I'll tell you what got me thinking about Old and Mild. It's a short, but dull, story. Skip to the next paragraph if you can't be arsed with it. I prompted Jeff to tell me which beers he'd have on next Tuesday, when, after another archive excavation, I'd be nipping into his boozer for a pint or seven. There. I told the tale in just one sentence. Except the beer bit. Shit. Landlord, Harvey's, Moorhouses Black Cat, Old Peculier. That doesn't count. Not a sentence. No verb.Takeaway draught beer. You don't get it many places. Not any more. In the 19th century everyone drank draught at home. The better off bought in barrels of it. Those of lesser means fetched it in jugs. Either from an off-licence or a pub. Victorians being what they were, it wasn't mum or dad who went. A servant. Or one of the kids.
They got into a bit of a tizzy in the last couple of decades of the 19th century. About impressionable infants and serving girls having to mix with the hoi poloi in the public bar while fetching supper beer. The solution? Not to make the man of the house do the job. They were far more practical than that. Pubs acquired a separate off-sales entrance, where the innocent were shielded from the inebriate masses.
Sipping. That was another problem. Kids having a taste of dad's beer on the way home. It still didn't persuade the authorities to make it illegal for minors to buy beer. They had a solution for that, too. The publican put a seal over the top of the bottle or jug. In theory, the thirsty teen or tiny couldn't take a tope unnoticed.My mum was born in 1916. As a girl, she was sent by her mother to fetch beer. So late 1920's, early 1930's. From the local pub. I'm pretty sure it was an Ansells house. In Handsworth*, where they lived. A whole tribe of Candelents. She had 11 brothers and sisters, my mum. Most lived on or around Newcombe Road. You can see it in the photo.
I never met my maternal grandmother. She died around the start of WW II. But we have more in common than just a few random genes. Our taste in beer. Old and Mild. My mum fetched her a pint of that every evening. Old and Mild. Just what I like to drink. Though not usually mixed.
Black Cat Mild. Old Peculier. Have to give it a try. In the genes.
Couldn't help thinking. Granny, born around 1880. Started drinking pre-WW I. Was mixing Old and Mild an attempt to re-create the Mild of her youth?
*Part of Birmingham.
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19 comments:
I think I've mentioned this before but when I was a student in Stoke in the early 90's, women still used to come into pubs with jugs to be filled. One of the locals told me that as a kid he remembered watching a miner's wife traipsing up and down the alleyway between their back yard and the pub on the corner all evening carrying a jug of beer to her husband, stopping now and then for a quick sip. I know he'd been digging coal all day but surely he could have got off his arse to walk to the end of the street!
I read that a mixture of 'old and mild' is called a 'Granny'. Can you guess what a 'Mother in law' is?
Takeaway draught beer, a tradition that still is very much alive in the Czech Rep. (in villages, including the sending the kids to fetch it bit). Many homes still have an earthenware jug at home for those purposes, though it's not uncommon for people to use empty PET bottles of mineral water.
I don't think I would send my daughter to get me beer, not because I have any issues with her "going to the pub", but because you can always have a quick one while you wait for your pitcher to be filled... Those simple joys of life.
That's interesting about old and mild. Old and bitter is another old-time mixture, what Ed was referring to I think.
These mixtures keep on happening, from the pre-porter days until now. Snakebite is a more recent one although decades old itself. Another is the American practice of layering - literally - Guinness draft over Bass draft although that seems less popular than it was.
I think old and mild might have been made to boost the ABV of the drink to what people remembered from the late 1800's, yes. Also, it might have been a way to balance sweet and more acidic tastes.
I used to like Old Peculier too and have had it both on draught and in bottle but it always had a sweet luscious taste to me, not old in the original sense I think.
Gary
I know I had it around here somewhere. In 2005, I posted a picture from a New York website about how in that City in the 1800s they used to have side windows for beer take away:
http://beerblog.genx40.com/archive/2005/november/sloppingbuckets
Alan
Alan, never heard of takeaway jugs in the US before. But it does make sense that it would have happened. But having special windows is a real surprise. I've only heard of that in Britain.
Oh yes, the (American) growler, rushing the growler. A pail of beer taken home from the saloon to the home table. Its etymology is interesting and not 100% clear but I think there must be a British origin (as so often in such matters).
A growler is a term used still Britain but it means a whisky or spirits flask. Oversize ones, partly humorous in intent I think, can be found with smaller ones in the catalogues of suppliers of equipment to those who shoot on estates. I infer that at one time, the term applied to any container meant to hold alcohol but the usages specialized and separated with time and distance.
Gary
Many/most of the breweries and brew pubs in the San Diego area offer growler fills allowing you to enjoy draught beer at home.
Great idea, and often times it works well as a way to bring beer to a party.
However, I really wish the prices were more reasonable. As it stands one can usually buy the volume equivalent in bottle format at the local grocery store for less money.
One major part of the investment is the growler itself (which according to state law must only be labeled with the beer it contains; so no sharing between breweries). After that you're paying upwards of $12-15 for 64oz of beer when you can spend $7-9 on 72oz of the exact same beer at the grocery store (6*12oz).
How does that make sense?
Just about every brewpub and microbrewery in the US seems to have growlers - 1/2 US gallon (~1.9 liter) glass jugs with a handle.
See http://www.eastendbrewing.com/?q=node/10
Back in pre-prohibition days (pre-1920), when laws were more rational, growlers were apparently also common, but were often a 1/2 gallon tin pail.
We just went to a local beer garden that is a private German-American social club's picnic grounds that they open to the public three Saturdays each summer. There were thousands of people - great fun. They sold beer in 1/2 gallon plastic pails with snap-on lids with punch-out openings to pour from.
Adrian, I can still remember when draught beer in the pub was cheaper than canned or bottled beer in the supermarket. And I'm not that old.
Takeaway draught beer was very much a "thing" in the states, though the tradition did mostly die off for the most part in the 1940's (maaybe even earlier).
But even as late as 1971 or 72, I can recall bringing home quart containers of freshly poured beer along with a couple of pizzas from a local tavern (and very nice pizza it was)...my brother was partial to their pizza and so it was a twice a month family ritual throughout the 1960's & early 70's.
The downside of course was that while the quart containers of draught were quite cheap (considerably less than $1) the choices were between two or three light American lagers (the famous "making love in a canoe" beer). Even though by then I was already into beers of more quality and character, that lightweight draught did go down well with the pizza.
I'm not that old either, born in 1949, it's all relative. Get to the point. When I was a nipper my Gran would send me to the local pub, the New Inn, Greenside Lane, Droylsden, Lancashire, I believe it was a Bents and Gartsides house, with an enamel jug to get beer for my Granddad to have with his tea. I would go in to the off sales and stand at the bar counter with the jug and a pot towel to cover it on the walk home (about 1/2 mile),I could see into the vault and watch the men play darts, bones or crib. Sometimes the landlord would give me a small glass of lemonade while I waited. The jug held about 2 pints, the landlord would put the towel over the top and tell me to be careful not to spill any. I did taste it a few times but as a 10 year old I didn't really get off on the taste of Best Bitter, I preferred the Mild, maybe that's why when I started going to the pub I always ordered Mild.
It seems to me that take-away draught beer from the pub should make a comeback. No packaging and short transport distances make it the greenest way to buy beer.
I wonder what the legal issues around it are? I'm thinking about selling in recognised measures, would you need to provide the landlord with a jug marked with 'pint to line'?
I'm sure our ancestors were more relaxed about such matters but equally sure that CAMRA would extend their silly 'take it to the top' campaign to it.
Matt, I'm sure they would have pulled the beer into a measured jug or glass and then decanted it into the customer's jug.
I've never understood why so many think expecting a full pint is so unreasonable.
Ron, my memory may be playing tricks but I'm pretty sure in Stoke they just filled the jugs - and bottles - from the handpump.
On your point about a 'full pint', the question is how you define that. English law certainly doesn't (it talks about a 'reasonable amount' of foam) hence CAMRA's campaign. I'd rather have a decent head, if necessary through using a sparkler, than a flat pint. The only way to achieve that without losing a bit of liquid is to make pubs use oversized lined glasses.
Ed, if your mother in law is half old and half bitter you would name a drink after her.
My father, as a small boy aged 10 or so, used to carry his grandfather's jug of porter home from the pub in Willesden, North London in the early 1930s, and take crafty sips on the way - I'd love to know whose porter it was. His grandfather, my great-grandfather, was born in Cherry Hinton in Cambridgeshire and moved to London in the 1870s or so, evidently bringing a taste for porter with him.
Before the First World War, old and mild was known as an "old six", because of its cost per quart, six pence ...
"They were alone in the saloon bar except for an old commissionaire, who slept over a pint of old and mild." From opening pages of Graham Greene, Brighton Rock (1938).
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