What’s In Your Jeans?

[GuingesRock]

…or is that genes. My spelling is atrocious! Do you brewers come from a long line of beer makers? Do you have any heirloom beers or beer making techniques that have been passed through the generations? Did your parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts make beer, and was it good stuff, or bad stuff?

My mother has known Jonathan Guinness, baron and heir to the Guinness fortune, for most of her life. She made beer when I was a kid. My parents had 5 gallon drums of liquid malt kicking around, hops from the garden, and she had a friend at the St Austell brewery who gave her yeast. My parents were poor bohemians, living in a cottage, down a muddy lane. We lived off the land, subsidized by my mother’s part time waitressing job. They had no fancy gear, no electricity, no car, no TV. My father read us books by the fire. They met lots of other interesting and famous people in Paris and London during their earlier life before they moved down the muddy lane, and I remember a steady stream of them coming to visit, mud up to their knees, and drinking the beer with much merriment.

To make the beer, my mother used to boil water in a pot on a primus stove. Then she would pour the boiling water onto hops from the garden, LME and honey from my bees in a plastic bucket. She would wait for that to cool to what she called “blood heat”. She tested the temperature with her elbow as she didn’t have a thermometer. When it was at “blood heat” she would add the yeast.

I think there’s a bit of fermentation on my mother’s side.

Edit: picture of the cottage "down the muddy lane" as it is today.

[jeffsmith]

No beer makers on my side, but a few of my passed relatives were pretty apt moonshiners. I can remember being fascinated by the process as a kid.

[LeafMan66_67]

I come from a long line of beer drinkers!

[canuck]

I come from a long line of beer drinkers!

Hahaha, same here!

As far as beer makers, my cousin Kellye won the Garrison brew off last year and is now a brewer for Garrison. That's about it for me.

[LiverDance]

I believe some of my relatives out of Nfld were rum runners. My father used to have a swish barrel with our town Councillor but he hates beer.

[mr x]

Making shine on one side and bootlegging on the other.

Sent from Tapatalk 2, a prick of a company.

[Woody]

No beer makers in my family that I know of. My parents don't drink much & always say they don't know where I got my love of beer & brewing from.

[chalmers]

No beer makers in my family that I know of. My parents don't drink much & always say they don't know where I got my love of beer & brewing from.

Ditto here (they'll have a glass of wine with XMas or Thanksgiving or Easter meal), though my dad did a bit of home brewing when he lived in England during his late twenties. He's promised me his brewing logs, but I haven't seen them yet.

[Tim Gregory]

My dad brewed when I was young. I've got his old recipe at home. It's scary.

[GuingesRock]

My dad brewed when I was young. I've got his old recipe at home. It's scary.

The suspense! Will you share it? It might be good stuff.

[Tim Gregory]

Sure, I'll dig it out tonight.

[dexter]

Dad brewed a bit in the 80's- and a few times in the 90s but only john bull extract cans.

[derek]

I come from a family of near-alcoholics (except for my brother, who died of drink). Lots of wine-making but I think I'm the only one who really got into beer (I know my brother occasionally made kit beer).

[Woody]

Brewing logs and old recipes sound interesting!