Let's Brew Wednesday - 1950 Whitbread Exp PA

An exotic treat for you today: a strong export Pale Ale from the early 1950's.

It's a funny period. British beer strengths were just starting to recover from their postwar nadir. But most beers were still pretty week. Whitbread Best Ale (Mild) was only 1032º, IPA 1035º and PA 1040º. Not particularly impressive. Apart from the odd strong beer  that was made in tiny quantities, there was almost nothing stronger and 1050º. Which is why this is an unusual beer.

Whitbread had been in the export business for a long while. Like most other large London brewers they took advantage of the port and Britain's imperial muscle to ship beer all around the world. For the export trade, already weakened at the end of the 19th century by the growth of Lager, the glory days ended with WW I. Most foreign markets had been closed or dried up. Sales in the empire had been badly hit as colonies built their own brewing industries.

Where was left? Belgium.

Let's take a look in detail at British exports:

British Beer Exports 1946 – 1953
	1946	1947	1948	1949	1950	1951	1952	1953
Channel Isands	5,342	7,021	9,958	9,693	6,505	2,721	8,959	9,815
Gibraltar	5,698	7,077	6,958	7,609	8,530	8,693	8,183	8,325
Malta	414	521	673	897	336	624	445	484
Cyprus		2,593	2,312	2,112	2,538	4,002	2,712	2,099
British West Africa	1,574	5,797	18,044	34,626	33,811	35,593	50,636	58,049
British East Africa	1,361	2,624	7,316	13,391	4,014	4,341	1,900	1,511
Aden	50	1,284	2,327	4,200	2,684	2,006	2,897	5,927
Bahrein, Koweit, etc		594	5,141	7,813	4,099	4,039	5,073	4,756
India and Pakistan	69,278	8,130	17,075	18,076	15,333	11,890	9,451	5,617
British Malaya	26,270	6,377	10,463	12,258	11,666	14,412	6,028	5,447
Ceylon	2,648	7,686	3,565	6,669	6,363	5,605	5,656	8,624
Hong Kong	10,062	5,873	5,679	12,863	9,508	12,027	7,254	4,811
Australia		54	8,481	18,761	16,879	35,790	8,303	57
Canada		313	1,598	1,281	2,090	3,352	3,680	3,892
Bermuda	22	788	977	1,603	2,843	1,901	1,466	948
British West India Islands	251	1,045	15,087	14,009	15,459	15,213	16,112	17,123
Bbritish Guiana	38	175	1,991	2,752	3,871	3,247	6,056	6,594
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan		1,843	3,069	5,747	5,291	6,805	6,277	3,035
Irish Republic	221	3,280	11,327	6,201	4,225	5,223	4,966	4,674
Other British Countries	74	972	6,470	6,719	7,153	8,927	10,260	6,570
total	123,303	64,047	138,511	187,280	163,198	186,411	166,314	158,358
Norway	595			1			17	79
Iceland	11		7	5	1	1	10	20
Faroe Islands	12		6
Germany	543	1,196	3,275	3,140	3,144	5,349	3,995	3,618
Belgium	1,405	3,414	34,288	33,786	33,362	45,733	50,237	55,240
France	756	193	294	611	645	817	882	852
Italy	2,564	121	71	17	44	28	21	92
Greece		2,954		1,917	137	196	24
Algeria			18				5	6
Libya	14	190	3,381	6,576	4,571	4,150	3,040	1,634
Transjordan		95	675	821	155	362	227	66
Palestine	1,299	8,684	3,045
Egypt	12,536	12,709	7,587	6,999	4,782	11,001	29,288	51,981
Iraq	1,760	7,792	5,621	4,936	2,503	3,763	2,516	3,619
Iran	1,898	1,700	1,996	1,971	553	259	89
Burma	40,439	5,695	31	147	636	1,018	1,800	1,173
USA		270	2,986	1,921	1,563	967	1,373	1,328
Other Foreign Countries	283	620	3,306	3,999	5,916	15,378	7,552	6,873
total	64,115	45,633	66,587	66,847	58,012	89,022	101,076	126,581
Grand total	187,418	109,680	205,098	254,127	221,210	275,433	267,390	284,939
Source:
“1955 Brewers' Almanack”, pages 58-59.

As you can see, in 1950 Belgium was the second biggest recipient of British exports, second only by a few barrels to British West Africa. Belgium received more than 50% of exports to non-British countries and 15% of all exports.

Whitbread Pale Ale is still sold in Belgium. No idea where it's brewed.






That's me done. Over to Kristen . . . . . . .

Kristen’s Version

A very straightforward beer here that doesn’t require a whole lot of explanation. This one does very well on cask as it can get a bit ‘tinny’ on draught.




Ingredients

Grist–Three different English pale malts. Really your choice here. All are indicated as ‘second’ grade so its really your preference here. I used Maris Otter, Golden Promise and some Halcyon split evenly. For the sugar I used straight No1 invert. Very simple to make and use in this beer. The tiny bit of caramel does add a hint of caramelly goodness but very little of anything else. A very simple recipe so make your decisions based on your preference. I think the %sugar to malt is what I’d focus on more than what type of malt. See how this much sugar plays in this beer. You can split your batch and add your sugar directly to your fermenter if you’d like. Just be sure to calculate your hopping BU if you do this as the lower gravity will extract more bitterness.

Hops–They call for Worcester Goldings which I used b/c I had them and don’t get to use them very often.
Wonderful little hops that I wish I got more often. Stick with something Goldings or go experimenting at your leisure just make sure they are lower alpha hops.

Yeast – The dry or the wet Whitbread works very nicely here. I’m not a big fan but it plays very nice with the sugar in the beer.

The Anchor Bankside

Which was, of course, the brewery tap of Barclay Perkins. 

"Since the third and present pub was built on the site in the early 1700's The Anchor, Bankside, has been famous — famous because it was only 200 yards from Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the Elizabethan bear pit and Clink prison, but more important, famous in its own rich: as a British pub.

The Anchor has now been given a new look and the opportunity to provide, more easily and in greater comfort, that for which it has for so long been famous — good English food and honest English ale in surrounding which are traditional but not folksey.

"Where in London can I get a superbly cooked English meal in surroundings which are 'England'?"

On an evening in March we invited the Press to find out for themselves. By the end or the evening, for which Anchor Hotels and Taverns should be justly proud our friends from Fleet Street had discovered that what we said was right, and so by now have many others, from Mr. W. L. Lee, Chief Architect of Courage (Eastern) Ltd.. recorded a broadcast to his native Australia, and Mr. H. Whitwell, Public Relations Manager, recorded one for America.

We can only suggest that readers come and see for themselves; our pictures will, we hope, whet the appetite."
"The Golden Cockerel Vol.2 No.5 Summer 1963" page 6.

You can just imagine the 17th century Good Beer Guide description: "Riverside pub, handy for the bear pit, theatre and prison." 

A superbly cooked English meal in early 1960's London. Quite a tricky enterprise, I fear.

But most importantly, look behind the bar. Those wooden barrels standing proudly. Were they really in use? The picture isn't quite detailed enough to tell. But I can't see any beer pumps. Bitter and Mild. That would be my guess for what's in the barrels, should they be real.

Brewing Ale the Irish way

Time for some real detail about Irish Ale brewing, courtesy of Mr. Morewood, the man with an ear for titles.

"The common process of brewing is to bruise or grind the malt; the bruising by cylinders is preferred. The grain is then put into the mash-keive which is supplied with water at a heat of 160°, where it is well raked to saturate it with the water, and is allowed to remain for three hours, during which it is covered with a lid, to prevent it absorbing so much of the oxygen of the atmosphere as would render it liable to become sour, to get too cold and not take out the extract. The liquor is now drawn off, when another mashing at a temperature of 180° takes place in the usual manner, and is allowed to stand covered for one hour. A third or final mashing at trailing heat and then standing for one hour, covered as before, completes the operation. If, by any accident, the keive should be set, as it is termed, or not run off, as sometimes happens, boiling water is then introduced and remashed, in order that the extract or fluid may flow the more readily. The produce of the mashing is called worts, and is successively conveyed to the coppers, in which, for about three hours, it is boiled with a proportion of 2.5lbs. of hops for every barrel intended to be made. This liquor is sent to the coolers, where it is allowed to reach the temperature of 63° or 64° before it is conveyed into the fermenting-tun, where from 40° to 43° gravity by Dicas's Saccharometer is considered a sufficient strength to yield beer at 20s. per barrel. Half a gallon of good, thick barm is considered necessary to ferment each barrel of malt brewed or mashed. If the malt be good, it should produce 2.5 barrels of 32 gallons English, or from 40 to 41 gallons Irish. If ale be brewed at 40s. the barrel, worts of from 70 to 75 lbs. gravity will be sufficient, and each barrel of malt employed in this way, will, after taking off the ale at the gravity above specified, give one barrel of table beer, the worts of which require four hours' boiling on the same hops. The heat in the fermenting-tun should never be allowed to rise more than from four to five degrees, to regulate which, the thermometer is commonly suspended in the vessel. In summer, the heat of the worts put into the tun should be the lowest possible ; but in no season should they be allowed to remain more than twelve hours in the cooler. Worts running into the tun generally cool at two degrees, and an allowance should be made on that account; but it is better to have them rather cool than warm, as a few gallons can be easily heated to bring them up to the necessary temperature. After being fermented in the tuns, the time for removal into the casks is indicated by the froth in the tun becoming rather settled ; but it is never allowed to fall or get down, as it was termed in the old distilling laws. Every three hours, for the first twenty-four, while the beer is working in the casks, it ought to be filled up by its own discharge collected from the troughs, on which the casks are placed. After the first twenty-four hours it is filled occasionally, in the same manner, every five or six hours ; and so on in proportion as the working ceases : in three days it is commonly fit for use. Brown patent malt should be employed to give the liquor colour, if designed for publicans; but if for private use, pale drink is preferred. For fining the liquor, isinglass dissolved in sour beer and strained, is the material generally used, a pint of which is sufficient for a barrel: more than what would clear, would injure it, as it thins it and gives it a tendency to become acid."
"A philosophical and statistical history of the inventions and customs of Ancient and Modern Nations in the Manufacture and Use of Intoxicating Liquors" by Samuel Morewood, 1838, pages 625 - 626.

Contextualisation. That's what I'm all about. Let's see how that mashing scheme matches with English practice. Looking at London brewing records from about the same period, the first thing I noticed was that most only performed two mashes. Here's the comparison in a tidy table:

Mashing temperatures
	water temp
Beer	Mash 1	mash 2	mash 3
Irish Ale	160º F	180º F	??
1838 Barclay Perkins X	172º F	190º F	200º F
1840 Truman 40/- Ale	176º F	190º F
1840 Truman XXX- Ale	176º F	190º F
1852 Reid X	172º F	182º F
1852 Reid XXX	175º F	185º F
Sources:
Truman brewing record document B/THB/C/122 held at the London Metropolitan Archives
Reid brewing record document 789/273 held at the Westminster CityArchives
Barclay Perkins brewing record document ACC/2305/01/550 held at the London Metropolitan Archives

The main difference is the water temperature of the initial mash: over 170º F for the English Ales, just 160º F for the Irish Ale. The water temperature for the second mash was also higher in England, though not by as much.

A three hour boil in Ireland. What about England? A bit more complicated, because each wort was boiled separately. And to be honest, I don't have enough boil times to make a useful comparison.

Strength and hopping rates. There's something I do have enough information to discuss. Dicas's Saccharometer. Yet another different bloody system of measuring gravity. I'm not 100% sure about this, but 2.5 lbs on the Dicas scale seems to be 1 lb per barrel. The first beer mentioned, that retailed at 20 shillings a barrel, is fairly weak. Luckily, I've an English 40 shilling beer I can use for a direct comparison:

Gravity and hopping rate
	gravity	lbs/barrel
Irish 20/- Ale	1044-1048	2.5
Irish 40/- Ale	1078-1083	2.5
1840 Truman 40/- Ale	1086	2.42
1841 Truman X Ale	1076	1.95
1840 Truman XX Ale	1083	2.66
1840 Truman XXX Ale	1106	4.97
1837 Whitbread X	1074	2.65
1837 Whitbread XX	1089	2.38
1836 Whitbread XXX	1102	2.8
Sources:
Truman brewing record document B/THB/C/122 held at the London Metropolitan Archives
Whitbread brewing record document LMA/4453/D/01/001 held at the London Metropolitan Archives

The Irish 40/- bears an uncanny resemblance to the London 40/-. In terms of both gravity and hopping. But that makes no sense. The Irish didn't grow hops. Like Scottish brewers, wouldn't they have used very few hops? (Bit of heavy-handed satire there.)

"Brown patent malt should be employed to give the liquor colour, if designed for publicans; but if for private use, pale drink is preferred." What a fascinating statement. By brown patent malt I believe they mean black malt. An English brewer wouldn't have used black malt in an Ale in the 1830's. Or only in the tiniest of amounts. Brewers had swapped to 100% pale malt for all Ales by about 1800. Did some Irish Ale remain dark into the 19th century? That would be a real difference with England.

"When sending out beer and porter from the public breweries, it is a common practice to put in two gallons of unfermented worts into each barrel which causes a sort of fermentation, throwing up a head at the bung and making the liquor appear strong and fresh.

In extensive breweries, the malt is commonly ground by rollers, of which there are more or less employed, according to the extent of the concern, but the mode of brewing is the same. To regulate the heat in the keive, some brewers use what they term a dash-box, which is a species of cylinder placed in such a position as to have discharge pipes running into it from the different coppers, with fixed thermometers to ascertain the heat of the liquor, while a tube with a cock conveying cold water, is attached, in order to enable the brewer to convey the liquor into the keive at whatever temperature he may desire. This obviates the old method of taking the heats in the coppers, and saves much time and trouble. The mashing of the grain is usually performed by machinery as in distilleries, manual labour being dispensed with. When the mashing is completed, in order to prevent the escape of heat, the tun is covered by a fixed suspended lid, around the circumference of which there hangs about two feet of canvass, which, when the raking is finished, is drawn round the circuit of the keive, thereby forming a complete covering : in some large breweries no covering is used. In this stage the liquor is permitted to remain, till the solid parts settle, when the liquor is drawn off into the underback. Three mashings are commonly made to extract the whole of the saccharine matter, the produce of which is sent to the copper, where it is boiled with the hops in the proportion of one pound and an half to a bushel of malt, and when boiled for some time, it is discharged into the jack or hop-back. This vessel has a double bottom, the upper one of which serves as a strainer, being made of iron perforated with holes, through which the liquor exudes, leaving the residuum.

This residuum of the hops is conveyed back to the copper and boiled with the second or third worts, while the liquor thus drained is sent to the cooler. In this stage of the process, the worts remain thinly spread over a large surface for cooling, and sometimes fans, worked by machinery, are placed on the coolers to accelerate this object; but where expedition in cooling is required, a refrigerator is generally employed. That of Mr. Avyard is commonly used, which consists of a number of thin metal tubes, arranged in a horizontal position in a cistern, into which there is a constant run of cold water, made to flow over the tubes in order to cool the fluid running through them. Various contrivances for the same purpose have been made, such as metallic plates, so placed in a cylindrical vessel, as to form conduits for the warm worts to flow through one set of plates, while through another set, in a contrary direction, a corresponding quantity of water runs, absorbing the caloric from the worts, and reducing them with great rapidity to the desired temperature. The average temperature at which the worts are set is about 60°, when they are sent into the squares or gyle-tuns, and yeast is added. As soon as the fermentation begins to subside, the liquor is conveyed into fixed fermenting vessels, usually small casks, where the liquor cleanses itself by working off the yeast, carrying with it a quantity of the fluid which falls into troughs prepared for the purpose. The beer thus carried over, is replaced by a quantity taken from a small reservoir adjoining, and the liquor is maintained at the same level in all the fermenting vessels by means of a regulating cock. When the fermentation has ceased, the liquor is sent into large vats, or barreled and sent into market."
"A philosophical and statistical history of the inventions and customs of Ancient and Modern Nations in the Manufacture and Use of Intoxicating Liquors" by Samuel Morewood, 1838, pages 626 - 628.

That's a good one. Early evidence of worting in Ireland. This was something I've only read bout in conjunction with Porter up until now. Adding unfermented wort at racking time is an early form of priming which appears to have been a particularly Irish practice. I assume the idea was to provoke a secondary fermentation to give the beer plenty of condition in the cask.

The next paragraph deals with practice in large Irish breweries. I assume when it's stated that the mashing is performed mechanically that it means an internal rake mashing machine was used rather than by men with paddles. The reference to distilling implies that distillers were quicker to adopt mashing machines than brewers. I wonder if that was just an Irish thing?

The hopping rate give, 1.5 lbs to a bushel of malt is 12 lbs hops per quarter. That's high for an Ale. Here are some London Ales, of varying strengths, for comparison:

Hopping rates
beer	gravity	lbs/qtr
1840 Truman 40/- Ale	1086	6
1840 Truman X Ale	1076	6
1840 Truman XX Ale	1083	9
1841 Truman XXX Ale	1106	7
1837 Whitbread X	1074	8.07
1837 Whitbread XX	1089	6.11
1836 Whitbread XXX	1102	6.09
Sources:
Truman brewing record document B/THB/C/122 held at the London Metropolitan Archives
Whitbread brewing record document LMA/4453/D/01/001 held at the London Metropolitan Archives

The first description gave a pitching temperature of 63-64º F, the second 60º F. All fall in the range used by London brewers, who pitched stronger Ales a little below 60º F, and weaker ones a little above 60º F. As this table shows:

Pitching temperatures
beer	º F
1840 Truman 40/- Ale	59.5º
1840 Truman X Ale	60º
1840 Truman XX Ale	58.5º
1841 Truman XXX Ale	59º
1837 Whitbread X	63º
1837 Whitbread XX	59º
1836 Whitbread XXX	62.5º
Sources:
Truman brewing record document B/THB/C/122 held at the London Metropolitan Archives
Whitbread brewing record document LMA/4453/D/01/001 held at the London Metropolitan Archives

The cooler sounds like the standard refrigerator of the day. A relatively simple affair, where wort in metal pipes was cooled by cold water flowing over them. The cleansing system - fixed casks and troughs - sound like pontoes, method popular amongst London breweries. It was a precursor of the Burton union. Then the final process: vatting or racking into trade casks. The former for Stock Ale, the latter for Mild Ale. It all sounds very similar to English practice.

Next we'll take a look at Porter brewing in Ireland. Again, courtesy of Mr. Morewood.

American brewing records

I'm often told that they don't exist. But they do, they most certainly do.

Like these ones:

"Fascinating and important commercial record of the breweries of James Alexander in upstate New York, covering a period of thirty years. The ledgers include both accounts payable and receivable, payments to employees, itemized listings of supplies purchased, and of course the beer, ale and porter sold. Also included are records of various batches of beer brewed, with the quantities of hops, yeast and malt used, the gravity, etc. One of the ledger books from the Geneva period gives Alexander’s accounting to the government, being records “of Materials used and Fermented Liquors made and sold or removed for consumption or sale at the Brewery carried on by James Alexander in the Village of Geneva County of Ontario in the State of New York.”"

They're on sale at  PBA Galleries. A snip at just $2,000 - $3,000. I'd be tempted to piut in a bid myself. But I want to die with a full set of bollocks.

What you need to start an early 19th-century Irish brewery

We're back with Samuel Morewood and his impossibly-titled book about booze.

First there's a handy breakdown of the equipment and its cost needed to set up a brewery in Ireland. Very useful for the time-travelling entrepreneur.

"To establish a brewery in Ireland on a moderate scale would require no great capital. For a concern calculated to turn out 30 barrels per week, two coppers only would be requisite, one to boil fifteen and another to boil six barrels. A mash-keive to answer those coppers should be about 78 inches in diameter and 40 in altitude. The under-back need not be of great capacity, one of five barrels' content would be sufficient, as the liquor is immediately pumped from it to the coppers. The cooler, usually made of inch and quarter plank, should be such as not to admit the worts to be, at any time, more than 2.5 inches in depth, the more shallow the better, but much must depend on the size of the cooler and the magnitude of the apartment where it is erected. Two fermenting tuns, of from 15 to 61 barrels' content each, would be adequate for such an establishment ; they are usually made from American pine. The cost of these articles may be estimated at—

	£ s. d.
2 Coppers	60 0 0
1 Mash-keive, or tun	8 0 0
1 Underback,	2 0 0
1 Cooler,	12 0 0
2 Fermenting tuns,..	12 0 0
A Wort and water pump,	5 0 0
A Handmill for bruising or grinding malt	10 0 0
40 Barrels, at 11s. per barrel	22 0 0
70 Half do. at 18s. do	28 0 0
70 Quarter barrels, at 5s	17 10 0
1 Large Dray,..	7 0 0
1 Small Dray,	3 10 0
Casks, stillings, troughs, instruments, etc...	40 0 0
Total,	£267 0 0

To work a concern of this kind, it would require two men and a boy constantly, with a cooper occasionally to prepare the casks, the expense of which may be reckoned at £40 annually. From these data may be easily calculated, what capital might be necessary for a concern on a larger scale, and which would be proportionably cheaper."
"A philosophical and statistical history of the inventions and customs of Ancient and Modern Nations in the Manufacture and Use of Intoxicating Liquors" by Samuel Morewood, 1838, pages 624 - 625.

Less than 300 quid for a fully functional brewery. I'll have two, please. 30 barrels a week is 1,500 or so barrels in a year. I just happen to know, from some other documents I've been looking at, that in 1832 there were 42 breweries in Ireland of about that size. That's out of a total of 216 breweries. So just about 20% of Irish breweries were this size.

Notice something odd about the prices of the various sizes of barrels? A half barrel is 18 shillings, but a full barrel just 11 shillings. That makes no sense. While we're on the topic of barrels, I was intrigued as to how many were needed to cope with that 30 barrel weekly output. 40 full, 70 half and 70 quarter barrels adds up to a capacity of 92.5 barrels. Or about triple the weekly production. That implies that the beer was no longer than 3 weeks in the barrel. Taking into account the time waiting for the empty to be returned, etc, it probably wasn't more than a fortnight. Presumably a brewery operating on this scale would have only been supplying local outlets.

With just two fermenting tuns, such a brewery couldn't have brewed every day of the week. A couple of brews of 15 barrels each would have tied up the fermenters.

We'll be getting on to a description of the brewing itself next. Exciting, or what?

Pinters

We've not been to Bolton for a while, have we? Time to revisit its 1930's pubs. This time with a vital question: glass size.

One of the biggest surprises for me about pre-war Bolton pubs was that most men drank halves. Something I've never experienced in a pub. Not one in Britain. (In Australia, of course, you rarely see anything bigger than a half. And never anything as big as an imperial pint.) I was intrigued as to why they drank from such small glasses. So I was pleased to find this explanation:

"PINTERS"

This brings us to the question of "pinters" — men who drink pints instead of gills. According to Nicholson (London Survey) men drink pints because it is something to grip on to. He quotes these words being used to him by drinkers. Also he says, it makes the beer last longer. This again, he bases on what pub-goers have told him.

Our Worktown timings show conclusively that the time taken, per pint, is practically the same whether it is drunk in pints or gills. Observers have reported men drinking pints with a group of gill drinkers, and finishing off their mugs the same moment that the others are draining their second gills. To confirm this, the same observers timed 48 beer-drinkers in London pubs (December);
result:

Pints    17.5 minutes average speed.
Halfs     8.6 minutes average speed.

In this small series, pints actually averaged more than twice as long as half-pints.

The fact that the mug "is something to grip on to" has to do with pint drinking. The landlord of a beerhouse who has recently installed gill mugs tells us that they are very popular. On the other hand, many pubs do not provide mugs with handles, and serve pints in large plain glasses. The actual size of the glass must also be taken into account in this respect. The habit of drinking gills from pint glasses may be due to this.

Nicholson also says that the majority of London pinters are old men. Our observations bear this out for Worktown too. One of the reasons for this may be purely historical. Before the war, when beer cost a great deal less than now, most working class drinking was done in pints. A factor for changing this may have been the increased price. (We say "may have been", because, although a reasonable suggestion, we have no proof of it, and other factors are involved.) But men who have been used to drinking pints for years have formed a habit pattern which is hard to break, so whenever possible they continue it. Besides old men, the other common classes of pinters are labourers, and people who do heavy manual work, especially foundry workers. In the forge people bring in bottles and drink them off.

A barman writes:

Pints—depends on how much one can swallow at a gulp. This is entirely a matter of natural growth, and when one has attained the degree of a pinter, a half pint seems insignificant, and you are well steeped in the drinking habit. Seems a matter of choice and habit and maybe length of thirst and pocket.

He is wrong — as those who best know so often are. We see here that the size of the pint glass gives the feeling that the men who drink from them must be drinking faster and more than those who drink gills. Connected with this is the fact that the labourer and the outdoor worker who are usually pinters, do very often drink more than other pub-goers, owing to the nature of their work, which makes them thirsty. Hence the feeling that there is something "manly" about pint drinking, and inversely, that it is "unrefined". The landlords of some pubs refuse to serve pints in the parlour. Women do not drink pints — the story of a woman who used to do so bears out these points: it is a discussion in the parlour of a small beerhouse, among a number of women, some of whom are drunk.

Discussion about a lesbian woman. They concentrate like hell to try and remember her name. After four minutes'working on it and puzzling, one remembers it, and there is joy all round, and the name is reiterated again and again. The following remarks were made about her:

"She be dead and buried now."
"The worst thing about her is neither woman or man."
"'er and Emily lived together."
"She was rather on the vulgar side."
"She was very dirty spoke though."
"She'd stand up at fire." (This mentioned twice.)
"She'd rather have a pint than a gill."

Undoubtedly, the pint mug is associated with labourers, men drinking in dirty working clothes, and old chaps who spit a lot and smoke cheap twist. The association between pints, spitting and strong tobacco is dealt with below. In the lounge of the town-centre pubs, pints are a rarity; while in most vaults they are normal. In the pubs in the "Irish" district, mentioned earlier, to ask for a gill in the vault is to become conspicuous. The first time an observer ordered one, the barmaid repeated "a pint", and there was some difficulty in getting across the idea that a gill was required. A man with a trilby, standing next to the observer, who didn't seem to belong to the pub (he wasn't talking to any of the other chaps) turned and said to the observer in a low voice — "Most of these navvies they come in 'ere and order a pint, you see. ..."
"The Pub and the People" by Mass Observation, 1943 (reprinted 1987), pages 183 - 185.

I already knew that larger glasses tend to slow rather than speed drinking pace. I'm surprised that the difference recorded in Bolton between pint and half drinking times was so small. Just 0.3 of a minute. 17.5 minutes for a pint is a pretty good pace. 15 minutes I found to be the maximum comfortable pace for me. 20 minutes is a bit more civilised.

Hard times are a reasonable explanation for the switch to halves. Especially in a culture of round-buying.  By buying halves, both the amount needed to buy a round and the amount any member was likely to overspend by buying odd rounds was minimised. WW I - what isn't it to blame for? That old men - whose drinking habits were set before the war - were mostly pint drinkers seems to confirm the role of WW I. Odd, because in my experience, old men were some of the few males likely to be drinking halves.

The use of beer for rehydration is another common theme. Especially for those working in hot, physically demanding trades like foundrymen or glassblowers. Or during harvest time, when a supply of beer was considered essential to get the best out of workers. Harvest beer, a low-gravity Mild continued to be brewed well into the 20th century.

I've a good story about women and pints. When I drank in the Cardigan Arms in Leeds during the late 1970's, there was a couple who used to be regulars. Both were in their late 50's. The man would always go to the bar and order a pint and two halves of Tetley's Mild. The pint was for him and the two halves for his wife. I can remember pubs that refused to serve pints to women. Only because it was considered "unladylike". How culturally defined such ideas are is demonstrated by Bavaria and Austria. Where women - even grannies - are happy to drink beer in litres.

I love the conversation between the women. It's like a cross between a scene the Rover's Return snug and Mrs Brady Old Lady.

Franconia June 2011 (part three)

We were up bright and early the next day. Early at least. The 15 half litres and multiple schnapps slurped with gay abandon the day before left my skull abandonned and anything but gay.

We got the jump on the cycling club this time. Mike wasn't going to be a famine victim again. Just in time. Seconds after sitting down, the locusts descended leaving nothing but a few brown stalks behind.

The day started with a merry walk to Eggolsheim station. It would have been merry if I'd had any impulse schnapps on me. Sadly, that well had run dry.

We'd a complicated trip ahead of us. Train to Bamberg, quick drink in Mahr's, then a confusing selection of buses. That would get us almost all the way to Uehlfeld, where we'd be sleeping.

Most of the little time we had in Bamberg was spent walking. With the exception of a quick half litre in Mahr's. Bamberg bus station. How I love it. And the ESP system of finding your bus. We were lucky. A bus driver with an uncanny resemblance to Lemmy took pity on us. His bus was just about the right one. Close enough. Empty at Bamberg station, the bus was swamped by a tsunami of schoolkids in the town centre. What did I care? I'd got a seat.

Once the kids had gone, Lemmy put on some music. Music as eccentric as the man himself:  German rap, drinking songs and something that sounded like a cross between oompah and punk.

First stop was Barnikel. A brewery and pub in one of those tiny Franconian villages that don't have anything but farmhouses and a pervasive smell of cow shit. Did have a brewery, though.

Interesting pub. One that still retains a bar-counter-free design. Instead there's a little pantry where al the drinks are conjured forth. There's a wood burning stove, like in so many village pubs. Except this one looks like a jukebox. And the flotsam of several generations hanging from the walls. Including the brewing diplomas of grandfather, father and son.

The Baker's Arms in Swindon. That's what it reminded me of. All that lovely worn formica.

I had two beers:

Lagerbier – soft and süffig.
Dunkles – pretty damn Dunkles, more like black.

(The beer descriptions won't be getting any better. I'm a bit ausgesprochen in that regard.)

I ate. You'd love to know what, wouldn't you? A Bauernplatte. It's the responsible option, I always feel. Meaty enough, but not too filling. And you can pick at it. I don't like meals to get too much in the way of beer.

Here the journey was supposed to get complicated. A bus to another village where we would hopefully get a taxi to bridge a busless gap. Asking the pub to ring up for one seemed a good idea. But they wouldn't. They insisted on driving us themselves. Lovely people, these Franconians.

We'd picked Uehlfeld as our overnight stop for one reason: it has two breweries. We stayed in one. The nicer one, as it turned out. Their beer was OK. Zwanzger Hausbräu was a decent unfiltered, amber-coloured beer. A subtle diacetyl note rounded out the taste nicely. There was quite a barnyard aroma, though I think that was from the adjacent cowshed rather than funk.

Lovely rooms, very recently done up. But the wifi didn't work. What was I supposed to do? Sit in the pub and drink more, I guess.



Mahr's Bräu
Wunderburg 10,
96050 Bamberg
http://www.mahrs-braeu.de/



Barnikel Fritz Brauereigasthof
Dorfstraße 5
96158 Frensdorf, Germany
09502 293
http://www.brauerei-barnikel.de


Prechtel Walter Brauerei
Hauptstraße 24
91486 Uehlfeld,
09163 228
http://www.brauerei-prechtel.de/index.htm



Brauerei-Gasthof-Zwanzger
Burghaslacher Straße 10
91486 Uehlfeld,
09163 959756
http://www.brauerei-gasthof-zwanzger.de

BSF at GBBF

Looked at the BSF list for the GBBF, Devil's Backbone Barclay Perkins Dark Lager is in there.

Don't know who to ask about this officially, so I'll do it here. Can you make sure there's some for me to try on Thursday?

I've a bit of a personal attachment to this beer. It would be nice to taste it.

Malt-drink in Ireland

Ireland again. But from another source. One of my favourite books, if only for its wonderfully impratical title: "A philosophical and statistical history of the inventions and customs of Ancient and Modern Nations in the Manufacture and Use of Intoxicating Liquors". Try saying that after a few intoxicating liquors.

"Malt-drink in Ireland, as has been already stated, was of early origin, but its general use was inconsiderable till after the English invasion. A duty of 5s. 3.75d. a barrel was imposed on it in 1787, when its consumption became of some magnitude. While it was in operation, this duty varied in proportion to the exigencies of the state and the views of the ministry ; but the government, from a wish to encourage the use of malt liquors, and the advancement of agriculture, thought it expedient to repeal the duty altogether; at the same time the duty was raised on malt from 9.25d. to 1s. 3d. the bushel, and afterwards gradually increased to 4s. 5d., and was again lowered to 2s. 7d., the present standard duty. It appears from the Parliamentary returns, that since 1796, the year in which the Irish beer-duty was rescinded, there has been on the whole, a falling off in the consumption of malt, notwithstanding the immense increase in the population, clearly shewing that the abolition of the beer-duty did not answer the intention, and proving that the Irish people preferred spirits.

To what this taste may be attributed might be worthy of inquiry ; for it must be admitted, that an Irishman has nothing inherent in his composition to render him more devoted to ardent spirits than the native of any other country. The most plausible reason for this predilection seems to be, that the malt-drink made in Ireland was never of strength, flavour, nor purity, equal to that manufactured in England: hence to the warm and exhilarating spirit a preference was given, rather than to the thin, cold, and unpalatable beer or ale to be met in the shops and taverns of the kingdom. In England, the greatest care was observed by the brewers; in Ireland the trade was in the hands of persons, the majority of whom were men of no capital, subject to no check nor regulation, and studying every thing but the interest of the public, while malt and hops formed but a small portion of the drink imposed on the community. On the other hand, it may be argued that the high duty on these articles induced the brewer to limit their use as much as possible, and to this the inattention of the legislature, in no small degree, contributed. Had the duty on malt been lowered, and a lighter duty been laid on beer with a higher impost on whiskey, it might have had the effect of making Ireland more an ale and beer than a whiskey country, and have prevented many of those misfortunes that have arisen from the unrestrained and prevalent use of ardent spirits, to the disgrace of the national character. It can scarcely be questioned, that were the trade conducted under the control of wholesome laws and the regulations of government, it could not fail to have a salutary effect by producing a pleasant, wholesome beverage, encouraging the fair trader, and punishing the deleterious manufacturer. The quality of the Irish malt-drink has, of late, through the conduct of some spirited individuals, been greatly improved, and is getting into greater repute not only at home but in the sister kingdoms, and even in foreign countries. The quantity of malt used in the breweries in the year ending the 5th July, 1827, was 1,391,456 ; and in the year ending 5th July, 1828, 1,415,832

* Parliamentary Paper, No. 30. Sept. 1828.

bushels, yielding for the one, at the rate of two bushels of malt for every barrel brewed, 695,728, and for the other 707,916 barrels of the different sorts of malt liquor.* The following is the number of bushels used by the licensed brewers for the years specified:—'

YEARS.		BUSHELS.		BUSHELS.
1832	Dublin	491,227	Ireland	1,543,265
1833	do	539,226	do	1,683,285
1834	do	790,713	do	2,055,326
1835	do	577,021	do	1,829,589
1836	do	617,035	do	2,032,856

The malt drink exported was, for the year ending 5th January,

1826	9,855	}
1827	10,800	}
1828	11,261	} Imperial barrels*
1829	14,499	}
1830	15,207	}

Of these, there were sent to England 11,101, and to Scotland 220 barrels, while in 1829 there were sent to the former 11,754, and to the latter 118 barrels.** The imports of beer during those two years were 747 barrels from England, and 875 from Scotland. In 1832, there were in Ireland 216 breweries, and in 1837, there were 247 breweries, in which the malt consumed in that year, was 2,034,557 bushels."
"A philosophical and statistical history of the inventions and customs of Ancient and Modern Nations in the Manufacture and Use of Intoxicating Liquors" by Samuel Morewood, 1838, pages 622 - 6

Apart from those lovely numbers, there was something else that attracted me to this text: the explanation of why the Irish drank proportionally less beer and more spirits. A pretty obvious one, really. Whiskey was better value and the beer was crap.

I love the way Samuel Morewood puts it: "an Irishman has nothing inherent in his composition to render him more devoted to ardent spirits than the native of any other country".

As Morewood points out, the quality of Irish beer was improving. Remember it was  in the 1840's that Guinness started exporting serious amounts of beer to England and Scotland. Over 40,000 barrels in 1840, or getting on for triple the amount of all Irish beer exports in 1830.

Before the 1800 Act of Union, beer taxation was controlled by the Irish parliament. And it often took a different path to its English counterpart. Excise duty on beer is a good example. It was always lower in Ireland than in England and was abolished in 1786 - 44 years before it was in England. Ironically, unlike most of the rest of the Irish economy, brewing wasn't damaged by the union, with the number of breweries and the amount of beer produced both increasing.

Franconia June 2011 (part two)

Day two started with a fight.

The hotel had seemed deserted when we arrived. Despite a bit of bumping around during the night I'd expected few other guests. Arriving in an empty breakfast room, this view seemed confirmed. Then, as we were still discussing which table to sit at, a horde descended. A horde of middle-aged cyclists, who ravaged the buffet before our eyes. I thought Mike was going to cry. Finally we fought our way to the front. I got the last egg.

The day's journey was simple: one bus then a mile or so walk. The bus we needed for the Hallendorfer kellerberg (which we later discovered is actually called the Keller Express) stopped by the church. It being the first bus on a public holiday, we'd expected it be quiet. How wrong can you get? The bus was packed full of keller-bound, partially leather-clad, men of all ages. Ascension Day - that's Father's Day in German - kind of logical, isn't it?

We didn't need the sign posts pointing the way to Kreuzberg, the string of men winding up the road toward the church led the way. I'd expected it to be a full house in the church - wrong again. Everyone was where every sensible person would be - on a seat under the trees, a mug of beer bristling with condensation on the table before them. Where to start? Left to right seemed the logical way, so we kicked off in Friedel. Friedels are weird bunch - they built a brewpub on a hill in the middle of nowhere and leased out their own brewery to someone else. As it happens, to Andy, whose pub we had been in the day before.

The beers were a bit dodgy. "That's infected, Mike." Mike had a doppelbock - bizarrely I hadn't opted for that as my breakfast drink. My Märzen wasn't much better. Very brewpubby. And I don't mean that as a compliment.

Quickly moving on, we took our place in peaceful shade, seated on and amidst rough, rustic furniture at Lieberth's Keller. Two words to tell you how good the beer was: Bayrsicher Anstich - beer served the way god intended. The garden slowly filled up around us and revellers slowly filled up with beer, schnapps and pork. The food, we can't forget the food, big chunks of it, roasting, crackling. Our beer, sadly was soon diluted by the streams of drool as we eyed the big hunks of pork passing by on other people's plates. Finally our numbers we called and we retrieved our sides of pork. Soon we were porking down the pork.

In Germany, Father's Day is more than just getting drunk with your mates - first you have to build a cart to house your entertainment and snack needs. The guys who parked their cart next to our table had obviously spent more than two hours building it. It included a smoke machine, a popcorn machine, two optics for schnapps and a sound system - all under a parasol. Oh, and a barrel of beer, too.

We didn't spend a long time there - no more than four or five hours. Sadly there was no bus strike, so we were forced to leave. We walked back to the bus stop, where several member of an angling club chatted with us in pretty good English. When the bus pulled up it was even more mobbed than the morning bus. Pushing aside the ancient members of the angling club we nabbed the last two seats. As the bus headed back towards our hotel, it kept filling up with more happy dads. One peacefully inebriated chav got the entire bus laughing by suddenly pulling out his wallet and yelling "ticket inspector!!!"

Shockingly, we arrived back at our hotel on time. Two elderly lady cyclists wanted to grab our rooms, but we beat them off with their air pumps. Our plan was to finish the day at, where else?, another bierkeller. We asked the hotel proprietors to call us a taxi, but they declined and instead offered to drive us there themselves. We pulled into St. Georgen Keller in time to hear the band singing some song about Amsterdam, but, while the other guests seemed fascinated, we managed to snag two seats in the best part of the beer garden.

Down the hill we got some L. beer from Bayrischer Anstich but it was a bit diacytelly this year. It was the same in our hotel. Shame really as last year it was one of the best beers of the whole trip.



As we sat there, a young guy came to our table and asked "Do you like my cart?" There's no real answer to that. Other than: "Yes." I didn't want to get into another fight.



Brauhaus am Kreuzberg -  Friedels Keller
Kreuzberg 1
91352 Hallerndorf, Germany
09545 4736
http://www.brauerei-friedel.de/



Rittmayer-Keller
Kreuzberg
91362 Hallerndorf, Deutschland
09545 4554
http://www.rittmayer-keller.de/



Kreuzbergkeller Lieberth
Kreuzberg
91352 Hallerndorf
Tel.: 09545-70746
http://www.bamberg-guide.de/bamberg/bierundbierkultur/location.php?loc=296


Löwenbräu Keller
Eremitage 3
96155 Buttenheim
Tel. 09545 / 50 93 46

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1883 Truman Export Pale Ale

Ha! On time for once. Probably because today's beer is so special. A Pale Ale with an unusual recipe.

First, a little background. Truman were one of the large London brewers that didn't attempt to brew Pale Ale in their home brewery. Instead, they built a plant specifically for that purpose in Burton. Despite never really running flat out, Truman's Burton brewery was around for more than a century.

It brewed two ranges of beers: Pale Ales and numbered Burton Ales, similar to those of Bass. They went from 1 to 8, 1 being Barley Wine and 6 to 8 Mild. I'm not sure what I'd call the rest, other than Burton Ales.The Pale Ales were, in ascending order of strength PA, P2 and P1, with gravities of 1058º, 1062º and 1068º. All the beers - Burton Ales and Pale Ales - had grists that were 100% pale malt.

Some of you may remember P1. Not under that name, of course. Under its later brand name: Ben Truman. Truman's premium bottled and keg Bitter of the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's. In 1953 it was down to just 1045º and was hopped at about 1 lb per barrel: In 1883 it had 4.5 lbs per barrel. Quite a difference, but all Victorian beers were hopped like crazy.

What's unusual about the recipe? I'm getting to that. From the middle of the 19th century Britain's hop industry was incapable of meeting the demand from brewers. The solution was to import hops. Lots of them. From just about every country that could supply them: USA, Germany, Belgium, France, Bohemia.German and Bohemian hops were prized for their flavour. American hops for their low price and long shelf life. I must dig out the Barclay Perkins KK from the 1930's that was dry-hopped with Saaz.


This beer contains hops from just about everywhere.USA, Germany, Bohemia and even England. A truly international beer. And one that demonstrates how hopelessly outdated the idea is of British beers only using British hops.




That's it from me, so over to Kristen . . . . .

Kristen’s Version:

So this beer is quite different than the other Truman pale ales we have done before. They are similar in OG and BU. They are similar in the ingredients in general. However they differ tremendously in the hopping type. One can look at as many logs as a brewery has ever been done and get a very good idea as to why things were done. You can see the same beer done over the course of a year and then a few years. Although the ingredients change a bit the theme is the same with a beer that is very similar. This one, the hops are so different there must have been a reason, right? There was only 145bbl made and it was for export so maybe it was made for someone, some place in particular. Maybe the brew master wanted to try out these hops as it was an export beer he had the leeway to do so. Maybe there was a shortage of their normal hops or they didn’t have the ages he wanted. Or, as most brewers know, he had all these hops he wanted to get rid of and did a kitchen sink-type thing as there is no rhyme or reason to these hop combos. However, I will not go so far as to make any sort of solid hypothesis. Seems like a really cool ‘one off’.


Ingredients

Grist – So…as with all the single malt-type beers, its completely up to you. Use the very best malt you can get of your very favorite variety. As long as its fresh and English, I think you are good. I very much like Optic for this one. I’m starting to get sick of the honeyed Maris Otter I’ve been getting lately. Golden Promise and Halcyon work quite well for this also.

Hops –  I’ve talked about hops about 6 times about this beer so far. Hops. They make this beer. They make it different. The quality is of the utmost importance. For this beer, for the shear uniqueness, try using 4 hops from 4 places. The  varietal Cluster, at the beginning, really doesn’t play a part so really any US hop with a 7%-ish AA% would be a fine replacement. Even higher % would be fine also. Same can be pretty much said for the Fuggle at 120min. Any UK at that % is fine. Where it gets interesting and fun is the late hop additions. Basically Bavarian and Bohemian hops are what you are looking for. Bavarian I’d stick with either Tettnang or Hallertauer (any). Whichever you can get fresher. Stay away from Northern Brewer, Spalt, etc. Bohemian, I would stick with Saaz. The prototypical Bohemian hop. You’ll also notice that I didn’t add any dry hopping. The average dry hopping for a pale ale or export pale ale was between 0.25 and 0.5lb/36gal bbl (~0.8-1.6g/L)…somewhere close. Nearly all of these were dry hopped. This log, the variety wasn’t included. They usually use the most fresh hops but since this log is so different I wanted to leave it to you. I’ve dry hopped with Saaz, Hallertauer and Goldings. Both at 0.8 and 1.6g/l. I’ve blended them to see what level was the my favorite. I found that right about 1.15g/L was optimum for this beer. I really like the combo of Saaz and Hallertauer (50:50). It was very different from most I’ve done like this. Do as you’d like, see what you’d like best.

Yeast – West Yorkshire. 100% West Yorkshire. However, most people can’t get it. So, I listed the Whiteshield. Which I do very much. But its very minerally. So keep that in mind. The Nottingham, this time, just came off too dry.

A German visits Barclay Perkins

The Barclay Perkins brewery used to be quite a tourist attraction. Especially in the first half of the 19th century when it was the largest in the world. That explains why there are so many visitors' accounts.

"It was a long time since I had visited the City, and I accordingly devoted yesterday to it. As I am, in my quality of Teutonic knight, a beer-brewer, I turned my 'cab' to Barclay's brewery, which the vastness of its dimensions renders almost romantic, and which is one of the most curious sights in London.

From twelve to fifteen thousand barrels, that is about twenty thousand quarts* of beer, are brewed here daily. Every thing is done by machinery, which is all set in motion by a single steam-engine. The beer is boiled in four vats, each of which holds three hundred barrels. The hops are first put into the vat or cauldron dry, and kept stirring by a machine, that they may not burn. During this process the sweet-wort flows in upon them. There is a curious apparatus for cooling the beer in hot weather; —it is made to pass through a number of pipes like those of an organ, through which a stream of cold water is then let to flow, and so on, alternately. At last the beer flows into a barrel as high as a house, of which there are ninety-nine under gigantic sheds. You can't conceive the strange effect of seeing a vessel holding six hundred thousand quarts tapped for you to drink a glass of porter, which, ' par parenthese,' is excellent, and cold as ice. These barrels are covered with a little hill of fresh sand, and preserve the beer fresh and good for a twelvemonth. It is drawn off into smaller casks, and sent out to the consumer. The drawing off is effected with great rapidity by means of leathern pipes, as the smaller casks are arranged in readiness under the floor on which the great ones stand.

A hundred and fifty horses, like elephants, one of which can draw a hundred hundred-weight, are daily employed in carrying out the beer.

A single enormous chimney devours the smoke of the whole establishment ; and from the roof of the principal building you have a very fine panoramic view of London.

* Fasser. Fass, a butt, barrel, tun, tub, &c—Grosse Quart. I do not know whether these measures correspond to the English words, or whether I have used the appropriate technical expressions.—Transl.
"Tour in England, Ireland, and France: in the years 1826, 1827, 1828, and 1829" by Hermann Pückler-Muskau (Fürst von), 1833, pages 168 - 169.

As you can tell be his name, the author was an aristocrat. A prince no less. The book is a collection of the letters he wrote while bumming around Europe.

The "curious apparatus for cooling the beer" sounds very much like a refrigerator, which in the 1820's would have been a pretty modern piece of kit.

This being the early 19th century, the giant Porter tuns were still in use. It sounds like Barclay Perkins pulled the same trick as Pilsner Urquell, pouring visitors a sample from their storage vats. Except, of course, those of Barclay Perkins were above ground, not in cellars. Which raises the question: how come the Porter was ice cold? He writes that the vats were covered with a "little hill of fresh sand". I can't imagine what he means by this. And none of the illustrations I've seen of tun rooms show anything similar.

Franconia June 2011 (part one)

It's become a tradition. A summer trip to Franconia to soak up beer,  and gobble down pork. Though not necessarily in that order.

I once thought that trying to tour the countryside by public transport would prove on the impossible side of difficult. Turns out it's not that hard. Once you get your hands on the bus timetables. And if you plan carefully.

I'll be honest. Both acquiring the bus timetables and the planning were Mike's efforts, not mine. I'm more of a planning executive. Publisher, too, I guess. As I assemble the printed guide. All those years preparing internet pub guides have given me one useful skill.

Our plan was simple: fly to Munich, get a train to Bamberg, have fun. Pretty difficult to mess that up. How can you not have fun in Bamberg? After that, it was out into the countryside, armed only with Mike's iphone and my unerring sense of direction.

Mike assembled a list of must-see pubs and tried to cram them into an itinerary. Harder than it sounds, seeing as the bus routes are designed for locals rather than itinerant pub-crawlers. He eventually nailed one together without too many protruding sharp objects. Just the odd scary bit beyond the reach of buses., 

After spending days poring over the German weather archives, we picked the first week of June as the most likely time for a peaceful trip. It worked - only first day was dampened with rain.

Our ridiculously early flight got us to Bamberg in plenty of time for lunch. Thanks to the careful weather planning, our eagerly anticipated al fresco lunch at Schlenkerla had to move indoors. Though the careful weather planning did mean that we arrived on the release date of Schlenkerla Kräusen. The only time I've seen a pair Bayrischer Anstich beers in a pub. Lucky us. Thank god for the rain, it had driven all the tourists away so we got to sit in the nice room where we could keep an eye on the barrels.

The Kräusen was perfectly nice, but lacked the deep bacon lure of the Märzen. There was no way I was leaving with lining my innards with a pint or two of that. And some pork. It would be a sin not to. "It's unlucky to walk past an open pub without going in." That's what I always tell the kids. For quite a while, they believed me. Possibly because I never walked past an open pub in their presence.

The buses at Bamberg station are run with typical German efficiency. None of the stops bears a number.

"We'll need to be psychic to find our bus, Ron."
"Aaarggh urggghh."
"I said pshycic, not psychotic."
"Just expressing my frustration, Mike."

We did manage to locate our bus. "See, it worked Mike." "No, asking the bus drivers worked."

Next stop, the new Zoiglstube in Strassgiech. We found the pub despite the bus stop sign blocking it out.

Wood, wood, wood. The stuff was everywhere. Except in the beer. That was clean as bishop's finger.

The schnapps was delicious. Deliciourifous. Mike wanted to buy a bottle. But it was from a cask. Being a friendly and generous fellow, the landlord stuck some in a random old bottle. "What do I owe you, guv?"  "Nothing, son. My gift." 

I allowed ten minutes for walking to the bus stop. A minute for each pace outside the door of the pub.

Bamberg, Eggolsheim: bus, train. That's more than you need to know. A half hour stroll along German roadways, with Lexie's dodgy pully bag bouncing behind me. I almost knacked it last year, marching through the outer suburbs of Kulmbach. I wouldn't have used it this time, except my posh De Bijenkorf bag broke a-bleeding-gain.

The hotel seemed locked tight. Turned out we were just at the wrong entrance. But its pub was shut.

Checked in, we explored the village. Who am I kidding? We went to the other pub, Landgasthof Kammerer. Just past the war memorial (for both wars, by the way - at there was a Kammerer amongst the dead), and the left-footer church. Offering St. Georgen Kellerbier, in pretty blue and grey ceramic mugs. Food, too. Pretty good food.

Back to the hotel for a good night's sleep, punctuated only by a little light vomiting. The first day is always the hardest. Until the body gets used to the new routine.

Next day would be exciting: Kreuzberg. A real Kellerberg, really out in the countryside. Could I control my agoraphobia long enough to make it there? You'll find out in the next thrilling instalment. Tomorrow or some other point in the near future.




Schlenkerla
Dominikanerstraße 6
96049 Bamberg,
0951 56060
http://www.schlenkerla.de/



Zoiglstube Drei Kronen Straßgiech
Drosendorfer Straße 24
96110 Scheßlitz-Straßgiech
Tel: 09 54 2 - 77 41 25 5
Mail: info@zoiglstube.net
http://www.zoiglstube.net



Waldemar Schneider
Hofäcker 6
91352 Hallerndorf,
09545 8768
http://www.gasthofschneider.de



Landgasthof Kammerer
Pautzfelder Straße 40
91352 Hallerndorf,
09545 443500
http://www.landgasthof-kammerer.de

Drogheda Ale again

Just a few other scraps about Drogheda Ale I've scavenged from the floor.

"Battersby's Registry for the whole world", 1851, pagepage 566.

Funny how the two beers mentioned - Drogheda Ale and Guinness XX Porter are the very beers analysed by the Royal Dublin Society. It's a measure of the stature of Drogheda Ale in the middle of the 19th century.

This short text gives some idea of the fame of Drogheda and Castlebellingham Ale, 

"Our hour wore on rapidly, and it was with regret I left the manufactory, and once again sauntered down the avenue. Shall I confess it, the next five minutes saw us ensconced in a shady arbour of a village auberge, idly drinking the white "Bière de Strasbourg" — the name of which had attracted our attention, and whose merits we were now discussing with surprising zest and eagerness. Burton, Bass, Drogheda, Castlebellingham, and a dozen other ales and beers were debated with all the warmth of Irishmen; and now, quietly remembering the pretty arbour, with its clustering green loaves, the odd hostess, and her high cap, and the animated group, I am tempted to laugh at the recollection, of how strenuously we abused the production of Strasbourg, and yet ended by finishing all the bottles placed before us."
"The Northern magazine, March 1852 - February 1853", 1853,page 41.

But what the hell was white Bière de Strasbourg? Some sort of Witbier?

William Makepeace Thackeray seemed quite impressed with Drogheda Ale, too:

"Of one part of its manufactures every traveller must speak with gratitude—of the ale namely, which is as good as the best brewed in the sister kingdom. Drogheda ale is to be drunk all over Ireland in the bottled state: candour calls for the acknowledgment that it is equally praiseworthy in draught. And while satisfying himself of this fact, the philosophic observer cannot but ask why ale should not be as good elsewhere as at Drogheda: is the water of the Boyne the only water in Ireland whereof ale can be made?"
"The works of William Makepeace Thackeray, Volume 14" by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1869 , pages 263 - 264.

More about Drogheda Ale to follow, I hope.