers to settle near their food supplies.
The need to keep track of their stores in turn led
to the development of the trappings of civilization
– accounting, writing and bureaucracy. So beer, a
byproduct of stored grain, and the rise of
civilization are intimately linked.
While Washington
may not have known beer’s lofty origins,
he realized the value of a home-grown product.
In true “buy American” form, he wrote to the
Marquis de Lafayette in 1789, “We have already
been too long subject to British prejudices. I use
no porter [a dark, sweet ale] or cheese in my
family, but such as is made in America, both these
articles may now be purchased of an excellent
quality”. Two centuries earlier, in 1587,
Europeans had brewed the first beer in the New World
at Sir Walter Raleigh’s ill-fated Virginia colony,
but weren’t pleased with the result. They sent
back to England for better quality beer.
Unfortunately, when it finally arrived, the colony
had vanished.
Today, despite valiant efforts by the
Mid-Atlantic Association of Craft Brewers,
which launched a “Virginia is for Beer Lovers”
campaign a few years back, the Old Dominion’s
breweries have not achieved the national
reputation of our wineries. This might be due in
part to their smaller numbers. Besides two large beer manufacturers –
Budweiser in James City County and Coors in
Rockingham County -- there are just a dozen or so
microbreweries and some breweries attached to
restaurants, known as brewpubs. The large beer
manufacturers produce massive amounts of beer –
seven million barrels per year, as opposed to amounts
ranging from 500 to 4,500 barrels per year for
Virginia’s microbreweries. (Barrel measures seem
to vary according to what is stored in them -- 31 gallons in a barrel of beer; 42 in a barrel of
oil.)
Just as an aside, according
to GMU’s
Charlie Grymes’ virginiaplaces.org, Coors sends a
“beer concentrate” in tank cars to Rockingham
County from its headquarters in Golden, Colorado.
Adding water and packaging in Virginia reduces costs
(Beer and Breweries in
Virginia). And it means
Coors drinkers here have some local water mixed with
their Rocky Mountain springs.
Beer basically has
four ingredients – grain, yeast, hops (a type of
flowering plant that adds the bitter flavor to a
brew) and water. Some Virginia microbreweries try to
adhere to a 16th-century German purity law, known as
Reinheitsgebot, which restricted brewers to water,
hops and barley malt. (Yeast hadn’t been discovered
yet). The larger beer manufacturers add non-barley
grains, such as corn and rice, which true brew
aficionados deplore. In fact, the Old Dominion’s
microbrewers are proud of their designer beers. Some
opt for purity; others boast brews with extras, such
as fruits and spices and even marshmallow, graham
and vanilla.
Thanks to the efforts of the
craft brewers, the Virginia Tourism Corporation now
devotes a section of its “Quench Your Thirst”
Web page to beer makers in the Commonwealth (Beer:
What's Brewing). A Web site called beerme.com
also provides an exhaustive, up-to-date list of
Virginia breweries (Breweries in
Virginia).
Washington would be proud that his taste for good
local ale has lasted through the centuries.
Do you
have a preferred Virginia brew? Send it to
edwin.clay@fairfaxcounty.gov. We’ll let you know
the results.
NEXT:
Edgar Cayce’s Legacy:
Virginia’s Psychic Phenomena and Other Stuff
November 14, 2005
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