It makes me wonder if there is something magic about yeast, because that parallels my experience as a teenager.
My Irish grandmother was reminiscing about Prohibition. she lived in PA at the time, and "Felt sorry for her German neighbors who missed their beer".
So she regaled us with "Taking a can of Blue Ribbon Hop Flavored Barley Malt syrup, five pounds of sugar and five gallons of water and a yeast cake and...."
At some point that Spring, puzzled by the sudden popularity of the neighborhood nerd, my sister discovered our "Down by the pond" brewery, capping machine nailed to a stump, and a covered pottery vessel liberated from the cellar. She squealed. My father busted us, and was yelling and lecturing. The bottles were on strings, floating low in the pond, and were staying a pleasant 50° or so.
I pulled one in and opened it and handed it to him.
His eyes popped out and he said, "GEt all this stuff into the cellar!!"
I made it for years, and actually miss it, when I remember it. I may just dust off the old skills..it was full bodied and very malty, no doubt not a Great Beer, but still...
I wonder if that malt syrup is still around? It was a large can with (haha) Muffin recipes on the side!
“I wonder if that malt syrup is still around? It was a large can with (haha) Muffin recipes on the side!”
I still see malt syrup in grocery stores. I buy mine by the pound at the Brewer’s supply. I remember my mother telling me about my grandfather making beer during prohibition and the bottles exploding in the cellar. It made my grandmother furious that he was making beer but she didn’t mind at all that he was a bootlegger for my uncle down in Hickman County Tennessee. Go figure.
Malt syrup is easily available. I don't know about Blue Ribbon, but we homebrewers use the stuff all the time.
Many of the breweries which were closed by Prohibition went into the malt extract business. There was a large advertising campaign around it. It was pretty much an open secret that almost no one was using the stuff for baking.
In fact several manufacturers would basically print a recipe very similar to yours on the can and say "now don't ever do this, kids."
And I highly recommend you rekindle your old skills. Homebrewing is lots of fun.
L
We made beer from Blue Ribbon Hop Flavored Malt Syrup for years. Ten gallons of water, three envelopes of yesat, a gallon of syrup, five pounds of sugar in a big stainless steel liner from a Navy coffee urn. (we had it on a dolly because it was rounded on the bottom). Bottling and capping took a full evening, but gave us 12 cases to enjoy. Man, was that stuff POTENT!!! Foosh!