Brewing with corn and potatos

Thank goodness for Google books. Otherwise if you wanted to read The theory and practice of brewing, from malted and unmalted corn, and from potatos it would cost you $602.75 plus shipping.

But you can read this argument for brewing with potatoes, apparently spelled “potatos” in 1829, for the price of your Internet connection. Author John Ham (not that John Hamm) makes an elegant case for the spud.

“This root contains, intermixed with its fibrous part, a juice which is not pleasant to taste, (although a great detergent or substitute for soap) and also a large quantity of fecula, or starchy matter, a great part of it to no degree inferior to the finest arrow-root. It is this fecula alone that constitutes the value of the potato in brewing . . .”

Time to add another category at the Great American Beer Festival?

3 thoughts on “Brewing with corn and potatos”

  1. I don’t recall if you ever made it to PEI but out there is a heck of a lot of “private mashing” of the potato going on there but not as beer – it goes on to be hobby distilled and hidden in cupboards and basements for sharing with guests.

  2. One of my favorite beers to drink during ski season the the Potato Ale at Sugarloaf mtn in Maine. It’s brewed with real Maine potato(e)s, and definitely makes for a tasty apres-ski pint.

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