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Green Corn Stalk Beer


Classification: historical, 1700s

Source: Thomas Manteufel, (tomm@pet.med.ge.com) Issue #748, 10/25/91


Published in the Virginia Gazette on Feb. 14, 1775. A family recipe by Landon Carter.

The stalks, green as they were, as soon as pulled up, were carried to a convenient trough, then chopped and pounded so much, that, by boiling, all the juice could be extracted out of them; which juice every planter almost knows is of saccharine a quality almost as any thing can be, and that any thing of a luxuriant corn stalk is very full of it, ... After this pounding, the stalks and all were put into a large copper, there lowered down it its sweetness with water, to an equality with common observations in malt wort, and then boiled, till the liquor in a glass is seen to break, as the breweres term it; after that it is strained, and boiled again with hops. The beer I drank had been made above twenty days, and bottled off about four days.