I couldn't have been looking for it, being unaware of its existence. Alloa Ale and Alloa Apale Ale I've heard. Alloa Table Beer is a new one to me.
This is part of the price list of a Manchester wine merchant:
First point I'd like to make is that you can tell this was a high-class establishment by the beers on sale: Bass, Guinness, Edinburgh Ale, London Double Brown Stout. Which tells us that Alloa Table Beer was a class act. As does the price. It's 2 shillings for a dozen pints. Guinness - a relatively expensive beers, with a gravity of 1075ยบ - is only 9d more. Alloa appears to be the Rolls Royce of Table Beers.
"Table beer" was the usual Scottish description of what in England was called dinner ale, which would normally be around 1045OG. So if Alloa Table Beer was the same sort of strength, it was certainly being sold here at a high price.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested in the differing description of Bass' products: 'Pale Ale' in the bottle, 'East India Pale Ale' in cask on this list. Was this just an abbreviation dictated by lack of space on the price list or were these different qualities of Bass' pale ale? What year is the list from Ron?
ReplyDeleteMartyn, in the 1850's William Younger's Table Beer had an OG of around 1035.
ReplyDeleteThat price looked very high to e for Table Beer.
Barbarrick, the advert is from 1861.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've seen, Bass weren't too consistent in their naming. They appear to use Pale Ale and India Pale Ale interchangeably.
This was the old Scots twopenny, run off the second mash. Beer after ale. Given how strong some of the ales were, I'd think anything from 3.5-4.5% ABV was typical. It's hard to think the Scots would stand for less given their appreciation historically for good ale, whisky, claret, and rum.
ReplyDeleteGary
Gary, it wasn't twopenny. And it wasn't from the second mash. The Scottish Table Beers I've seen in the logs were entire gyle.
ReplyDeleteOkay I thought I'd read this somewhere, I'll check.
ReplyDeleteGary
Yes, I saw it in Roberts's The Scottish Ale-Brewer, look at pp. 83-84 and 151. He is sparging in the Scots tradition, but clearly the table beer is after-runnings, it's not entire gyle. Once again I think it's a question of later practice evolving, this disussion is from 1836. But the gravities which can be calculated from his figures on p. 151 would I think show an ABV of 3.5-4%, so it's the same kind of beer surely as what came later under that appellation.
ReplyDeleteAs to twopenny: he doesn't use that term, I thought I read it somewhere, but I can't find it yet.
Gary
Ron, on twopenny and table beer: what happened was, twopenny as a designation was supplanted for duty purposes, as was small beer, by table beer, as you see from this table for the period 1805-1829. Table beer as a dutiable or possibly other term appears not to have existed before 1805 in fact.
ReplyDeleteSo loosely I think it is right that table beer could be called twopenny after 1805. "May I have some twopenny, landlord?; yes sir but we call it table beer now courtesy the revenue men".
Before that year, I'd infer the true distinction was between small beer and twopenny.
I am not sure if this means the original twopenny was stronger than table beer, this is possible, or perhaps table beer was sold, or some of it, at the old twopenny strength.
http://books.google.com/books?id=JuqDMkp4ZRAC&pg=PA405&dq=Scots+table+beer+%2B+twopenny&hl=en&ei=tQqKTujcLoji0QGIqrWSDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ
Gary, Twopenny was something very specifically Scottish that owed its existence to the Act of Union.
ReplyDeleteI agree with that Ron, but the term disappeared for duty purposes after 1805, table beer took its place..
ReplyDeleteGary