Good Luck to the Barley Mow

Foreword

Introduction

When I started this project, I wasn't trying to write the history of beer in Canada, or of its brewers. Others have done that, and done it brilliantly. I wanted instead to revisit the history of the beers themselves: to trace how the styles that quenched people's thirst here evolved over time. By brewing these beers, I wanted to bring their spirit back to life and imagine what generations of drinkers might have tasted.

The further back we go, the harder it is to recreate the profile of yesterday's drinks with any certainty. Techniques have changed, ingredients are no longer produced the same way, and written records are fragmentary at best. Claiming historical accuracy is nearly impossible.

I'm not a historian. My goal is rather to make beers that taste good to today's palates. Each recipe therefore says clearly what comes from the sources and what is interpretation.

If you're already a seasoned homebrewer, skip straight to the recipes. If you've never brewed, or you're just starting, take the time to read the first chapters. You'll see: it's not that complicated.

Grab your kettles and follow me on this little trip through time!

Chapter 1

Humans and alcohol: hooked from the cradle

Let's start with a short detour to place beer in the history of humanity, no less. In short, we've been "having a drink" since our species was in its infancy. As soon as we learned to grow grain, we turned it into "liquid bread".

Before agriculture

In fact, we know very little. Alcoholic drinks very likely existed before agriculture: a beehive left in water for a few weeks, and there's mead; fruit juice left to itself, and there's wine. Humans probably met alcohol long before they understood how to make it.

Some archaeologists even think beer may have motivated the cultivation of cereals. In 2018, a Stanford University team found traces of brewing about 13,000 years old in Raqefet Cave, Israel, left by the Natufians, semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers. That is almost as old as the oldest known bread remains, found in Jordan and dated to about 14,000 years ago.

The first civilizations

In China, at Jiahu, 9,000-year-old jars held a fermented drink of rice, honey and fruit. In Mesopotamia, beer is everywhere: people drink it through straws to avoid the grain residue, workers are paid in beer rations, and the Hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of beer, inscribed on a tablet around 1800 BCE, describes how it is made. Beer bread (bappir) is both a food and an ingredient: bread and beer are two sides of the same activity. In Egypt, the builders of the Giza pyramids also received a daily ration.

According to each continent's resources

Everywhere, the kind of alcohol depends on what grows:

• Greece and Rome: vine country. They drink wine and see beer as a drink for "barbarians". Tacitus marvels at the Germans who drink a liquid made from barley.
• Northern Europe and the British Isles: the Gauls drink cervoise (from the Latin cervesia, hence cerveza). In the Middle Ages, beer is flavoured with gruit, a blend of herbs, until hops take over. One of the earliest mentions of their use comes from the abbey of Corbie, in Picardy, in 822.
• Asia: grain isn't malted; moulds (Japanese koji, Chinese qu) turn rice starch into sugar. This is the sake family.
• Africa: sorghum and millet beers, often cloudy and tart, and palm wine.
• The Americas: corn chicha in the Andes (traditionally the grain is chewed: saliva converts the starch), pulque from agave sap in Mexico, Maya balché made from bark and honey.

What about the Indigenous peoples of the Northeast?

North of Mexico, alcohol production before the arrival of Europeans was rare. In the American Southwest, the Apache brewed tiswin, a corn beer, and the Tohono O'odham made a wine from saguaro fruit. Researchers have analysed potsherds about 800 years old from New Mexico looking for traces of corn beer, but the results remain inconclusive.

In the Northeast, among the Iroquoians, the Algonquians or the Innu, no alcoholic drink is known, even though the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee grew corn. Their drinks were infusions and decoctions, some with an important medicinal role: one of these decoctions, annedda, saved Jacques Cartier's crew from scurvy in 1536.

Alcohol therefore arrived with the Europeans, above all brandy, the currency of the fur trade. The damage it caused in Indigenous communities led to a long conflict between the Church, led by Bishop Laval, and the merchants. In 1678, an assembly of notables, the "Brandy Parliament", came out in favour of continuing the brandy trade.

Distillation, briefly

Fermentation rarely goes past 15% alcohol: beyond that, the yeast dies. To go further, you have to distil, heating the liquid and collecting the alcohol vapours, which boil off before water. Alchemists of the Arab world perfected the still; in the Middle Ages, European aqua vitae was first a medicine. By the 17th century, wine brandy, easier to ship than wine, had become a global trade good.

Alcohol and ritual

Almost every culture has given alcohol a sacred role: libations to the gods, communion wine, harvest-festival beer, wedding toasts. Drunkenness opens a door to something else, and societies have always tried to control it.

Waves of prohibition

Sometimes that control takes the form of a ban. In the 19th century, temperance movements swept across North America, driven by the Protestant churches and, in Quebec, by the Catholic clergy and its black temperance crosses. In Canada, almost every province adopted prohibition during the First World War. We'll come back to it in the chapter on Americanization: it was a turning point for beer styles.

Chapter 2

How beer is made

Alcohol exists thanks to a marvellous organism: yeast. A microscopic fungus that eats sugar and gives off alcohol and carbon dioxide. Everything else is the art of preparing the right meal for it, then letting it work in good conditions.

A bit of science

For each molecule of glucose, yeast produces two molecules of ethanol and two of CO₂. That's alcoholic fermentation. Along the way it also produces hundreds of aroma compounds: fruity esters (banana, pear), spicy phenols (clove), higher alcohols. Each strain has its signature. That's why the same recipe fermented with an English yeast or a Belgian yeast gives two very different beers.

The basic rule is simple: if there's a source of sugar, there can be alcohol. Grapes and apples already contain sugar. So does honey. Cereals, however, contain starch: long chains of sugar that yeast can't eat. They have to be cut up first.

Malting: preparing the grain

Malting means letting barley sprout, then drying it. As it germinates, the grain makes enzymes (amylases) able to turn its starch into sugar. Drying stops germination and, depending on the temperature, gives the malt its colour and flavour: biscuit, caramel, coffee, chocolate. Canada is now one of the world's leading producers of malting barley; Canada Malting Co. was founded in Toronto in 1902, and small craft maltsters have broadened the choice in Quebec since the 2010s.

It all comes down to controlling each step

Extracting the sugars: the mash

Crushed malt is steeped in hot water, between 62 and 70 °C, for about an hour. The enzymes cut up the starch. At 62–65 °C they mostly make simple sugars that ferment easily: the beer will be dry. At 68–70 °C they leave more complex sugars: the beer will have more body. The sweet liquid you get is called wort.

The role of hops

Hops are a climbing plant, a cousin of cannabis. Their cones contain alpha acids, which become bitter when boiled, and essential oils, which provide aroma. Hops are also a preservative: that's why they replaced gruit. The longer they boil, the more bitterness they give and the less aroma is left. Added at the end, or in the fermenter (dry hopping), they add aroma without bitterness. Bitterness is measured in IBU (International Bitterness Units).

Why boil

The boil, usually 60 to 90 minutes, does several jobs: it sterilizes the wort, extracts bitterness from the hops, coagulates proteins (the "hot break") that would make the beer hazy, and drives off unwanted compounds such as DMS, which tastes like canned corn.

Chilling

The wort must be cooled as fast as possible, below 25 °C, to reduce the risk of contamination and let the yeast survive. A copper immersion chiller or an ice bath in the sink will do.

Pitching the yeast

The yeast is added to the cooled, well-aerated wort (yeast needs oxygen to multiply at the start). A local anecdote: one of the largest yeast companies in the world, Lallemand, was born in Montréal in 1915. Many of the dry yeasts suggested here come from them.

Controlling fermentation

Temperature is the most important variable. Ale yeasts work around 16–22 °C, lager yeasts around 8–13 °C. Too warm, and yeast produces heavy alcohols and solvent aromas; too cold, and it goes to sleep. An ale fermentation takes one to two weeks.

Carbonating

To get bubbles, a little sugar is added at bottling. The remaining yeast ferments it inside the closed bottle, and the CO₂ dissolves into the beer. Carbonation is measured in volumes of CO₂: about 2.0 for an English ale, 2.5 for a blonde, 3 and up for a Belgian beer. Each recipe's calculator gives the amount of sugar to use.

Conditioning

After fermentation, beer benefits from resting: a few days for a blonde, months for a barley wine. Flavours round out, yeast drops, the beer clears. Lagers are kept near 0 °C for weeks (lager means "to store" in German).

Measuring: the hydrometer

The hydrometer is the brewer's best friend. It measures the density of the wort, and so its sugar content. You measure the original gravity (OG) before fermentation and the final gravity (FG) at the end. The difference lets you calculate the alcohol. This tool has a Canadian story: John Molson owned John Richardson's Theoretic Hints on an Improved Practice of Brewing (1777), one of the first books to argue for using the saccharometer in brewing.

Cleaning, sanitizing and sterilizing

This is the golden rule. Everything that touches the wort after the boil must be clean, then sanitized. We distinguish:

• Cleaning: removing visible dirt (hot water, unscented soap, or a percarbonate cleaner such as PBW or unscented OxiClean).
• Sanitizing: killing most microbes on a clean surface (Star San or a no-rinse iodine sanitizer).
• Sterilizing: killing everything, normally with heat. The boil takes care of the wort; for everything else, sanitizing is enough.

Stack the odds in your favour: most failed beers are caused by contamination or a fermentation that ran too warm, not by a bad recipe.

Chapter 3

A simple method for beginners: brew in a bag

The method used here is called BIAB, for Brew In A Bag: you brew in a single kettle, with the grain in a large mesh bag. No lauter tun, no complicated sparging. It's the simplest way to make real all-grain beer.

Essential equipment

• A large kettle. For a 19-litre BIAB batch you need at least 30 litres, ideally 36 to 40 litres (8 to 10 gallons), because all the water and the grain go in at once. With a 16 to 20 litre pot, brew 8 to 10 litre batches: the calculator adjusts everything.
• A fine-mesh bag (homebrew shops sell BIAB bags sized to kettles).
• A thermometer, ideally instant-read, like a meat thermometer.
• A large spoon in stainless steel or food-grade plastic.
• A large colander (a pasta colander will do) to drain the bag.
• A fermenter: a 23-litre (6-gallon) carboy or fermenting bucket, with an airlock.
• A bottling bucket with a spigot.
• Bottles (not twist-off) and caps, with a capper.
• A siphon or auto-siphon with a few feet of silicone tubing.
• A hydrometer and its test jar.
• A no-rinse sanitizer (Star San, iodophor).
• A kitchen scale accurate to the gram, for hops.

Brew day, step by step

1. Heat the water. Put the full volume of water given by the recipe in the kettle and heat it to strike temperature (the calculator gives it: it's a little higher than the target, because the cold grain will lower it).
2. Mash in. Put the bag in the kettle, pour in the crushed grain and stir well to break up clumps. Check the temperature: it should be within a degree or two of the target. Cover, wrap the kettle in a blanket and wait an hour.
3. Pull the bag. Lift the bag, let it drain in the colander over the kettle and squeeze it gently. Every litre you recover is extra sugar.
4. Boil. Bring the wort to a boil. Add hops on the recipe's schedule ("60 min" means 60 minutes before the end of the boil). Leave the lid off.
5. Chill. At the end, cool the wort below 25 °C as fast as possible. From this point on, everything that touches it must be sanitized.
6. Measure and transfer. Take the original gravity. Pour the wort into the fermenter, splashing it to aerate.
7. Pitch the yeast. Sprinkle the dry yeast (or rehydrate it in a little lukewarm water), seal with the airlock and put the fermenter somewhere at the right temperature.
8. Wait. When the gravity is stable two days in a row, fermentation is done.
9. Bottle. Dissolve the priming sugar in a little boiled water, pour it into the bottling bucket, siphon the beer on top without splashing, then fill and cap the bottles. Wait two weeks at room temperature.

How recipe scaling works

All recipes are written for a reference volume (usually 19 litres into the fermenter) and an efficiency of 70%. The My equipment panel lets you change both. Here's what happens behind the scenes.

Volume

If you go from 19 to 10 litres, every ingredient is multiplied by 10 ÷ 19. Gravity, bitterness, colour and alcohol don't change: it's the same beer, just smaller.

Efficiency

Efficiency is the share of the sugar in the grain that you actually get into the fermenter. The rest stays in the wet grain or at the bottom of the kettle. A BIAB setup usually runs between 65 and 75%, depending on how fine the crush is, how long the mash lasts and how you squeeze the bag.

If your efficiency is lower than the recipe's, you need more grain for the same gravity. The calculator therefore multiplies the mashed grains by 70 ÷ your efficiency. At 60% you need about 17% more grain; at 80%, about 12% less. Sugars, honey, molasses and juice don't go through the mash: they only change with volume.

Hops and the rest

Hops follow the volume. Bitterness is recalculated with the Tinseth formula, the one most brewing software uses. If your hops' alpha acid differs from the recipe's, adjust the amount in proportion: a 6% hop instead of 4% calls for two-thirds of the quantity.

Water

In BIAB, all the water goes into the kettle at the start. The calculator adds up the final volume, what the grain holds back (about 1 litre per kilo, bag squeezed), what evaporates during the boil (at your boil-off rate) and what stays at the bottom of the kettle (trub and hops, about 1.5 litres).

Reading a recipe

Each recipe card gives the key values up top: original and final gravity, alcohol, bitterness (IBU) and colour (SRM, with a swatch of the approximate hue). Then come the ingredients, the mash, the boil schedule, the yeast and the fermentation. Difficulty goes from one to three mugs: one for a beginner's recipe, three for those that need precise temperature control or patience.

Chapter 4

Canada's beers, from then to now

The aim of what follows is to "live" the history of Canada's beers by recreating them. Some are easy to make, others more complex. I've taken some artistic licence: it's almost impossible to faithfully reproduce a historical beer, because too much information is missing. The goal is a drinkable beer that tells the story of its time.

This history falls into four broad eras. Each one corresponds to a different economic world: who drinks, who brews, with what, and for whom.

The same logic runs through all four eras: beer follows the economy. In the 17th century it depends on harvests and household labour, mostly women's. In the 19th it follows the railway, steam and refrigeration. In the 20th, advertising and economies of scale reward very large companies and a single product. At the end of the century, wealthier and more curious consumers, and looser regulation, open the door to the small players again.

In closing

Conclusion

In four centuries, beer here has taken quite a journey. It started in the kitchens of the habitantes, industrialized with the English brewers, became uniform to the rhythm of advertising and mergers, then began to flourish again in pubs and small breweries.

Brewing these recipes, you quickly notice that every era made the beer its means allowed. The molasses in spruce beer is the West Indies trade. The corn in lagers is six-row barley and economies of scale. The American hops in modern IPAs are globalized agriculture and drinkers willing to pay for flavour. Beer tells the story of its economy as surely as a history book.

The circle closes nicely, too. Today, Quebec craft breweries are once again making spruce beer, cider, farmhouse beers and maple syrup beers. They're not trying to reproduce the past exactly, any more than this project is. They're looking for what the habitants of 1660 were looking for: a good beer, made here, with what's at hand.

Cheers!

Appendix

Short glossary

Attenuation

The share of the sugar the yeast has eaten. 75% apparent attenuation means the gravity has dropped by three-quarters.

BIAB

Brew In A Bag: all-grain brewing in a single kettle, with the grain in a bag.

Dry hopping

Adding hops to the fermenter, for aroma without bitterness.

Efficiency

The share of the grain's sugar that actually ends up in the fermenter. See "How recipe scaling works".

First wort hopping

Hops added to the wort before the boil. It gives a smoother bitterness.

IBU

International Bitterness Units: milligrams of iso-alpha acids per litre. A measure of bitterness.

Lager and ale

Two families of yeast. Ale ferments warm (16–22 °C) and gives fruity aromas; lager ferments cold (8–13 °C) and gives a cleaner beer.

Mash

Steeping crushed malt in hot water (62–70 °C) to turn starch into sugar.

Original (OG) and final gravity (FG)

Hydrometer readings before and after fermentation.

Party-gyle

A technique that draws several beers of different strengths from one mash.

SRM and EBC

Beer colour scales. 2 SRM: pale straw; 10: amber; 20: brown; 40 and up: black. EBC ≈ SRM × 1.97.

Whirlpool

Hops added after the boil, around 80 °C, for aroma with little bitterness.

Wort

The sweet liquid obtained after the mash, before fermentation.

Appendix

Notes and references

All the documents cited on this site, in alphabetical order. The printed works of Catherine Ferland (Bacchus en Canada, 2010) and Sylvain Daignault (Histoire de la bière au Québec, 2006) are the two major French-language syntheses for anyone who wants to go further.

1. A Better Beer Blog, "1749 Quebec Drinks Advice From Pehr Kalm" abetterbeerblog427.com
2. A Better Beer Blog, "Grain suffisamment pour faire de la bière" abetterbeerblog427.com
3. A Better Beer Blog, "Who Made Ontario's First Lager And Where?" abetterbeerblog427.com
4. Alaskan Brewing Co., "Our story" alaskanbeer.com
5. André Vachon, "Cinq notes sur la Nouvelle-France", Les Cahiers des Dix, no. 39, 1974 (in French) releve.erudit.org
6. BC Ale Trail, "The afterlife of the Horseshoe Bay Brewery" bcaletrail.ca
7. BeerAdvocate, "Canadian IPA, circa 1900" beeradvocate.com
8. Brewery History Society, Brewery History, no. 121 breweryhistory.com
9. BYO, "Brown Malt" byo.com
10. Catherine Ferland, Bacchus en Canada. Boissons, buveurs et ivresses en Nouvelle-France, Septentrion, 2010 septentrion.qc.ca
11. Craft Beer & Brewing, "A Recipe for Historic Burton IPA" beerandbrewing.com
12. Craft Brewers of Boise, "The complete history of the IPA, part 1" craftbrewersofboise.com
13. Crystal Luxmore, "Craft Brewing in Canada", The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2014 thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
14. Derrek Eberts, "To Brew or Not to Brew: A Brief History of Beer in Canada", Manitoba History, no. 54, 2007 mhs.mb.ca
15. Dictionary of Canadian Biography, "O'Keefe, Eugene" biographi.ca
16. Durden Park Beer Circle, historical English recipes durdenparkbeer.org.uk
17. Gervase Markham, A Way to Get Wealth (17th-century English household manual) google.ca
18. HomeBrewTalk, "1800 IPA: pseudo-historic IPA recipe" homebrewtalk.com
19. Ian Coutts, Brew North: How Canadians Made Beer and Beer Made Canada, Greystone Books, 2012 books.google.ca
20. J. R. T. C. Roelandt, "An arcane cardiomyopathy", Netherlands Heart Journal, 2014 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
21. John Richardson, Theoretic Hints on an Improved Practice of Brewing Malt-Liquors, 1777 (Google Books) books.google.ca
22. Labatt Historic Collection, Western University labattheritage.lib.uwo.ca
23. Lallemand Brewing, WildBrew Sour Pitch lallemandbrewing.com
24. Lallemand, company history lallemand.com
25. Maclean's, "Care for a tall cool glass of spruce beer?" macleans.ca
26. Make: magazine, "Brew a Vintage IPA" makezine.com
27. Martyn Cornell, "A short history of spruce beer, part two: the North American connection", Zythophile, 2016 zythophile.co.uk
28. Molson Coors Canada, 1908 Historic Pale Ale (Brewers Journal) brewersjournal.info
29. MoreBeer, "Brewing Old, Strong and Stock Ales" morebeer.com
30. Mémoires des Montréalais, "Un toast à l'histoire" (in French) ville.montreal.qc.ca
31. New England Historical Society, "Beer in the New England Colonies" newenglandhistoricalsociety.com
32. New York Public Library, "To Make Small Beer" (George Washington's notebook, 1757) gopher.nypl.org
33. On Beer, "Treading water in rough seas: Canada's craft beer industry in 2025" onbeer.org
34. Parks Canada, "Wintering (1535-1536)" parks.canada.ca
35. Pehr Kalm, Voyage de Kalm au Canada (French tr. L.-W. Marchand), 1880, on Canadiana canadiana.ca
36. Pierre Boucher, Histoire véritable et naturelle… de la Nouvelle-France, Paris, 1664 (in French) axl.cefan.ulaval.ca
37. Ron Pattinson, Shut Up About Barclay Perkins (posts on Canada) barclayperkins.blogspot.com
38. Sandia National Laboratories, "Did early Southwestern Indians ferment corn and make beer?", 2007 newsreleases.sandia.gov
39. SAQ, "The Prohibition Years" saq.com
40. Stanford News, "Crafting beer may have led to cereal cultivation", 2018 news.stanford.edu
41. The Canadian Encyclopedia, "Brewing Industry in Canada" thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
42. The Canadian Encyclopedia, "Intendant's Palace Archaeological Site" thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
43. The Canadian Encyclopedia, "John Molson" thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
44. The Canadian Encyclopedia, "Moosehead" thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
45. The Main, "The story of Labatt 50, a working class beer" themain.com
46. Unibroue, "Our story" unibroue.com
47. Untapped Cities, "The NYPL has George Washington's 1757 recipe for beer" untappedcities.com
48. Western University Archives, historical Labatt records twitter.com
49. Wikipedia, "1919 Quebec prohibition referendum" en.wikipedia.org
50. Wikipedia, "Alcohol in New France" en.wikipedia.org
51. Wikipedia, "Anchor Brewing Company" en.wikipedia.org
52. Wikipedia, "Beer in Quebec" en.wikipedia.org
53. Wikipedia, "Carling O'Keefe" en.wikipedia.org
54. Wikipedia, "Dow Breweries" en.wikipedia.org
55. Wikipedia, "Homebrewing" (H.R. 1337, 1978) en.wikipedia.org
56. Wikipedia, "Houblon", history section (Adalhard of Corbie, 822; in French) fr.wikipedia.org
57. Wikipedia, "Hymn to Ninkasi" en.wikipedia.org
58. Wikipedia, "India pale ale" (New England IPA section) en.wikipedia.org
59. Wikipedia, "Labatt Brewing Company" en.wikipedia.org
60. Wikipedia, "Le Cheval Blanc (brewpub)" en.wikipedia.org
61. Wikipedia, "Les Brasseurs du Nord" en.wikipedia.org
62. Wikipedia, "Patrick McGovern" (biomolecular archaeology: Jiahu, Godin Tepe) en.wikipedia.org
63. Wikipedia, "Pilsner" en.wikipedia.org
64. Wikipedia, "Sierra Nevada Brewing Company" en.wikipedia.org
65. Wikipedia, "Susannah Oland" en.wikipedia.org
66. Wikipedia, "Unibroue" en.wikipedia.org
67. Îlot des Palais, "History" ilotdespalais.ca