Mission Impossible: Passover beer

I really wanted to put up a post about Passover and beer before Passover, but time got away from me. So better late than never:

For those of you who don't know, Passover is a Jewish holiday that (among other things) prohibits eating or drinking anything based on yeast and grain interactions. So wine is ok because it is a fruit and yeast product, and some grain products are ok because they don't involve yeast.

You can imagine how distressing this holiday is for me - no beer, no grain based spirits (whisky, vodka, gin, etc) for 8 days! It looms like 8 days without beer every spring, if not for wine and brandy I'd have to be sober for over a week straight! I know you all feel my pain, which is why I set out on a quest to find a loophole!

I considered the most obvious loophole: ignore Passover, drink beer. But that seemed like a cheap way out - if I was going to violate the spirit of my religion for alcohol I should at least try and stay within the letter of the rules.

After a bit of research I discovered that most interpretations of the Passover rules put only 1 major restriction on grain: there can only be 18 minutes between the grain touching water, and the product being cooked to the point that all enzymatic reactions have ceased (apparently a strict reading of the bible can produce phrases like enzymatic reactions).

So that didn't seem so bad, I thought, I could minimash for 10 minutes and then get the water boiling - I wouldn't get very good efficiency, but I could cover that up with molasses. It might be a little strange, but it would work. Except that malt is grain that has been soaked in water till it germinates, and then gently dried - so malt is out, it's already been at least weeks since it was first exposed to water.

What does that leave? Unmalted wheat and barely, lots of sugar, and a lot of covering hops. With enough hops you can probably mask all the weird off flavors all the sugar is going to leave. I didn't have enough time to try and make something this year, but I'm marking my calendar for next year.

In reality it's all an academic issue because I don't keep kosher or throw out all my Chametz (beer, bread, and other Passover No-Nos), but I'm curious to see whether it’s possible to make a good 'Kosher for Passover' beer. If I can make something good maybe I'll contract brew it and sell it once a year in Brooklyn!