I sampled the beer at one-week intervals after it was bottled. Both of the batches of small beer that I brewed tasted the same to me and the taste did not appreciably change over a four-week period. The beer was a light brown in color (as opposed to the pale straw color of American commercial beers). It was about the color of “dark beers” from Europe. It had sufficient carbonation, but was somewhat murky. Present-day commercial beers are filtered to remove all yeast and precipitates; American commercial beers are at their best the day they are bottled. Many types of ale, like John Gaylord II’s small beer, condition over time and can improve in the bottle.


I solicited the help of a number of friends to evaluate John Gaylord II and compare it to the (equivalent) beer we drink today- the American commercial beer. Each taster evaluated both John Gaylord II small beer and an American commercial beer on appearance (0-3 points), aroma (0-3 points), taste (0-10 points) and overall impression (1-3 points). Thus beer ratings fell between 1 and 39. Both beers were served at approximately 45( F. The results of the taste tests (10 people rated both the small beer and an American commercial beer) are shown in figure 1.

Each “x” on the graph represents a taster’s John Gaylord small beer rating and his/her American commercial beer rating. “x”’s above the line indicate that the taster preferred the American commercial product to the small beer; those below the line are ratings where the taster preferred small beer to the American commercial product. The 45-degree line in the graph represents equal preference for both beers. Were the “x”’s concentrated above the line, a clear preference for the American commercial product would be indicated. In a similar manner if all the “x”’s were below the line, a clear preference for the small beer would be indicated. Ratings in the 1-20 range indicated an “everyday” beer, ratings in the range of 20-39 indicate a “special” beer. Figure 1 shows, remarkably, that there was about an equal preference for the two beer styles. All ratings for both beers were in the 1-20 range, so both were perceived by tasters to be “ordinary-” that is, nothing special. I expected that both beers would be judged as average or ordinary; I did not expect John Gaylord’s small beer to do as well as it did in terms of preference.

Tasters indicated that the American commercial beer was insipid and thin compared to John Gaylord II’s small beer. John Gaylord’s small beer was perceived to have more body. Some of the tasters were able to identify the molasses and clove taste in the small beer; and comments about the small beer ran from “awful” to “pleasant taste.”

Conclusions

“Small beer” was meant as an everyday drink; it was not something special. It was brewed from molasses and cream of tartar, largely because this was cheaper than brewing from barley malt. All things considered, it was not a bad drink!

Were I to make it again, I would probably use less cream of tartar, maybe a little more hops. I’d use one ounce of cream of tartar and two ounces of a mild hops, like Saaz or Kent Goldings. The small beer that John Gaylord brewed was a bit tart for my taste. I suspect that there were very good reasons for brewing it with the amount of cream of tartar that John Gaylord prescribed in his recipe; a more acidic wort (sour) was conducive to better yeast activity (fermenting), it probably served to help preserve the beer, and to cover any “off” tastes that may have resulted from spoilage.

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