Mock Beers
The recipes in this short chapter make what are popularly called ‘mock beers’, and that is precisely what they are. The fact that they are called beers at all is probably because they are too low in alcohol to be called wines and that where one recipe calls for the use of hops another needs some malt. In some recipes both malt and hops are used in smaller amounts than those used for true beers.
Like all aspects of home wine making and beer brewing, the making of mock beers is becoming more popular every day. Messing about in the cellar, kitchen or outhouse, knocking up all sorts of alcoholic drinks has taken such a hold on the country that I shall not be surprised to find a bottle of something fermenting under the seat of my train one morning, or to see a fermentation lock sticking out of my neighbor’s brief case.
If the trend continues, and I can safely predict that it will because we are no longer working in the dark with only hearsay and near-witchcraft to guide us, there will be hardly a household in the country not making some sort of beverage from low alcohol beers to strong beers and high alcohol wines fit for royalty.
The type of yeast is not important in these recipes, but do not use fresh baker’s yeast as this is likely to 87 impart a ‘yeasty’ flavor, or bakehouse mustiness to the beer. A good dried yeast in granulated form is useful. Do not use expensive wine yeast as this would be wasteful because the characteristics imparted to wines by good quality wine yeasts would be lost in these beers.