Mastering brewing takes years, and Frank Clark spent nearly 10 of them stymied by one particular style of beer, the 18th and 19th century porters that early Americans loved.

He researched, he experimented and he found himself confounded by the key step of lighting molasses on fire. Setting it ablaze in its basic state proved impossible, as did dousing the goo with whiskey. Other ideas lacked the spark. He finally found the solution in a cookbook from the 1820s: add in brown sugar, put it in a cast-iron pot and, in his words, “Burn it to death.”

Success, right?

“It bubbles, it smokes, it looks like a black volcano,” he says. “And it stinks to high heaven.”

Clark, the head of the Department of Historic Foodways at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and a specialist on the era’s beers, knows a bit about brewing. He runs the Art and Mysteries of Brewing program four days each spring and fall in a scullery right by the reconstruction of the Governor’s Palace in the restored city. It’s an appropriate program and location, since one royal governor kept 1,100 bottles of high-quality beer in the basement.

For now, Clark has set dates for this fall’s program with, perhaps a bit more tentatively, the ales he eyes brewing: Bristol beer (dark, highly hopped, 8-10 percent alcohol) on Sept. 12; an 1820s-style porter on Oct. 9; mum, a North German medicinal beer that turned into a popular English brew rich in herbs and oats, on Oct. 24; and strong ale on Nov. 20.

Keep in mind that the sessions act as demonstrations, and that visitors can watch but they can forget about drinking the final product. Nor are the brews for sale. It’s effectively homebrewing writ large, so either brew your own or pick up some bottles from one of the few craft breweries that sell early American-inspired varieties, such as the local Washington’s Porter from Williamsburg Alewerks, or Yards Brewing Company’s Ales of the Revolution, which includes General Washington’s Tavern Porter.

Washington loved porter, even dispatching his secretary, Tobias Lear, to quietly secure some when his favorite brewery burned in 1790. But then, the style dominated the colonies and the young nation from the 1730s before fading into second place behind pale ale in the 1780s.

Now one understands Clark’s labors with molasses and fire. Once the stinking, scorched molasses forms into a hot, smelly clump, he adds water (“Which you have to do very carefully”), and it becomes a deep, black liquid that bitters the beer. The concoction tastes so strong that it takes six months for the actual porter to mellow. He also adds a licorice-root extract.

“In fact, the first time I made this stuff, I ended up taking a big spoonful of it,” Clark says. “It took me three hours to get that taste out of my mouth.”

The strong flavors meant long aging times, and  the average brewer, whether out of the home or with a small facility, lacked the space and time for the necessary smoothing of flavors. Only the large outfits could produce the proper potion. In urban London, this meant porter became the choice of the working class, while an ocean away it served as a luxury item shipped in from Britain or produced by a few American companies. Clark figures that it often aged for two years in kegs, though he keeps his for six months in bottles.

The small-scale maker of beer simply mashed – for the non-homebrewer, that’s heating a combination of water and malt to create wort, which is beer before it ferments – two or three times. The first run created a strong ale, the second produced what our forbearers called table beer and the third resulted in small beer, an everyday drink imbibed at all times of the day from tobacco fields to shoe shops.

Clark usually mixes the first two for his ales during the Art and Mysteries of Brewing program, adding that if he underwent a third mash, “We’d end up being here until 3 in the morning.” Also, since colonials could buy molasses dirt cheap, they often whipped up a quick-and-easy small beer by throwing in a little wheat and hops.

On brewing day, Clark’s process runs from 10 a.m. through the late afternoon. Most visitors look inside the scullery for a few minutes and continue on their way. But beer enthusiasts often return several times during the day.

“And sometimes they don’t go away at all,” Clark said. “They just camp here all day.”

-- by Matt Gottlieb