Beer has always been a popular beverage in the US. In fact, the frothy beverage has been brewed here since way before the country was founded. Recently, Virginia’s Ardent Craft Ales collaborated with the Virginia Historical Society (VHS) to create a persimmon beer taken from a recipe found in a cookbook from the early 1700’s.
“The cookbook contains recipes for food preparation, medicinal remedies and beer, as well as business accounts for household items and clothing,” says Paul Levengood, President of the Virginia Historical Society. The cookbook is a photocopy of the original owned by Mrs. Polk Laffoon of Cincinnati, Ohio, the photocopies of which were donated to the VHS in 1960. “The original remains in private hands,” says Levengood.
Originally called “Jane’s Percimon Beer,” the folks at Ardent immediately knew that the recipe would be challenging.
“It was written by a 10 or 11 year old girl and was intended for domestic use, so there weren’t any measurements or specifics,” says Tom Sullivan, co-founder of Ardent. They did their best to brew true to the text but incorporated their own understanding of the brewing process, and they soon discovered that there were many valuable nuggets of wisdom hidden between the lines. “You start to realize what the writer was trying to convey. After we brewed the beer, the recipe read entirely different.”
None of them had ever seen a persimmon beer recipe before and they knew they had seasonality on their side. It was October and Persimmons were just about to ripen in Virginia, but the problem was finding some trees.
“The effort to educate ourselves about Persimmons in Virginia was a cool discovery”, says Sullivan. People at the historic gardens at Colonial Williamsburg and Monticello helped steer them in the right direction, as well as everyday people who were interested in the project. Ultimately, they ended up finding some farms west of Richmond where they were able to acquire seventeen pounds of persimmons. This yielded about 3 gallons of beer. “If we knew that would be the case, we would have picked more.”
After brewing, they were sure how the beer was going to turn out. “We knew that it was going to be delicious, even though it was something we never dealt with before.” If fruits or vegetables are treated properly, and the fermentation process is managed properly, you’re almost always going to get something pretty tasty and pleasant to drink. “Fermentation has a funny way of producing something that is always enjoyable. It might not be for everyone, but it’s almost always delicious.”
The final product was mild and cloudy, which they were pretty confident would be the case. “This was an everyday drinking beer, so alcohol was naturally low.” There was a good amount of extract from the persimmons, which they could have cleared up with either modern or colonial techniques, but they chose to keep the variables to a minimum. “We knew that extra bit would only make it taste better.”
