It comes from the Rigasche Rundschau of 22nd December, 1899.
I'm very pleased with this for a variety of reasons. First, because it's the only advert I've seen for Barclay Perkins Imperial Stout. They may call it Imperial Porter here, but the brewery considered it a Stout.
You remember having read an earlier post about Allsopp's loss of their Russian trade after an increase in import duty on Ale that didn't apply to Porter. here's evidence that Allsopp did disappear completely from the Russian market.
Barclay Perkins and Le Coq had the Russian Porter trade pretty much sewn up between them. But I wonder what the volume of the trade was. Barclay Perkins didn't brew a great deal of Russian Stout. I'm not sure they even brewed it every year. In 1859 they made 24 brews of Imperial Stout, of about 450 barrels each. So 10,000 to 11,000 barrels. That's out of a total production of 425,000 barrels.
It's odd that Bass and Allsopp are listed as London breweries. Hadn't anyone heard of Burton in Russia? I thought they made the town famous with their pale Ale. Obviously not in Russia.
Barclay Perkins and Albert Le Coq in the same item. Just what you need on a Wendesday.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone see A Le Coq Porter for sale? The last I saw of Le Coq they were trying to focus on the 'premium lager' market. Had a look at their web page: it looks like the professional beer marketeers have got hold of the company and the product line is going to shit. The stout and pale ale have gone.
Legend has it that Albert Le Coq establishe his Estonian brewery in order to be close to the Russian market - counterfeit beer was being sold under his name.
Premium lager is the sector to be in. It's not like there's any competition there or anything.
ReplyDeleteHow about the theory that Porter became the default term for the stuff on the Continent because it's easier to pronounce? I remember trying to order a stout in Belgium and the waitress, on figuring out what I meant, exclaimed "Ah! Une stoot!"