Brewery Experiments with 19th-Century Flavors

In a region better known for heirloom tomatoes and heritage pigs, a small craft brewery is reaching back to an 1840s recipe for its next beer.

Craggie Brewing Co. in Asheville, N.C., plans to start producing its Antebellum Ale later this week, following a few successful test runs that surprised even brewmaster Bill Drew.

"I wasn't a big fan of brewing this, but I actually really like it," admits Drew, who found his inspiration in a trio of beer recipes included in a business plan for a 1930s Statesville brewery helmed by his co-owner's distant relative. While it's almost certain Maj. William Allison never bottled the beer – his enterprise floundered in the face of a legal challenge from Chattanooga's Southeast Brewing Company -- a hand-written note indicating the beer's century-old antecedents intrigued the Craggie team.

The original recipe calls for spruce, molasses, ginger and "a gill of yeast." Since the beverage didn't include hops or grain, co-owner Jonathan Cort admits it's a stretch to classify it as a beer -- although he eagerly explored the possibilities of marketing Craggie's product as a gluten-free brew.
"It may have been similar to a whiskey," Cort says, speculating that the elixir might have been prepared to appeal to Southern palates.

But Drew points out that molasses, a sugar byproduct, wouldn't ferment with the ferocity of refined sugar, sorghum skimmings or fruit juice. "Technically, the drink would be like a kombucha," he says. "It was one or two percent alcohol, so it wasn't liquor or beer."

The beverage was probably a sort of mountain root tea, the Native American-influenced remedy that 19th-century teetotalers remade as root beer.

Craggie's ale – a pale ale spiked with molasses, ginger and spruce -- likely wouldn't please the Temperance movement, which counted aspiring brewer Maj. Allison among its members. "He never drank a drop of alcohol in his life," Cort says. "He just saw an opportunity to provide North Carolina with beer."