By PHI Board Member Turtle
When Frank Cook passed on back in 2009, he left us with several boxes worth of treasures. Several books, some finished, some unfinished, from illustrated children’s books, to his “Plants and Healers Series” i.e. (Peru and Ecuador and India and Nepal). There is a stack of journals full of notes, scribbles, poems, shopping lists and itineraries. He also left footprints; places to go places to see! 6 continents and over 25 countries. He led trips of 7 or 8 lucky travelers to Costa Rica, Peru, India and Africa (a tradition that PHI is beginning to offer! See the following link for more information on a trip to Costa Rica coming in March 2016 with ones to Asheville, NC and Peru coming later in the year.
Last but not least is the cache of meads, beers and medicines he created, but never consumed! How many of us have a treasured bottle or two in our collection that Frank gifted us? Perhaps it is a Sam’s Knob Blueberry Mead (careful when you open those! After it sprays everywhere, you are likely to only have half-a-bottle left!!). Or maybe it is a Chaga-Reishi, or one of the ones he made with bread yeast (how do you say yuck with emoticons?)! Out here in Nevada City, California, I have been fortunate enough to stumble upon one of his primary brewing locations, the homestead of PHI board members Paul Harton and Jill Mahanna. This is one of the few places that any substantial quantity of Frank’s medicinal brews reside. These three friends used to brew beer and mead back in North Carolina and carried their love for the art out to Northern California, where they would fill vessels with medicinal roots and herbs, a jug of honey and some yeast (wild, bread or otherwise!) and let it ferment into something delicious and nutritious! For those of us that have had the joy of poking around Frank’s old mead stash, one of the things we see the most of is labeled, “The Pearl Harbor Porter.”
It was made on December 7th of 2006 which is Pearl Harbor Day, It consists of a trifecta of barleys (Special Barley, with Amber and Golden Spry malts), Ginseng roots, Cacao nibs, half a Nutmeg, Kent Golding Hops and 3 Satsuma mandarins. The outcome of this combination was…. well, I don’t really know! It was almost 10 years old and beer doesn’t age so well. Yet, whenever we opened one, there was no complaint! It was always a nice dark brown color, a tad flat with a smokey malty aroma and flavor, with just that right amount of orangey-sweetness. Not bad for old beer. Perhaps it was just the nostalgia of our good brother. You could almost feel him sipping it with you! Paul and I decided to remake this now classic brew, and we would like to share with you the recipe.
The Pearl Harbor Porter:
(While we don’t exactly know what Frank’s recipe was, we do have an ingredient list from off the bottle! We used educated guesses to fill in questions around quantities whenever we lacked exact information.)
-Amber Malt (3 lbs. dried malt extract)
-Traditional Dark Malt (3.3 lbs. liquid malt extract)
-Two Row Barley (.5 lbs.)
-Crystal 120* Malt (.5 lbs.)
-Roasted Barley (.5 lbs.)
-Chocolate Malt (.5 lbs)
-Kent Golding Hops (2 oz.)
-4 Ginseng Roots
-Cacao Nibs (4 tbs)
-1/2 Nutmeg
-3 Satsuma Mandarins. 