Need moral support, suggestions, to re-create an old family recipe… Flint Hills Farm House Ale


So apparently I have a lot of brewers in my ancestry… going back at least to the early 1600s…. I have no idea what any of them made except for my Great Grandfather…. And that is sketchy……

From the 1880s (or earlier) until the early 1900s he made beer on his farm in the southern Flint Hills of Kansas. Far as I can tell, from the bits and pieces I’ve heard…. He brewed once or twice a year… in big crocks (there were a couple of like 15-gallon ones out in the barn when I was a kid) covered with cheesecloth for fermenters, down in the root cellar. Malted grain in his pole barn, and boiled in a huge big copper kettle. My Grandfather’s oldest brother was the only family member that I was ever able to get to talk about it in any detail, and that was before I started brewing. From all accounts his beer was “kind of darkish, with a reddish tint”, and was the best beer around back then. It was pretty wild around there until 1910 or so. I was told that he paid for his favorite “cartridge rifle” with his beer… (weird European single shot thing in 30-something caliber… only other one like it I’ve seen is cradled in the arm of Annie Oakley in an old photograph).The old boy grew a small plot of Barley for his beer, as well as winter wheat (his main crop). To make his Barley go farther, he malted some wheat also…. I’m thinking he used about 30% or so. He went to great pains to keep from getting a lot of smoke flavor in his malts, but I’ll bet there was a good touch of it…. He used Pecan and some Burr Oak for fuel. From the descriptions, he made some roasted barley, and what had to be a dark crystal malt (made no sense to me at the time, but looking back it had to be, he soaked it in hot water for a while before roasting dry).
He grew a few hops…. Variety unknown…. That “struggled” in the climate. (and were gone long before I came along). They would not have been available there that early, so they had to have been brought with them when they moved west. The family started out in Massachusetts in the 1600s (between 1620 and 1642), and lived in Indiana (from sometime after 1807 to between 1867 and the mid 1870s) before heading to KS…. So they could either be wild or something like Cluster hops? from Indiana, or English Hops that were brought along from Mass. The family showed up at The Plymouth Colony about the same time that Hops first came over…. … the first commercial cultivation of Hops in North America (no connection that I know of, but cool anyway). I would think that Cluster or wild hops would thrive there, but English hops would suffer in the heat. Best I know he only used bittering Hops. I was told that he put a little chicory in there too….. late in the boil?
No idea what he used for yeast….. But…. There was an “applesauce apple” tree near the house that the old boy was “very protective” of, and always allowed a few apples to fall, and would whip anybody that dared to pick them up…. Was he “cultivating” yeast????? (that tree was still there as late as the 1970s, and made the best dang applesauce on earth…. No idea what the variety was, they were small, yellowish green, and tart as hell…. and were only ever used to make applesauce, I would kill to be able to make Cider from them).
I’m thinking that his beer was an evolution of something passed on for generations…. That branch of my family were Scots from Aberdeenshire that ended up in Northern England (Barnstable) around the mid 1500’s, before they came over here. Anyway, sad, that the Beer, like so many other things, was lost with the coming of the “modern age”…..

So, from what little I know…. I’m thinking something like a Brown Ale in color, with a reddish cast from a small amount of roasted barley. Base malt would not have been too pale, kilning would have been very crude. With a touch of Pecan/Oak smoke, low on hops (bittering addition only)…. and a bit of chicory. Gravity shouldn’t be too high, but since it was “pretty potent stuff” (compared to BMC), maybe 1.055 to 1.060 or so (I’ll shoot for the high end of this)…. Probably would not have had real high attenuation…. Low carbonation. (I think I just wrote the style guidelines…. )

Anyway my thoughts to replicate it are a grain bill of 2-row Barley, with a bit of Crystal 90, a touch of Crystal 20, some roasted barley, and about 30% red wheat malt. I see that AHS is now selling Pecan smoked malt….. (kind of what got me thinking of this….. )

Hops I’ve been going back and forth between either Cluster or Fuggles…. Since they will only be used for bittering, probably doesn’t matter….. so Fuggles it is.

Yeast is the hardest decision…… I have even been thinking of using a sweet cider yeast…. (No, I’m not going to consider doing a “wild” beer)…. But will most likely end up using S-04, and ferment on the warm end of the range…

So, for a tentative stab at a recipe for a 5-gallon batch…….

5 ½ -pounds 2-Row Barley
3-pounds Red Wheat Malt
0.5-pounds Crystal malt 90
1-pound Pecan Smoked Malt
0.25-pounds Crystal 20
0.25-pounds Black Roasted Barley

This would put my O.G. at 1.058 and an SRM of around 19.
I’ll keep the IBU around 30….
Figure mash at 156…..

No idea how to handle the chicory…… but figure 2-oz (?) or so of the roots, roasted in the oven, and added with 15-min. left in the boil….. ??????????? or should I steep it in boiling water, cool, and add late in fermentation??????????? Kind of leaning towards the later….

Reality check????? Suggestions?????