[tubercle]

I'm glad to hear it too. It doesn't hurt to step off the edge every once in a while.

Bread yeast is a big time fermenter and will take wine down to the .99x range very quickly. It will also survive 15% + in most cases. People knock it because it doesn't have the characteristics of the specially bred yeast we use today but not that long ago it was all that was readily obtainable.

[bigchicken]

I thought I'd post one final time on this. The beer finished at 1.004 with the bread yeast. It was pretty much finished in 4 days. The beer was able to sit in the bottles for about 3 weeks before my uncle came to town. My dad and uncle were really excited to try it and were glad to see I had it made in time for the get together. My uncle, dad, and brother-in-law loved it! They are all huge Busch Light and Bud Light drinkers and this is the first beer I've made that any of them really liked. Funny, this is one of the only beers I've made that I didn't like that much. I also had the opportunity to learn that my brother-in-law can't really hold his homebrew as this stuff knocked him on his butt!

I wanted to thank everyone that pushed me to stick to the original recipe. The beer brought back many stories from my uncle and dad. My uncle also showed me that traditionally, they drank the beer after pouring a little salt into the glass. It definitely changed the flavor. I'm not exactly sure why they added the salt.  Also, the recipe didn't turn out to be my grandpa's. It was my great grandpa's recipe. My grandpa had it for decades before handing it over to my uncle. Interesting to hear how much history can be tied to one old recipe.

[ccfoo242]

Very nice!

[kramerog]

Baking yeast = brewer's yeast
Fleishmann's yeast = Budweiser yeast at least for one variety of Fleishmann's

[Jimmy K]

I would do it as written just to do it. You are out an hour and a few bucks but would be a great tribute to Grandpa. I have a shoebox full of my grandmother's hand written recipes. I have followed some of them to the letter just to see even though I know of better ways or ingriedents.

Even if it is horrible, you'll know it is no worse than what your grandfather was drinking - and gulping down that swill will provide you guys with quite a laugh.
 
Maybe replace sugar with more malt for an 'unobtrusive' improvement.

[ElG]

I agree.  Blue Ribbon Malt Extract made a pretty rough beer.  We made a lot of beer with it when I was in grad school now over 50 years ago.  The one quart can made about 20 - 25 gallons as I recall  We used a 30 gal. plastic garbage can as our brewing vessel and bottled in quart bottles.  There was one place where we could get the corn sugar locally.  You definitely don't want to use baker's yeast for beer brewing, but then maybe that's all they had back in the prohibition. Someone in the biology department at the university had taken a champagne yeast and thru multiple generations created a yeast that made a decent beer and created a slime on the bottom of the bottle so you could get a clear pour without filtering.   We drank a lot of it, but I've had better beer.