Growing Branches: Persimmon Beer

As you know, our awesome neighbor kindly shares his produce with us. In June it's his juicy, thornless blackberries. Then in the fall, it is persimmons. Although we've already made persimmon bread, we thought we would try persimmon beer.

First we needed a recipe. In my internet search I came across Euell Gibbons. Remember him??

He was popular in the late 60s - early 70s for books and articles he had written about eating wild, natural foods. A couple of his book titles are Stalking The Wild Asparagus and Stalking The Healthful Herbs. He appeared on "The Tonight Show" and " The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour", but I think we probably know him best for his Grape Nuts commercial.

Anyway, he had a recipe for persimmon beer and it was extremely simple. Never having brewed beer before, we decided to go with his recipe:

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Persimmon Beer

10 pounds wheat bran
1 gallons of pulp from very ripe persimmons

Bake this mixture like pones of cornbread until it is brown and firm. Break the pones into small pieces and put through a food chopper using a coarse plat. Dump the ground mixture into a 5 gallon crock and fill the crock not quite full of boiling water.

As soon as the crock cools to the points of barely being warm, stir in 1 package of dry yeast with a little liquid from the crock. Keep the crock covered with a cloth. It will ferment furiously for a few days but keep watching it and in a week it will start settling down. The moment it becomes still and clear, bottle and cap it tightly. Store it in a cool, dark place and in about 3 weeks it will be ready to use.

www.persimmonpudding.com
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As I read the words from the recipe that I've highlighted in red, vivid memories came flooding back from my high school years. The year was probably '75 or '76 and the place was our chemistry class. A new high school had been built, but our chemistry teacher was the only teacher that remained in the old building across the campus. It was kind of creepy walking up the stairs to his class in that deserted building, but I think he stayed in that building because it had a large chemistry lab, plus he was just a character anyway (and a great teacher). Anyway, at some point during the year, our he started cutting the class a few minutes short and would ask all the guys to come with him to the lab. Girls were left behind in the classroom. We had no idea what was going on until one of our friends told us what they were doing....brewing beer. He said they had a big crock in the lab and were fermenting beer. The crock had cheesecloth over the top of it. They went over each day to check on their brew.

Now I'm not saying any students ever drank any of it! I have no idea! Fermentation is a chemical process and therefore falls under the chemistry curriculum. Right? And for all I know they threw it out when it was done or maybe our friend was just messing with us and there was never anything in there in the first place. Who knows??? Not me! I'm just saying that these are the memories that came flooding back when I read those words in Euell Gibbons recipe!