It would be a fun read to see a series of articles documenting US craft beer past through the past forty or fifty years through actual recipes from breweries of beers that had a presence at the time broken up in blocks of time. Like if you were a craft beer drinker in 1985 here are the beers you could have found both widespread and those seasonal or special releases that were a treat to find. I know some of these older recipes are already in BA/AHA publications but it would be fun to see it organized along with some new old recipes. I imagine some of the older breweries no longer with us that once had a presence in craft beer like Pete’s could offer some recipes and breweries still with us are probably not too concerned that somebody might copy their porter recipe from 1990.
At the end of the series readers could put the recipes together and brew a trip through time from the 1970s into the early 2010s or whenever would make sense as a cut off. It would be a lot of fun to be able to do that with well known beers like SNPA and taste side by side recreations of how the recipe was tweaked over time.
What you are looking for is the North American version of Ron Pattinson. Good luck. I don’t think brewing records were archived as meticulously in the U.S. as they were in England.
Thinking of a more narrow focus to craft beer in the US from the 1970s in which there would be more existing breweries and live people to tap for information.
It would be great to do the same thing for over time periods and locations too but there is enough in smaller time blocks to fill out a series of articles. I think it would be great to see the same treatment of beer in the US from the end of prohibition to the 1970s in which most of the breweries that hung on to non-pilsner styles fell off and American pilsners drifted towards lighter and blander recipes. There is lots of history written about that era but not as much of a brewable history.
I am really, really digging this idea, but I wonder if Zymurgy has ever entertained the idea of an extended series of this nature. More like a book. Charlie’s book referenced earlier isn’t quite it, and could stand to be updated anyway. Somebody could have quite a project here, and I hope to see the result some day. The suggested format of historical episodes illustrated by representative recipes is genius.
I know a guy in Oshkosh WI that writes about beer in Oshkosh. He also research old Oshkosh breweries finds old recipes and have local brewer brew it. He even had a book published with that subject matter.