It's sometimes difficult for a beer book to get promptly reviewed in the mainstream press. Even specialty brewspapers can only deal with a handful of the many beer related publications. But every worthy book will eventually get its turn, even if it takes 176 years. Yes, it's been 176 years since the publication of Mackenzie's Five Thousand Receipts in all the Useful and Domestic Arts clamored it's way into literary oblivion with nary a single review. Until now that is. Thanks to book collector and historian Peter Tamburro, this hefty tome has been resurrected and now is finally getting its due. And its due is also a boon for today's home brewer as the book reveals itself to be a treasure chest of unique brewing insights mixed with more than a few unintentional chuckles.
It should be first noted that this is not solely a brewing book. Chapters range from the sublime "How to Warm Beds", to the eminently practical "Salutary Cautions for Females Whose Clothes are on Fire". There are also hundreds of recipes for things such as pigeon auz choux, compound soap, house paint, and of course a miracle rheumatism curing elixir. Each of these topics is briskly and concisely detailed in a quarter page. However there is a single topic that takes up the majority of the book. That topic is brewing.
The plethora of brewing tips in this bible for 19th century survival were specifically written for the home, or as it was called then, private, brewer. The author in fact quickly dismisses the professional brewer when he says, "of public breweries we affect to give no help because books are not likely to be resorted by the class of persons engaged in those extensive manufactories". This belief that professional brewers were mainly illiterate, low class individuals was not an uncommon one then. Only with the early 20th century rise of the national breweries and high profile beer barons of great wealth did that perception slowly begin to change.
Logically enough Mr. MacKenzie starts by warning the private brewer to choose his water carefully. This advice however does leave quite a bit of wiggle room as he concludes that "soft water makes for a stronger extract that is more inclined to ferment but hard water is better for keeping beer and is liable to run sour". He is more definitive when advising his readers on how to mash without a thermometer, "a device resorted to by those professional brewer who has no confidence in their own abilities or traditional ways." Instead of the thermometer, one need only follow this simple rule: "as diminished evaporation takes place on the surface of the water just before it boils the private brewer should tun on more heat as soon as they see their faces on the smooth surface of the water." Quite the practical and ingenious solution.
While today's home brewer can readily find recipes for stout, porter, Burton and Windsor ales, that are easier to follow than those of Mr. Mackenzie, he'd be hard pressed to find anything similar to a many others in the book. For example, there's "making table beer from sugar". The straightforward instructions advise the brewer to take 4 pounds of coarse brown sugar, add 10 gallons of water, and then put in three ounces of hops. Let it all boil for three- quarters of an hour. Keep it for a week, then tap. I wonder if using Equal instead of sugar would produce a low calorie beer?
For many home brewers of the early 1800s the difficulty in securing some ingredients and the overall expense involved meant that significant efforts had to be made to salvage every off batch of brew. To recover beer when flat Mackenzie recommends taking "the bad brew, boil it with honey, skim it well when cold and put it into the cask again". Now you know what to do with all those half finished Bud cans from your last party. As an alternative he suggests adding two ounces of new hops and a pound of chalk into the cask and close it up. In three days, so he claims, it will be fit to drink. Sorry, but I think I'll take flat to chalky on this one.
He is a firm believer that prevention is the best remedy however. To stop beer from becoming stale and flat he instructs that a quart of French brandy be mixed with wheat or bean flour to form dough. Simply put the dough into the cask and your beer will remain fresh. He unfortunately doesn't recommend just forgetting it all and just drink the brandy, a much more sagacious solution.
Want to give new life to some of your old ale? Mackenzie's prescription calls for taking a "handful of pickled cumbers and add it to the cask. This will add an apparent six months of aging in taste." He doesn't mention that the taste may be salad like, but at least it will taste like a 6-month-old one. Want to give your beer a richer taste? For this he suggests putting six sea biscuits into a bag of hops and put that into the cask. Don't worry, a recipe for sea biscuits is also included in the book.
For those of you who share the early 19th century view that electricity is a mysterious and odious phenomenon whose main function is to ruin your next batch of brew the book provides an answer. Simply place your cask over pieces of iron. This alone will "serve as sufficient protection against this pernicious influence".
Perhaps the section that resonated most loudly with the home brewer then and today was one irresistibly entitled "Making Cheap and Agreeable Table Beer". All you have to do is take 15 gallons of water and boil one half, putting the other half into a barrel. Add the boiling water to the cold with one gallon of molasses and a little yeast. Keep the bung hold open until fermentation is abated. That's it. Cheap, assuredly. The agreeable part is however, debatable.
MacKenzie's Five Thousand Recipes in all the Useful and Domestic Arts provides us with a look back into an era of individualism and iconoclastic self-reliance; an America without supermarkets, convenience stores, or even mass market breweries. If you wanted beer you made it yourself. Home brewing was not just a hobby but a necessity. And more importantly, the book clearly shows us an America that had an abiding affection and regard for beer. In that sense things haven't changed so much after all. (contact: VinceC@cornerpub.com)
Yours in Hops,
Vince Capano 2001 Quill & Tankard Winner North American Guild of Beer Writers
