Beer-drinking in Paris

I love these little reports from newspaper correspondents, where they look at some banal aspect of life in a foreign city. They provide aa small window through which to gaze out on the streets of the past.

As the title has probably given away, this time we're in Paris. A little further away in time from the Franco-Prussian War. You may remember that a big worry for Parisions at the start of that war was where how they would get their supplies of Vienna Lager. It seems by the 1880's that Bavarian had supplanted Vienna Lager in Parisians' affections.

"BEER-DRINKING IN PARIS.
Now that the great "beer anestion" has been raised once more, it may be as well (the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says) to state the facts of the case as regards Paris. Never within the memory of the most venerable and hoary-headed inhabitants of the city has so much Gorman beer been consumed here. You have only to walk up the Boulevards any night from the Café Anglais to tha Place do la Repubiique to find abundant proof of this. Almost every second place of refreshment is a dazzling brasserie with the words "Biere de Munich," in large : flaunting letters, over the shop-front. Here and there you meet a place styled Café Francais or Café de la France, which, with its mawkish French malt liquor, is intended to appeal to patriots. These worthies, however, do not go there, for they find better drink at the German brasseries. That the Munich beer sold in some of these places is indifferent in quality is true ; but there are at least half a dozen brasseries where the liquor is almost as good as you could get it in Bavaria, and those establishments are simply crowded to excess every evening, not by Germans but by Frenchmen. It is, therefore, useless to try to "run" English or even French beers, with a few exceptions, in Paris, Vienna beer is relished to a considerable extent by Parisians, but Munich carries away the palm, and leaves but little opening for Belgian, Dutch, British, or Sandinavian drink. A one-eyed man could see this after an observant walk along the Boulevards any evening in August. The lower classes of course, mostly drink their cannettes of bottled French beer, for the Munich is too dear for them ; but the Bavarian is nevertheless consumed, not only on the boulevards, but in many of the by-streets in the business centres of the city."
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser - Thursday 16 August 1888, page 3.

This is an example of how German beer became a hugely successful export in the 1870's and 1880's, pushing British beer asidee and conquering the world. It wasn't just in Paris, but, more worryingly for British brewers, right across the British Empire, too.

As no Munich brewer made a Pale Alger until the 1890's, the Munich beer so beloved in Paris must have been dark. Lager Dark Mild as no-one but me calls it. Its often forgotten how popular and widely-consumed this type of beer once was.

The stuff about their being no room for Belgian or Dutch beer is ironic, given that those two countries now sell far more beer in France than Germany.