By Emil Eirich – Saskatoon, Sask.
Stories in The Senior Paper about homebrew reminded me about my father, Dave, and my Uncle Gust making their own homebrew. This would have taken place in the early 1940s when I was about six or seven. I’m 76 at time of writing this now and still remember it well.
We lived on a farm eight miles west of Leader, Sask. While it was then, and still is illegal now, to make spirits without a license in Canada, I’m sure my dearly departed father and uncle won’t be taken to task for their wrongdoing.
It started with a mixture of various ingredients from their secret recipe, of which the main one was sugar. Sugar was rationed at the time due to the war. It must have taken some doing to collect enough to make up a batch of ‘mash’ to brew.
The mixture was placed into a 20-gallon crock. It was put into a corner behind the living room heater in order to keep it warm so it would ferment properly. It was during the winter that this took place.
Brew day distilling
I can still remember seeing mom and dad dragging the crock around the corner into their bedroom and closing the door to hide it, if and whenever, a strange car came down the road to the farm.
Mom would then sprinkle some sulfur on the hot kitchen stove to hide the smell of the brew. This happened very rarely though, because road traffic was light in those days.
On ‘brew day’, dad and uncle Gust would commence with the distilling process. This was done in what was called the summer kitchen, which was mom and dad’s original house when they first moved to the farm.
The still was a rather makeshift affair, but it got the job done. It was made from an old cream can with some spouting soldered through a hole in the lid. That was routed through a one gallon antifreeze can with another spout coming out of the bottom for the finished product.
The cream can was placed on an old kitchen stove. It was filled with mash and the lid replaced. A dough mixture of flour and water was packed around the lid to prevent any vapour escaping. Ice was put into the antifreeze can to condense the product.
Finished product close to the real thing
As the brewing commenced, there came the sampling of the finished product to see how good it was.
First, a sample of the brew was set aflame to test its purity. After this was done to their satisfaction, the taste test had to be done.
By the time the brewing was done, two very cheery lads were making their way back to the main house with the fruits of their labour.
Mother, though not directly involved in the brewing, still did her part by caramelizing some sugar on the stove and adding it to the brew. This turned it into a nice amber colour. It looked close to the real thing, only is was twice as powerful.
