Kentucky's Beer Heritage
Beer, like most products in the nineteenth century, was locally made, and like most American cities, Louisville had its share of breweries. Other river towns-Maysville,Covington, Newport, Owensboro, Henderson, and Paducah all had breweries in the last century. With a few exceptions-single breweries in Lexington, Frankfort and Middlesboro- the Kentucky brewing industry was centered in the larger cities on the south bank of the Ohio, and followed the settlement patterns of south German, Swiss and Alsatian immigrants, mirroring the industry on the north side of the Ohio in Cincinnati, Madison, New Albany and Evansville. The industry thrived and until the mid 1960's Kentucky produced more beer than it consumed.
Among these were:
Cream or Present Use Ale- Sometimes called common beer. A light bodied ale fermented at or a little below room temperature. It was an ale which was marketed with little or no aging. It was cheap, and when well made consumers enjoyed the light, fresh taste of this moderate alcohol beer. Often common beer was put in kegs before in was completely fermented, and built up considerable pressure as it aged in the cellars of the saloons where it was served. It was generally consumed within three or four weeks after brewing. Original gravity was around 13 degrees B (1.052), bitterness 25-30 IBU, at least twice that of the modern "cream ale" (often an underhopped lager). Brilliant Ale was more heavily hopped, like the lager of the time,aged longer at cold temperature (about 39 F.)to clarify and usually bottled.
Dark Cream Common Beer-This beer, using 1-2% black sometimes also 1-2% crystal malt, and or 3-8 grams of brewers caramel per barrel was popular in the Louisville/ New Albany area and referred to as Kentucky Common Beer in the Wahl-Henius Handy Book of Brewing, though it was locally known as cream beer or common beer. There is some evidence that partial sour mashes were used to lighten the body. It was usually made with about 75% malt and 25% corn grits or sugar, 11 or 12 degrees B (1.044-1.048). Like cream ale, it was consumed fresh, usually as draft beer. In 1913 it was estimated that 80% of the beer consumed in Louisville was of this type. Many local breweries made this type of beer only. It is a distinct beer style originated in Louisville
Stock Ale- A strong, heavily hopped American version of India Pale Ale, it usually had an original gravity of 16 to 25 degrees balling (1 .064-1.100) with a bitterness of about 60 or 80 IBU (Modern American mass market beers usually have bitterness in the range of 8-16 IBU, European lagers 20-40 IBU). It was usually mashed by single infusion, six row malt with up to 25% sugar.
Porter and Stout- A common recipe for porter called for porter was two pounds of black malt and six of caramel malt per barrel, with the rest pale malt, with an original gravity of 13 degrees B. (1.052). Hops were 1 1/4 pounds per barrel, the last third added 10 minutes before the end of the boil. Stout was 16 to 18 degrees Balling (1.064-1.072) and typically had 2 1/2 pounds of hops per barrel. Hops in those days were of low strength, but even at 3% alpha acid it works out to about 45 IBU for the porter and 80 IBU for the stout. Single infusion mashes were generally used.
Weiss Beer-Sour wheat beer of the Berliner Weiss type was made by some breweries (see advertisement). The American product usually had a higher percentage of barley malt than the Berlin article (70% vs. 25%) and was a little stronger, but like the Berlin Weiss was very tart, cloudy and effervescent.
Lager -By the l880's Fehr's and Senn & Ackerman were making a lager beer from about 2/3 six row pale barley malt and 1/3 rice, and clarifying it over beechwood chips (does this sound familiar?). Hop rates were about three times that of recent American pale lagers, including those still using beechwood chips. Civil War era lager was all malt, probably darker than modern.
Bock- All the breweries made a kock, marketed for a short time beginning in late March. The large lager beer breweries probably made fair copies of the Bavarian article, the common beer brewers just added a lot of caramel malt to their regular recipe, and sometimes made the beer a little stronger and aged it more.
Malt Tonic-A strong, dark, heavy bodied beer marketed as a medicine. Sometimes it was pasteurized and unfermented wort added to give it even more body. Advertisements of the period actually recomended it to nursing mothers!