Now all that travel stuff is out of the way, I can get back to the roots of this blog. Regurgitating tidbits of my research. Rather that previewing bits of a new book based on that research. There's a big difference.
I'm currently trying to research Brown Ale.Which is a slippery eel of a beer style. Despite its relatively recent origins, I know frustratingly little about Brown Ale before WW I. Other than that it existed and wasn't very common.
All of which is totally irrelevant to the rest of this post. Which is about take-home formats. What are the options nowadays? Bottle, can, minikeg, polypin, growler.
It was pretty much the same in 1900. You buy bottled beer. Or send your kids with a jug to fetch draught beer from a pub (growler equivalent). Splash out on a cask (polypin). But what was the minikeg equivalent? A gallon jar (with tap).
In 1901, this grocer's in Newmarket was selling beer for the home market in three formats:screwtop pint bottles, gallon jars with taps and casks up to 36 gallons.
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| An advert for G. F. Layng's in Newmarket Journal of Saturday 28 September 1901, page 1. |
The advert suggests "Try a Gallon Jar and test the Quality." Which, given it was the same price per gallon as in the larger casks, seems like a bargain.
The puzzle now is: what exactly was the beer inside the jar? Was is sparkling like bottled beer? Or was it cask beer run off bright? I suppose I'll never know.
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4 comments:
Given that so many grocers in those days were doing their own bottling, I'd assume this was all the same beer, arriving in cask and being run off into bottles and jars.
Hi Ron,
From what I know this was a year before Mann's invented their new sweet Brown Ale. So would this have been a dryer red-brown ale or was the practice of colouring one's X Ale already in place?
In the 1950s in Newcastle, the cider man would come round before Christmas with gallon glazed stone jugs of cider, with a tap, and he'd collect the empties in the new year. I was allowed a small glass at Christmas dinner!! I remember it being flat and quite sweet, proper scrumpy.
An interesting thing about Ireland is that spirit grocers survived for quite a long time, well into the 20th century.
Oscar
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