Disinformation source

I think I've spotted one. A disinformation source.

Googling, I found plenty who had used it when writing about Russian Stout. Including that recent Courage Russian Stout ad.

"Russian Imperial Stout 

When Peter the Great opened Czarist Russia to the West in the early 18th century, dark ales called "Porter" were all the rage in England. Porters, named after the working class who devoured them, were relatively easy-drinking brews with a small percentage of highly roasted malt. The result was a dark brown, toffee-flavored libation fit for mass consumption. Arthur Guinness took the idea to Ireland, increased the dark, coffee-tinted profile and added “Extra Stout” to his label, thus creating another new beer style.

Peter the Great fell in love with stouts during his 1698 trip to England, and he requested that some be sent to the Imperial court in Russia. Much to the embarrassment of the English, the beer had spoiled somewhere along its tedious thousand-mile journey! Determined as always to save face, the Barclay brewery of London came to the rescue by rapidly increasing the amount of alcohol and hops for their second effort. The result was an inky black concoction with enough warmth and complexity to immediately become a sensation throughout Russia. The “Russian Imperial Stout” had been born and quickly became popular throughout European Russia.

Empress Catherine the Great of Russia (1729-1796) was very much a fan of Imperial Stout. One notable supplier was Thrale’s Anchor Brewery in the parish [district] of Southwark, a mile or two up river from John Courage Brewery’s site. In 1796 Thrale’s supplied Imperial Stout "that would keep seven years" to the Empress of Russia. The author of The History and Antiquities of the Parish of St. Saviour, Southwark, said of Thrale’s beer at that time, "The reputation and enjoyment of Porter [Imperial Stout] is by no means confined to England. As proof of the truth of this assertion, this house exports annually very large quantities; so far extended are its commercial connections that Thrale’s Entire [a contemporary name for Imperial Stout] is well known, as a delicious beverage, from the frozen regions of Russia to the burning sands of Bengal and Sumatra. The Empress of All Russia is indeed so partial to Porter that she has ordered repeatedly very large quantities for her own drinking and that of her court." She also ordered some of her supply from The John Courage Brewery. The John Courage Brewery continued to brew its Imperial Stout, with the boast on its label that it was originally brewed by Imperial order of Catherine, up until the 1990s. While hugely popular through the 19th century, Porters had fallen away completely from consumer's tastes by the end of the 20th Century. The style may have disappeared altogether were it not for the newfound bravado and quirkiness of the emerging craft brewing scene in the U.S. Anxious to brew all things intense, extreme and obscure, many small batch American brewers began resurrecting and re-inventing the old Russian genre. Today’s versions are even bigger and bolder than the originals."
-by Greg D. Willis, Professional Beer Guy, for the Alexander Palace Time Machine.
http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/ImperialStout.html

Does anyone know who Greg D. Willis is?

It's scary how widely this, er, dodgy article has been copied or used as a source.

The article isn't dated, unfortunately. It could be itself a copy. Can you find an older version of the story? The Peter the Great drinking Porter in London story. Or the Courage brewing Russian Stout for Catherine the Great story. Any of the fantasies in the article will do.

There may be a prize in it. How far back can we trace the crap?

Horst again

Yes, they also let Horst Dornbusch write the article on Old Ale in the "Oxford Companion to Beer". It's not quite as bad as his one on the shilling system. There are even a couple of sentences without mistakes.

Here's the text:

"old ales, a British ale style that has evolved greatly over the past 2 centuries. Traditionally, these beers were also known as stock ales or strong ales as they emerged to some prominence in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At first, little separated them from barley wines, and they were big beers. Old ales were normally fermented only from the first, high-gravity runnings of the mash, often in a parti-gyle brewing process. The second runnings were then fermented as brown ales or other medium-strength beers; sometimes a third running was even performed, yielding small beers of little strength and body. Old ales were invariably higher alcohol beers of perhaps 6% to 7% alcohol by volume (ABV). But the alcohol level was initially kept in check by mashing techniques that favored unfermentable sugars in the high-gravity wort. The beer was left with notable residual sweetness rather than higher levels of alcohol. The original old ales were literally old by beer standards of the day, matured for months and often years in wooden casks. Long aging in wood allowed the ale to mellow in bitterness but also to acquire some flavour from the raw wood, a slightly stale taste from oxidation, and a dash of sourness from wild yeasts, particularly Brettanomyces, and lactic acid bacteria with which the brew would invariably come into contact. Old ales received very little to no aroma hops; hop flavor and aroma, even if they survived the long aging, would not have been compatible with the beer's other flavors. The finished beer would have had low, natural effervescence, a deep tawny color, and a substantial mouthfeel. A long, slow secondary fermentation would sometimes eventually reduce the 'unfermentable" sugars, leaving the beer with a dry finish. Old ales were often blended with young "running ales," thereby conferring to the young beer some of the richer properties of the older fraction. The British brewery Greene King still produces its excellent Strong Suffolk (also known as Olde Suffolk) by this method.

Over time, like most British beer styles, the beers referred to as "old ales" have changed substantially. They have kept the original dark color range, and most show a tendency to rich fruitiness, but in all but a few examples, the touch of wild or lactic character is gone. Some are simply slightly beefed-up mild ales, barely touching 5% ABV. Wood aging is rare, and aging itself seems optional, although some strong versions to age very well indeed. In the past decade or so, however, craft brewers have sought to bring back types of old ale somewhat closer to those of the mid-1800s, and many of these are very characterful and show good aging potential."

"Old ales were normally fermented only from the first, high-gravity runnings of the mash" Interesting claim that one. And easy enough to check up. Though notice how the whole article is very vague about time. Does he mean late 18th/early 19th century? The 19th century in general? To be on the safe side, let's check several years.

Here's a nice Whitbread example from 1837:

It shows the gyles and how they were mixed to create two beers: X (a Mild Ale) and KXXX (a Keeping or Stock Ale). There were three worts:

1st 39.5 lbs/barrel (1109º)
2nd 29.8 lbs/barrel (1083º)
3rd 22.6 lbs/barrel (1063º)

KXXX was blended from 48 barrels of the first wort and 31 of the second. X had 7 barrels of the first wort, 23 of the second and 38 of the third.  KXXX had an OG of 35.7 lbs/barrel (1099º) and X 26.6 lbs/barrel (1074º).

Not only wasn't the Keeping Ale all first runnings, some of all three runnings were in the weaker Mild Ale. Not much like Horst describes, is it?

Not convinced about the gyling? Here's another example, from the other end of the 19th century. It's a Barclay Perkins KKK from 1891:

This one is even simpler, having been brewed entire gyle. Three worts of 1086, 1085 and 1037 were blended to get an OG of 1085.

Here's another example from closer to the middle of the century. It's a Truman KXXX from 1860:

This was also brewed entire gyle. There were 4 worts:

1st wort 42.3 lbs/barrel (1117º)
2nd wort 35.5 lbs/barrel (1098º)
3rd wort 23 lbs/barrel (1064º)
4th wort 20 lbs/barrel (1055º)
combined: 32.3 lbs/barrel (1089º)

Still not convinced the gyling method described in the article is fantasy? Here's yet another example, again from Whitbread, but this time the year is 1875. We've seen a standard-strength Mild parti-gyled with a strong Keeping Ale and we've seen two entire gyle Keeping Ales. Here's a third variation: two Keeping Ales parti-gyled with each other:

This time there were 2 worts:


1st wort 38.8 lbs/barrel (1107º)
2nd wort 18.9 lbs/barrel (1052º)

which were blended to make KK at 26.4 lbs/barrel (1073º) and KKK at 29.4 lbs/barrel (1081º).


I could go on. I have hundreds of examples from several different breweries spanning the years 1830 to 1950. None of them were brewed in the way Horst describes.


"Old ales were invariably higher alcohol beers of perhaps 6% to 7% alcohol by volume (ABV)."  Old ales 6 to 7% ABV in the 19th century? Total bollocks. The weaker X Ale in my first example above would have been that strong. The KXXX was probably more like 9% ABV. He's just taken modern strengths and assumed beers were always like that. 6% ABV was normal strength in the 19th century. That's how strong a bottom of the range Mild or a standard Porter were.

Hang on a minute. I've a set of Old Ale analyses from the British Medical Journal. Let's see how strong those were:

Old Ales
Year	Brewer	Beer	Acidity	FG	OG	ABV	App. Attenuation
1870	Allsopp	Old Burton Ale (brewed March 1869)	0.32	1040.38	1121.63	10.64	66.80%
1870	Allsopp	Old Burton Ale	0.25	1030.11	1111.45	10.69	72.98%
1870	Bass	Barley Wine	0.23	1032.31	1114.78	10.84	71.85%
1870	Roy	Scotch Ale	0.20	1037.84	1111.46	9.61	66.05%
1870	Truman	Old Ale (KXXX)	0.16	1020.81	1084.95	8.39	75.50%
1870	Bass	Burton Ale	0.18	1014.91	1091.47	10.10	83.70%
1870	Allsopp	Burton Ale	0.56	1008.61	1086.4	10.30	90.03%
1870	Butler	Kennet Ale	0.36	1012.31	1090.3	10.31	86.37%
1870	Charrington	Old Ale	0.26	1017.08	1089.16	9.48	80.84%
1870	Charrington	Old Ale	0.28	1013.9	1073.27	7.78	81.03%
1870	Elliott, Watney & Co.	Old Ale	0.28	1007.93	1072.81	8.55	89.11%
Source:
British Medical Journal 1870, vol. 1, 1870, page 68.

Look at that - the weakest is almost 8% ABV.

"The second runnings were then fermented as brown ales" Second runnings fermented as Brown Ales? In the 19th century? That shows just how clueless he is. Brown Ale didn't exist in the 19th century. I thought everyone knew that. It died out at the end of the 18th century when everyone sussed out how much cheaper it was to brew with pale malt. And, as the brewing records above have shown, when beers were parti-gyled, the weaker beer almost always contained some of the strongest wort. There were several reasons for doing that. First and foremost: hitting the target gravity. Second: a beer from only later weak worts is thin and crap. You wanted some of the good stuff in every beer.

Let's move on to some other points.

"acquire some flavor from the raw wood" British brewers went to great lengths to stop this happeneing. They deliberately made their barrels from types of oak that im[parted little flavour. Barrels and vats were constantly re-used. Any wood flavour would have quickly disappeared. They also treated new casks to remove any wood taint*.

"a deep tawny color"; "They have kept the original dark color range" I think he's making a big assumption here, that Old Ales were dark in the 19th century. They weren't. Or at least not until the very end. Like pretty much all British beers except Porter and Stout, Old Ales were brewed from 100% pale malt (and maybe some sugar) between 1800 and around 1890. They were pale in colour. (My source: countless brewing records.)

"Some are simply slightly beefed-up mild ales, barely touching 5% ABV." That's what Old Ales always were. Old Ale and Mild Ale were essentially the same thing. The difference was that one was sold young and the other aged. The recipes were identical, except for the level of hopping (Keeping Ales had more, obviously). A KK Keeping Ale had the same gravity as an XX Mild Ale. The Keeping Ales were brewed in the higher end of the gravity range - KK, KKK and KKKK. Mild Ales tended to be in the lower ranges, X and XX, but there were XXX and XXXX Mild Ales.

What are some modern Old Ales in the 4 to 5% ABV range? For the same reason that Mild is now 3% rather 6% or 7% ABV. Because British beer strengths aren't much more than 50% of what they were 150 years ago. Gravities of all beers have declined in steps: Boer War, WW I, 1931 tax increase, WW II. Each chipped away at beer strengths. Only a very small number of specialist beers - Colne Spring Ale, Bass No. 1, Barclays/Courage Russian Stout - remained at pre-WW I strengths.

He is right about the Brettanomyces. That's what made Old Ale old - a long, secondary fermentation with Brettanomyces that gave the beer the "aged" flavour. Brettanomyces can break down complex sugars that normal yeast can't. That explains some of the very high degrees of attenuation in the table above.

Overall, not that bad an article by Horst's standards. Only half a dozen serious errors.



* I know that I've posted a section of a brewing manual discusses seasoning casks.  Just can't find it. If you can find it, I'd be grateful.

Written out of history

The Oxford Companion to Beer. Yes, I'm back stamping on it's broken body. Or rather I might have a glass of beer is doing it for me.

If I were more paranoid, I might think he'd done it deliberately. Writing Barclay Perkins out of history.

I think I've already got a winner for this year's Protz Shield.

Classic Horst

"They've let Horst Dornbusch write the articles on Scottish beer." How my heart sank when I read those words. Ace fantasist Horst being allowed to write about Scottish beer in the "Oxford Companion to Beer".

There have been volumes of rubbish written about Scottish beer. Fantasies have become established as fact. Articles like this one aren't going to help:

"shilling system is not only a traditional, pre-decimal, British currency denomination but also an old-style, uniquely Scottish measure for a beers strength. In the 19th century, it referred to the pre-tax price of a British barrel (36 UK gal, about 43-2 US gal or 164 1) or a hogshead (54 UK gal, about 64.8 US gal) of ale. In those days, Scottish ales were brewed to a wide range of differing strengths, from a very weak gravity of perhaps 7.5 P (OG 1.030) to a whopping gravity of perhaps 32.5 P (OG 1.130). The stronger the brew, the more it cost, from roughly 60 to 160 shillings. The classic way of making Scottish ales is by the parti-gyle method, which involves boiling and fermenting the early, heavier runnings and the later, weaker runnings of the same mash separately. See parti-gyle. Parti-gyle beers are often blended from two consecutive batches and sometimes from different-strength runnings. The strongest finished ales were often called Scotch ales or Wee Heavy ales; the mid-range brews were called Export ales and the weaker ones Scottish ales or Two-Penny ales. This nomenclature, however, was never applied consistently, and the technical dividing lines that separate the various shillings ratings have always been somewhat fluid. A typical 60-shilling Two-Penny may have a gravity of 7.5°Plato 8.75 Plato (1.030 1.035); a 70-shilling Export 8.75 P-10°P (1.035-1.040); an 80-shilling Export 10°P-13.75°P (1.040-1.055); a 90-shilling Wee Heavy 13-75°P-19-25ºP (1.055-1.075); and a 140-shilling outlier 23.75°P 32.5°P (1.095 1.130). Shilling ratings are sometimes denoted by the old currency symbol "/-," with "80-shilling" becoming"80/-."The modern drinker, when these antiquated terms are used, simply knows to expect a beer of "normal" strength (4.5% to 5-5% alcohol by volume) to be designated "80 shillings" and something lighter below this number and something heavier above it."

Let's attack it point by point. His biggest mistake: confusing the shilling Ales of the 19th century with the shilling Pale Ales of the 20th. Yes they were 60/- to 140/- or even 160/- Ales. But these were the thick sweet type of Ales than resembled Burton Ale.

The number of shillings refers to the price per hogshead, not a barrel. And apparently Scottish hogsheads were generally larger than English ones, typical holding 63 gallons. It wasn't the pre-tax price, it was the wholesale price. 1830 to 1880, it couldn't have been the pre-tax price because there was no tax on beer. The tax was on malt and hops.

The weakest shilling Ale (60/- according to Horst) only 1030º.? No it wasn't. The Table Beer brewed in Scotland was stronger than that. These are William Younger's shilling Ales from 1868:

50/- Ale 1040
60/- Ale 1047
80/- Ale 1068
100/- Ale 1076
120/- Ale 1088
140/- Ale 1102
160/- Ale 1116

Parti-gyling. Why does everyone get it so wrong? Younger's brewed most of their beers entire gyle, including the really strong ones. They didn't just use the first runnings. And they certainly didn't blend after fermentation. Blending beer from two different mashes? Nope, didn't do that either.

The strongest beers called Scotch Ale or Wee Heavy? Wee Heavy doesn't appear until the 20th century. The original - Fowler's Wee Heavy - was actually called 12 Guinea Ale. That still appeared on the labels in the 1960's. Wee just refers to the bottle size, a nip. Heavy just means strong. The strongest may have been called Scotch Ale in England, in Scotland they were sold as Strong Ale. Or 6, 8, 10 or 12 Guinea Ale.

The mid-range beers called "Export"? No, totally wrong. It's the Pale Ales that were called that, totally, totally different type of beer. Export does appear in the 19th century, but only really came into common use in the 20th. 70/- has never been called Export. In the second half of the 20th century it was called Heavy.

Twopenny? Does he have any idea what twopenny is? It's a very old Scottish type that was give a special status by the act of Union. It existed as a separate tax category until 1802. In its final days the tax was 3s 4d per barrel, while Strong Ale was 10/- and small Beer 1s 4d. So it was probably about 1045º. The name comes from the price per Scottish pint, which was about 4 English pints. Nothing to do with 60/-. It's easy enough to work out the retail price:

2d for a Scottish pint = 4d per gallon (or a third of a shilling)
54 (the number of gallons in a hogshead) / 3 = 18 shillings retail per hogshead

How could a hogshead that retailed for 18 shillings have a wholesale price of 60 shillings?

That last lot of shilling ales, which period are they supposed to come from? It isn't clear. I think he means now. It which case he got 80/- right. Then again, he doesn't say that it's a type of Pale Ale. And the top of the gravity range is too high. He calls Twopenny, a  type of beer that hasn't existed for 200 years, 60/-. It's Light. Even the BJCP gets that right. Calling Strong Ale 90/- only dates to post-WW II. Between the wars 90/- was a relatively low-gravity (about 1035º), bottled Pale Ale. As I said before, Wee Heavy was a 12 Guinea Ale.

Distinguishing different strengths by a shilling designation wasn't uniquely Scottish. Some English brewers - Brakspear is an example - used it in the early 19th century, too.

One final point.The shilling system was used for all different types of beer. There are 54/- Stouts, 54/- and 60/- Milds,

"a traditional, pre-decimal, British currency denomination" that's the only true statement I can find in that article. Oh, and that /- is a way of denoting a shilling. Utter, utter drivel.

I told you had something even worse

I did, didn't I? The excerpts below contain the most egregious error that's flapped in front of my eyes. See if you can guess what it is.

I'm sure you can guess the source. Good old Horst Dornbusch, man of a million unfounded claims.

"Pale ale originated in England about two hundred years ago when some brewers started to use cleaner, but more expensive, coke  — instead of coal or wood — to dry their malted barley. The higher-priced grain led to higher-priced brews. This helped to foster the British notion that pale beers are for the upper classes, while darker beers are for the toiling masses. Most of this new ale came from just one city — Burton-on-Trent.

British breweries have only been maintaining reliable brewing records since the beginning of the twentieth century, so we do not have the recipe of the original brew. From the perspective of authenticity, we have only a few vague hints as to what the original pale ale might have looked or tasted like. It ought not to come as a surprise, therefore, that pale ale has one of the broadest style definitions you can find in the world of brewing.

Early English beers brewed with these paler grains were mostly amber to copper in color. Today we might not even consider them pale, because we compare them to modern beers such as the golden-blond Pilsners, the brilliant Munich helles, and even American light lagers. By the standards of the staple brown ales and porters of two hundred years ago, however, these new beers were pale indeed."

Not too awful yet. Except for paragraph two, obviously. Unless all my archive visits have been some fantastic and fantastically-detailed dream. Naah. I went down the pub after every visit. They were always open and I can remember tasting the beer. Couldn't have been a dream. The street was even the same after I came out of the pub. Conclusive evidence against the dream theory.

What else has he got wrong? That there weren't any Brown Ales in the early 19th century. And that Mild - a working man's drink if ever there was one -was pale at the time. By 1800 pale malt was cheaper to brew with than other base malts. That's why Porter grists were changed to be mostly pale malt.

"Originally, in cask-conditioned “real” pale ales, the turbidity from the yeast was taken out of the drink with various finings. But in regular “running” beer — as draft beer was often called then — this was not the case. It was not until the invention of beer filtration in 1878 that pale ales could sparkle, too."

I'm not even sure what that means. What the hell were 'cask-conditioned “real” pale ales'? If he's saying what I think he is, he's got it arse about tit. I wouldn't trust that date for the introduction of filtration, either. The idea of Stock Pale Ales was that the long maturation allowed them to drop bright without fining. Read any description of Bass or Allsopp Pale Ale and they go on about how wonderfully pale and bright it is.

"The name “pale ale” is not without ambiguity, or even confusion. Initially, the beer was known as India Pale Ale (IPA) because it was being made mostly for shipment to the administrators, merchants and soldiers of the British Empire in India. This beer faced a six-week long, often rough, ocean voyage through the tropics and around the tip of Africa. To ensure that the beer would survive the trip without spoiling, Burton brewers made it almost twice as strong and twice as bitter as the standard ales of the day."

He's not the only one to claim that. Doesn't make it right, though.

"This India Pale Ale acquired a domestic British market only by accident when, after a shipwreck off Liverpool in 1827, casks of IPA were salvaged and sold for local consumption. Once the Liverpudlians had tasted the hoppy export ale, they clamored for more and the Burton brewers obliged. Because of the beer’s bittering levels, it became known domestically as “bitter.” However, because plenty of alcohol as a preservative was no longer necessary on the short transport routes for domestic sales, Burton brewers made their bitter in three strengths. They brewed an ordinary bitter (with an average OG in the mid-1.030s), a best bitter (with an average OG in the mid-1.040s), and a strong bitter (with an average OG in the mid-1.050s). The strong bitter also became known as special or extra-special bitter (ESB). As beer bottles entered the British market from the 1860s onward, the bottled bitters came to once again be called pale ales to distinguish them from the bitters in casks. At this time, however, the “India” prefix was dropped."

Domestic IPA was in reality higher gravity than the ones sent to India. I'll make no other comment. Except to point out the irony in this being the next sentence in the original:

"As brewers, we may be comfortable with the thought that styles are something fixed and lasting. But in reality, styles are born as an expression of their times and tend to change with them, sometimes even radically."

How true.

To top it all off, there's this brilliant recipe:

"British Nineteenth-Century Best Bitter
(5-gallon, all grain)
OG = 1.044
FG = 1.010
SRM = 11–13
IBU = 30  

Ingredients

    7.0 lbs. two-row pale ale malt (3° L)
    1.0 lb. crystal malt (40° L)
    6.75 AAU East Kent Goldings hops (bittering)
        (1.35 oz. of 5% alpha acid)
    0.5 oz. Fuggles hops (flavor)
    0.5 oz. East Kent Goldings (aroma)
    Wyeast 1028 (London Ale) or White Labs WLP026 (Premium Bitter Ale) yeast
    0.75 cup corn sugar (for bottling)"

You can read the whole article here:

http://www.byo.com/stories/beer-styles/article/indices/11-beer-styles/1239-pale-ale-style-profile

I rest my case.

More Dornbusch bullshit

Lachlan has found some more fantasy beer stylings from Horst Dornbusch. Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

First Porter:

"Robust Porter - Near the end of Queen Victoria's long reign, as the 19th century was coming to a close, the Robust Porter split off from the standard London or Brown Porter. The Porter, long a brew of working class lineage and favored by the rough, hearty and robust strand of the British social fabric, seemed to be just a touch too rough for the more gentile denizens of refined Victorian society. A gentleman might want his dark ale, but it had to me a bit more upscale. Strange then that the upper-crust Porter that evolved came to be known as "robust," a term more workman- than gentleman-like!"

I wonder when the term "Robust Porter" was first coined? Was it Victoria's reign? Or was it Elizabeth II"s? I'd ask what his evidence is for such ludicrous claims. But that would be a waste of time., Because there isn't any.

"Porter brewing reached its peak production volume in London in the 1820s, by which time it had become arguably the first mass-produced commercial beer. There was no brewery of note that didn’t depend on porter sales for its prosperity. Ironically, brown or standard porter reached its zenith at just about the same time when a newly-patented indirect-heat kilning technology made the reliable production of very pale, as well as very dark, malts possible, thus hastening the phase-out of the traditional, floor-malted brown malts. As brown-malt mashes fell out of favor in the brew houses of London, so did brown-malt based porters in the city’s pubs. Eventually, near the end of Queen Victoria’s long reign, the once-dominant standard porter “represented only one quarter of London’s beer consumption,” according to porter expert Terry Foster (see his book Porter, Brewers Publication 1992). It was during this technology-induced beer transformation of the standard porter that the robust porter — not unlike the stout in earlier times — split off from the fading original porter.

Diversification of the porter style into various sub-styles in the 19th century, however, could not save the brew. In the early 20th century, as beer drinkers switched more and more to pale ales, porters — robust or not — disappeared almost entirely from the beer menu."
Horst Dornbusch.
http://www.byo.com/stories/beer-styles/article/indices/11-beer-styles/1358-robust-porter-style-profile

Brown malt fell out of favour with London brewers in the 19th century? No it effing didn't. They were still using it in the 1970's. What a twat. "Robust Porter" splitting away from "standard Porter"? More fantasy.

"Mild Ale - The roots of mild ale, however, date back to well before the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, perhaps to as early as the 16th century, when milder, weaker versions of the regular brown ale was the drink of the "fairer" sex and of the servants. Brew-technically, mild ale was often made from the final runnings of a partigyle brew."

Yet another wannabe beer historian who doesn't realise that Mild Ale used to be a pale beer. And not weak. He clearly knows fuck all about the history of British beer. He's paid to write this stuff? I'm glad I'm an amateur.

It's a crime that in the 21st century a supposed renowned beer writer can come up with such total drivel.

Fantasy beer history: Gose

Gose is a beer very dear to my heart. One of my specialist subjects. I can recall my excitement when, reading "Die Biere Deutschlands", I first learned of its existence. For many years it was the beer I most wanted to try. When I finally tracked it down, it was no disappointment.

My very personal relationship with Gose explains why I get so upset when I read total rubbish about it on the web. Today I'm going to discuss a couple of shockingly inaccurate histories of Gose.

The first is from the website of Four Peaks Brewing:

A cross-cultural constant is that water, whether it comes from the Colorado, the Ganges or the Seine, can just get so -- I don't know -- boring? That's why beer has been a favorite beverage since the heyday of Ancient Egypt, and why -- somewhere between then and now -- some creative beer drinkers in Liepzig and Goseler, Germany decided to add to the usual hops, barley, yeast and water two interesting ingredients: coriander and salt. The result was "Gosebier," which became hugely popular, especially in Liepzig. It also became popular to add different fruit and nut-flavored extractions to this tart, refreshing and somewhat acidic wheat beer. Raspberry and almond-flavored Gosebier joined the plain version at tables all over Germany, and there was much rejoicing. Unfortunately, Gosebier was literally knocked out of existence around the year 1516 with the amalgamation of Eastern Europe and the adoption of the German Purity Law, which demanded that beer only be brewed using variations on its four base ingredients.

History seems to illustrate that even basic good beer can get boring, and eventually the desire for different flavors overtook the German purity law. Gosebier began to make a comeback. Just as this unique beer was regaining popularity, however, the Communist Party took over East Germany. People had a helluva lot more to worry about than, "what neat, fun ingredients we can throw into our bier now?"

Four Peaks is glad to report that, since the dissolution of Communism in that part of the world, Gosebier has certainly made its comeback in Liepzig and even in Goseler -- and that it has finally arrived at our brewery. Brewmaster Andy Ingram -- who was the source for all of this information -- describes the Four Peaks Gosebier as a combination of a Belgian white beer (wittbier) and a Berliner wheat (weisse) beer. "The Gosebier is a wheat beer with a mild spiciness from coriander and a tartness from yeast and lactic acid," said Ingram. "It's refreshing. Many people can get turned off by the idea of adding salt," he said, "but in this case, the addition of salt in just the right quantity does what salt is supposed to do -- enhance the flavors of the beer and give it a big, round mouth-feel." The upcoming beer dinner in March will also feature the three different, traditional Gosebiers as part of the dessert course: raspberry, almond liquer-flavored and regular. Four Peaks Gosebier, which is on tap now at the brewery, weighs in at a light, drinkable 4% alc./vol. Ahh . . . just in time for Spring drinking. Prost!

http://www.fourpeaks.com/Brewsletters/BrewsletterFeb2004.htm

Where do I start? Almost everything in the first paragraph is total crap. The Reinheitsgebot didn't apply to the places where Gose was brewed until the 20th century. Gose wasn't the result of "creative beer drinkers" adding stuff to their beer. It's called Gose not Gosebier. The town is Goslar, not Goselar. And Gose is brewed from wheat as well as barley.

Now leat's consider paragraph two. Gose wasn't making a comeback before the communists took over, it was in decline after WW I. Gose was brewed during the DDR period.

I suppose as American brewers who probably can't read German, they may have an excuse. The author of the following disinformation can make no such claim. This was written by German-born Horst Dornbusch and can be found on his "German Beer Institute" website.

In the 20th century, with its wars and dictatorships, Leipziger Gose slowly faded into oblivion. The air raids of the Second World War wreaked havoc and destruction on the brewing facilities, which the planned economy of the Communists proved incapable of rebuilding. The division of Germany during the Cold War (starting in 1949) into a "workers' and farmers' paradise" in the Soviet East and a "revengist, bourgeois" hellhole of "exploitation" in the capitalist West — separated from each other since 1961 by a the Berlin Wall and a death zone with barbed wire, search lights, and a brain-washed, trigger happy "people's army" — not only kept the East Germans in their socialist prison but also caused their beers to wither. Gose was still a local specialty in Leipzig, when the Communist regime in East Germany decided it had better uses for its feeble economy's precious grain. This was because food shortages that resulted from the forced collectivization of agriculture turned bread-making, not beer-making, into the almost sole purpose of the precious grains. Not surprisingly, all brewing suffered under the Communist regime and, by the late 1950s, the last pre-unification Gose was brewed in Leipzig.

Only after the Wall came down on November 9, 1989, could this traditional beer style make a comeback; and many craft breweries in and around Leipzig started to brew it again. One of the driving forces behind the modern Gose-Renaissance has been the Gosebrauerei Bayerischer Bahnhof (Gose Brewery Bavarian Station), wich opened its doors in 2000. It is located in the historic downtown train station dating from 1842 that linked Leipzig with Munich.
http://www.germanbeerinstitute.com/Gose.html

There's barely a true word in the first paragraph. The only brewery producing Gose in the 1940's was not destroyed in the war. It was on a country estate and survived intact. It never restarting brewing after the war. Gose was revived in 1949 (after the communists had taken over) at the newly-founded Friedrich Wurzler Brauerei in Leipzig. They were never short of grain for bread-making in the DDR. In any case, the bread was mostly made from rye, with a little wheat and certainly no barley . The last pre-unification Gose was not brewed in the 1950's. The Friedrich Wurzler Brauerei closed in 1966 after the owner died. It was so small and primitive that it wasn't worth nationalising and just shut down. Gose was revived by Lothar Goldhahn in 1986 and brewed at the Schultheiss Weissbier brewery on Schönhauserallee in Berlin until 1988.

Sorry to come across all negative, but this sort of unresearched "history" drives me nuts. It's not hard to find the correct information, if you can be arsed. Even wikipedia gets it right. Then again, it was me who wrote the section on the history of Gose.

If you're interested, I've an accurate history of Gose here:

http://www.europeanbeerguide.net/leippubs.htm


Sources:
"Gose Häppchen:100 Jahre Gosenschenke Ohne Bedenken", 1999, pages 13 - 63
"Die Biere Deutschlands" Höllhuber & Kaul, 1988, pages 342 - 344.