Photo courtesy Alewerks Brewing Company
I wouldn’t have thought I’d want to see the stuff I use to make gingerbread in my beer, but the molasses in this fine brown brew has made me a believer.
At Brewhaha, a beer extravaganza held for the first time in August at the Virginia Historical Society, this was the best of the many beers I tried, and easily the most interesting.
I reached out to Frank Clark, who led a session at Brewhaha, to learn how it was made.
What I got was a history lesson — which is fitting, since Clark has also spent more than a quarter century talking about historical foodways at Colonial Williamsburg.
At the time of the American Revolution, porters were made with brown malt, as they were in England. Malt was cheap and plentiful across the pond, but after the war it became expensive, and U.S. brewers began casting about for replacements. Molasses was one.
Clark found a recipe for an 18th-century porter that intrigued him but soon found it was of little help. Another instructed him to “‘put the molasses and brown sugar in a cast-iron pot and set it over the fire until it lights on fire.’ I never could get it to work. I tried floating whiskey on top of it and lighting that,” he says.
It sounds terrible; charred sugar. Why would anyone consume burnt molasses and sugar in beer?
But it worked. The result is surprisingly, crazily, palatable. Not as round and roasty as most porters, it brims with notes of licorice and molasses, and if you concentrate you can taste a hint of ash in there, too.
I think it’s an ideal beer for this time of year, and in my house I’m pairing it with a nice hunk of aged gouda or, better yet, a nice hunk of aged gouda that I’ve slipped into a gooey grilled cheese.
