Oh dear once more

I've still not finished with the style descriptions in the 2013 Good Beer Guide.

First Old Ale:

"Old ale is another style from the 18th century, stored for months or even years in wooden vessels where the beer picked up some  lactic sourness from wild yeasts and tannins in the wood.. As a result of the sour taste it was dubbed 'stale' by drinkers and the beer was one of the components of the early blended porters."

Old Ale was not a component of early Porter. Porter was an unblended partially-aged beer, at least in the beginning. And it was a beer, so wouldn't have had Ale in it. When later in the 18th century they did begin to blend Porter, it was Mild Porter and Keeping Porter that were blended. Two beers.

We've some to the entry on Bitter (totally different from Pale Ale, remember) now:

"Bitter was a new type of running beer: it was a member of the pale ale family but was generally deep bronze or copper due to the use of slightly darker malts, such as crystal, that gave the beer fulness of palate."

Pale Ale had been called Bitter, Bitter Beer, Bitter Ale, etc before the first running Pale Ale was brewed. Bitter was not coined to describe running Pale Ales and after they had appeared continued to be used in relation to Pale Ales of all types.

Running Bitter wasn't darker than Pale Ale. The two beers were brewed from the same ingredients. In fact they were often parti-gyled together. I've yet to find a single case of crystal malt being used in a Pale Ale or Bitter of any kind before 1900.

Finally Scottish beers:

"Historically, Scottish beers tend to be darker, sweeter and less heavily hopped that [sic] beers south of the border: a reflection of a colder climate where hops don't grow and beer needs to be nourishing."

I sometimes wonder if I'll ever manage to stop people repeating this bollocks. It isn't true. Hops have been grown in Scotland and, just because hops aren't grown in a region doesn't mean brewers don't use them. Where are the hop fields in Staffordshire? Or Yorkshire?