It's hard to imagine George Washington as anything but the stoic, grey-haired military commander who led America to independence.
But apparently, the founding father was also a tippler — and an experimental brewer.
Among the pages of a military notebook he kept while overseeing troops in Virginia during the French and Indian war, Washington left a recipe for "small beer," a porter made with molasses.
In 2011, to honor of the 100th anniversary of the New York Public Library's main building, where the original version of the recipe is housed, Coney Island Brewing Co. recreated Washington's original brew. Business Insider tried it.
The tasting took place at a bar in midtown Manhattan.
George Washington scribbled down his beer recipe while camping with troops in Virginia in 1757.
He never could have imagined that we'd be consuming the same drink at this crowded midtown bar 254 years later.
That's brewer Pete Taylor on the left.
Brewer Pete Taylor told us that the recipe, which is no more than a few lines written on a scrap of paper, took "a few weeks to figure out."
Since beer-making is an exact science, it took lots of experimentation to determine the right ingredients and ratios.
The handwritten recipe took weeks to decipher.
The first step, "Take a large Siffer full of Bran Hops to your Taste," would be enough to confound most brewers.
And the direction to "let this stand till it is little more than Blood warm?"
That's even tougher.
The recipe, part of one of Washington's military notebooks, has been in the New York Public Library's collection since 1918.
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