tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5445569787371915337.post8550384526854550795..comments2024-03-18T16:40:32.561-07:00Comments on Shut up about Barclay Perkins: Another new English Lager Beer BreweryRon Pattinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03095189986589865751noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5445569787371915337.post-349048859506461212012-09-20T05:26:57.240-07:002012-09-20T05:26:57.240-07:00Ron, just a postscript in that I realize the focus...Ron, just a postscript in that I realize the focus of this particular venture seems to have been the export market. But given the references also to potential high-end use in domestic cities, and the need too for almost any business to have a local base, it is clear, and the general buzz at the time was, that lager was the next big thing for home use too.<br /><br />Well, it wasn't. What was missed was that British brewing, even before running beers became the norm, was a perfected entity unlike the small creaky northern European top-fermenting plants with their oft-acidic medieval ales. The simple want lager supplied there didn't exist in Britain and anyway the new stuff didn't taste as good (still doesn't taking all in all, IMO).<br /><br />GaryGary Gillmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5445569787371915337.post-59821397780499371842012-09-20T05:04:46.873-07:002012-09-20T05:04:46.873-07:00It seems to me that the "bon ton", never...It seems to me that the "bon ton", never the best or first market for beer, convinced itself that a beer with much more gas and less alcohol than the typical English beer, and tasting hopefully of (at the time) reduced pine and fir resins, would knock out some established pillars of British brewing.<br /><br />(The only problem was, the British man in the street who was the typical beer consumer, whose ancestors were drinking beer for hundreds of years, didn't agree).<br /><br />Educated chemists like Charles Graham backed up this trend. I believe that Frank Faulkner and most other practical brewers writing in the mid- and later-1800's were skeptical that lager improved upon the merits of English beer, but they seemed abashed to say so. In this they were cowed I think by the big emerging German and Austrian concerns, their impressive decoction methods and their investment in cooling plant.<br /><br />Few voices in British beerdom seemed actively to have defended the native product. Here is one who did, see page 179 in The Curiosities of Ale and Beer: An Entertaining History:<br /><br />"Neither German nor Anglo-German beers appear to make much headway over here, nor is this very surprising when we remember how far superior our own ales and beers are to any brewed in Germany". <br /><br />http://books.google.ca/books?id=xGkuAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=charles+cook+beer&source=bl&ots=gxUBmJybkh&sig=WTdFzghMBNlmNgP6FRvRcMB3mBA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4QFbUNKDCqfq0gGh<br /><br />Thank you.<br /><br />GaryGary Gillmannoreply@blogger.com