New Brew – Spruce Beer

This weekend, to celebrate our Battle of Black Creek Revolutionary War Re-enactment, Ed has brewed up a batch of Spruce Beer.  Colonial soldiers learned from the First Nations peoples that spruce could prevent and cure scurvy: a scourge of mariners and soldiers alike prior to the 19th century.  Scurvy was recognized as a disease caused by a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, but it wasn’t understood to be caused by a deficiency of Vitamin C until 1932!  Thus, while soldiers and sailors didn’t know that spruce was an excellent source of Vitamin C or why Spruce Beer kept scurvy at bay, they did know it was good for what ailed them!  In North America, Spruce Beer was brewed in the home and on the march.  Molasses, a source of both fermentable and unfermentable sugars, with a burnt sugar flavour similar to malt, could replace barley when soldiers were far from farmlands or when grain supplies were low. Spruce Beer was on order for the “Health and Conveniency of the Troops” under the command of British General Amherst in North America in 1759.  He also authorized sutlers (merchants who travelled alongside the military) to brew as much as they desired to add to the supply (for more information about General Amherst’s forays in North America; check out his general orders to the troops, published in Commissary Wilson’s orderly book, available online here).  His personal recipe is preserved in his journal, published by his descendents in the 1930s.

General Amherst’s Spruce Beer Recipe

Take 7 pounds of good spruce & boil it well till the bark peels off, then take the spruce out & put three Gallons of Molasses to the Liquor & boil it again, scum it well as it boils, then take it out the kettle & put it into a cooler, boil the remained of the water sufficient for a Barrel of thirty Gallons, if the kettle is not large enough to boil it together, when milkwarm in the Cooler put a pint of Yeast into it and mix well.  Then put it into a Barrel and let it work for two or three days, keep filling it up as it works out.  When done working, bung it up with a Tent Peg in the Barrel to give it vent every now and then.  It may be used in up to two or three days after.  If wanted to be bottled it should stand a fortnight in the Cask.  It will keep a great while. – Journal of General Jeffrey Amherst

Ed’s brew uses barley and molasses from a later recipe, that was designed to produce a more palatable beer.  Ed describes the beer produced by the above recipe as tasting like “drinking turpentine mixed with Vicks”.  For those of you unfamiliar with Vicks, it’s an ointment with a powerful smell caused by two main ingredients – camphor and menthol.  By our time period – the 1860s – Spruce Beer was still being made, but often with additional ingredients such as oils of sassafras, wintergreen, ginger and substantially less spruce.  Recipes usually called for spruce oil, or essence of spruce – that is previously boiled and distilled spruce oil that could be purchased from the store – and less spruce oil than any other ingredient.  Ed has tried to recreate the ‘hint of spruce’ style that was popular in the 1860s in this brew.  Ed describes the brew as a complex Brown Ale with hints of pine, smoke, treacle (molasses) and oak. This year, he’s using an organic blackstrap molasses – very exciting! Ed’s Spruce Beer will only be available at BlackCreekPioneerVillage (not in the LCBO), and will be ready for sale beginning this Friday, June 15th, 2013.  Why not celebrate Father’s Day by dropping by the Village and checking out the Battle of Black Creek and picking up a growler of Spruce Beer to take home!

Hoppy Drinking! – Guest Post by Black Creek Beer Expert, Katie Bryski

Over the next little while our own Katie Bryski, Beer Expert at Black Creek Pioneer Village, will be supplying us with guest blogs on a variety of beer related topics.  Katie has been working at the Village in a variety of roles over the past few years and is a published author to boot!  Enjoy!

Can you imagine beer without hops?

Today, hops – the flowers of the Humulus lupus plant – are inextricably linked to beer and the brewing process. The small, pine cone-like flowers act as both a flavouring and preserving agent. Not only do they give beer its distinctively bitter taste, they help keep beer from spoiling: highly important in periods before artificial refrigeration!

 While Victorians (like us) expected hopped beer, the earliest brewers didn’t use them at all. The first record of hops as a flavouring agent doesn’t appear until the 9th century. Given that beer has been brewed for almost seven thousand years, hops are a relatively late addition! Early medieval brewers flavoured their beer with gruit: a mixture of yarrow, bog myrtle (also known as sweet gale) and marsh rosemary. While gruit helped flavour beer, it lacked hops’ preserving qualities, which meant that beer’s “shelf life” was quite short – brewers tended to brew for personal or immediate consumption, rather than for export.

Bohemian towns experimented with and eventually perfected hopped beer by the 13^th century, but the issue of hopped versus unhopped beer was more than a matter of taste. It was a political issue as well! Production of gruit was a privilege bestowed by the local lord or archbishop; granting permission to make gruit was thus an important source of income for them. Brewing with hops meant that brewers no longer needed to seek this permission, which meant a loss of revenue for the lords!

The English distinguished between unhopped “ale” and hopped “beer.” Similar to their Victorian descendents, they were fiercely protective of their national drink; hops were banned in England until about 1600. As Englishman Andrew Boorde wrote in 1542:

Ale for an Englysshe man is a naturall drinke… Beere is made of malte, of hoppes, and water; it is a naturall drynke for a doche [Dutch] man, and nowe of late dayes it is moche vsed in Englande to the detryment of many Englysshe men … (from Ale Brewing in Late Medieval and Early Tudor Times)

 But palates adapted, and the benefits of hopped beer quickly became clear. Thanks to the preservation afforded by hops, beer lasted longer, and so could be brewed in larger quantities and exported further away. Without hops, brewing might never have developed beyond its roots as a small, home-based industry.

 While wild hops spread like wildfire, by the nineteenth century hop farming had become a thriving industry, with specific hops strains cultivated for certain flavours. In Canada, hop-pickers could be paid 30 cents per box of hops. Boxes held about thirteen pounds, and an expert picker could fill two per day.

 The use of compacted hop pellets was developed by New Zealand’s University of Otago in the late twentieth century, but in Black Creek’s Historic Brewery, Ed uses hops just as the Victorians did, adding whole dried flowers to the sweet wort during the boil. If you’d like to taste our hops at their best, try some of our India Pale Ale. The distinctively bitter, grapefruit-like taste comes from the hops. More specifically, Ed uses a combination of Chinook, Nugget, and Citra hops, all of which are noted for their fresh floral and/or citrus-y characters. And after you’ve sipped some IPA, take a wander behind Laskay’s Emporium to see our very own hops. This feisty climbing vine is small now, but will have achieved some impressive height by the time of our Hop Harvest in the fall.

Hoppy drinking!

Katie

History Byte – Beer Pudding Anyone?

Next time you host a dinner party and serve Ale Sangaree’s, why not serve a Beer Bishop for dessert?  Known as Kaltschalen in their native Germany, beer puddings became popular in England and North America towards the end of the 19th century with the waves of German immigrants and introduction of German style beers.  Kaltschalen were sometimes known as ‘bishops’ in the English language and were a type of cold soup consisting of fruit, bread and usually (but not always!) alcohol.  One such recipe is for the Beer Bishop, from The Flowing Bowl: When and What to Drink by William Schmidt – published in 1891.

Pumpernickel is grated on a grater and put in a tureen; mix with it one-fourth of a pound of powdered sugar, one-fourth of a pound of choice raisins, a teaspoonful of powdered cinnamon, an unpeeled lemon, cut in pieces without the seeds; add a quart of white beer or lager(Franziskaner), and serve.

Though described as a soup, the bread quickly absorbs the beer creating a texture more akin to a pudding.  The white beer mentioned in the recipe refers to beers brewed with wheat alongside the barley malt.  Franziskaner beer is a wheat beer brewed in Munich, Germany.  While this recipe is not for the gluten intolerant, it is a tasty, albeit different kind of dessert on a hot day.  Black Creek Historic Brewery does not currently have a wheat beer in production, so try Toronto’s Amsterdam Brewery’s 416 Urban Wheat as a substitute!

New Brew – Apricot Ale

Image by Fir0002

Ed has been busy brewing up a specialty beer for this weekend, June 1st, 2013.  Ed will be releasing his Apricot Ale, available beginning on Friday, May 31st, at the Black Creek Historic Brewery in the heart of Black Creek Pioneer Village.  This beer has a burnished gold colour with a hint of apricot in both the flavour and aroma.  Ed also notes that it has a bit of a bready malt taste in the background.  Lightly hopped and carbonated, this medium to light bodied beer is very refreshing and is what Ed describes as ‘a patio beer that will appeal to the most discriminating palate.’  Available in our signature glass Growlers for $18 (including a $4.00 bottle deposit), this one-of-a-kind brew will sell out fast, so make sure to visit the Village and pick up your growler soon! 

Sneak Peak – New LCBO offering – Montgomery’s Courage

Loyal patrons of our LCBO line may have noticed a new brew on the shelf! Representing the decade between 1830 and 1839, Montgomery’s Courage is the third beer in our series of 12 unique beers that represent each decade between 1800 and 1900. This beer commemorates the Rebellion in Upper Canada.

In the 1830s, the seperate colonies of Upper and Lower Canada both revolted against unjust government rule. Economic hardships emboldened rebels whose pursuit of democratic freedoms had long been suppressed. Although both rebellions were defeated, Upper and Lower Canada were unified as a result, and responsible local government was enacted in Canada. In 1837, Toronto’s Montgomery’s Tavern became the base for a rebellious force led by William Lyon Mackenzie. It was quickly defeated. Possibly the rebels courage was due in large part to their consumption of the tavern’s fine ales. In the 1830s, rye based ales like Montgomery’s Courage were in abundance. This amber ale is lightly carbonated and balanced to favour a slightly bitter hopping while delivering peppery, spicy notes with a bouquet reminiscent of ripe apples or calvados.

Montgomery’s Courage, LCBO #343137 is a limited edition brew, available only through the LCBO in a traditional short neck 500 ml. bottle beginning in May through late September 2013.  Individual bottles retail at $3.95.

Copland Brewing Co. 1915

1915 Vest Pocket Reference Annual published by Copland Brewing. Image provided by Ken D

Ken D, one of our readers, sent along an image of the cover of a 1915 Vest Pocket Reference Annual published by Copland Brewing Company.  It’s a neat piece of ephemera as it lists the brands of beer Copland was producing at the time (Pale Ale, Half-and-Half, Budweiser, XXX Porter and Special Brewed Ale) and includes images of two of the bottles and labels in use at the time.  It’s also interesting to note the proprietors, Robert and J.E. Davies.  Robert was late of both the Don and Dominion Breweries; in fact XXX Porter was one of the Don’s signature brews.  Ken mentioned that the volume contained details about horse racing, sports records and information regarding postage rates.  These were likely given out as a promotion either to the public, or more likely to bar owners and people in the business. 

Copland Extra Stout Label from the Fisher Library’s Vintage Canadian Beer Labels Collection.

I pulled up one of the labels pictured on the cover from the Fisher Library collection at the University of Toronto for comparison.  Looks like a pretty good match to me!

Rush Hour in Toronto is Nothing New!

Diagram Showing Homeward Passenger Movement. Civic Transportation Committee, Toronto: 1915. From the digital collections of the University of Toronto

Construction on the tunnel borer launch site for the Toronto-York Spadina Subway expansion is really picking up along Steeles, east of Jane Street. While waiting in traffic this morning it reminded me of an interesting map I’d seen in the University of Toronto digital map collection. Dating from 1915, this diagram shows the movement of passengers between 4:30 and 7 p.m. during the mid-week. It shows that some 57 000 people were departing from the downtown area on their way home. Toronto’s first subway didn’t open until 1954 so all of the traffic was at street level. The map includes data for passengers who travelled on the civic line of electric street railways, car passengers and jitney passengers. Jitneys were a brief fad in Toronto, as David Wyatt of the All-Time List of Canadian Transit Systems notes, “private automobile owners began using their cars to pick up fare-paying passengers. In some cities hundreds of cars were engaged in the trade, jitney associations were formed, routes established, and service hours announced. Operators serious about profitability began modifying their cars to carry more passengers, and the motor bus was born. Nearly everywhere the activity was eventually stamped out by municipal or provincial legislation.”  The map doesn’t cover our location at Jane Street and Steeles, but it’s an interesting archival document that demonstrates that gridlock is not a new concern for Toronto!   You can check the progress of the subway expansion on the TTC website.