Shut up about Barclay Perkins

Today’s is a very special recipe: the legendary Allsopp Arctic Ale. A beer genuinely brewed for Arctic expeditions. It’s courtesy of Chris B...

One beer which hasn’t dropped much in gravity is the Bitter. Which is just 2º lower in gravity than in 1884. It’s pretty much a full-strengt...

In this set of beers, there is a Stout. Not a particularly strong one, but a Stout all the same. This one does have quite a complicated gris...

The other Mild at Lees, K, was rather less feeble than U. Though it was still 8º down in gravity since 1884. There’s not a great deal to the...

I would really love to know what the “U” stood for. It’s not a name I’ve seen used by anyone else. The passage of a couple of decades have s...

I’m quite surprised to see that Lees were still brewing a Porter in 1884. It’s in this period that Porter was starting to become rare outsid...

Interestingly, Lees called this beer Bitter in the brew house and not Pale Ale. Which is what it would have been called in most breweries. I...

There was also a stronger Mild at Lees. With an equally enigmatic name as its weaker sibling U. This one is very similar in strength to a Lo...

The earliest Lees brewing is, er, rather idiosyncratic. Where sometimes really important is simply left out. Which makes interpreting them a...

Maclay didn’t content themselves with brewing one watery Pale Ale. They also had a slightly less watery one, in the form of 48/-.  It wasn’t...

Top of the tree at Maclay was their Strong Ale. A beer which, if it were sold in England, would probably have been called Scotch Ale. In a g...

As one of the first Oat Stouts, this is an incredibly important beer. One which inspired a whole generation of beers. This should be interes...

Now, Scottish Stouts could be pretty weird. Very weird, in fact. I’m looking at you William Younger, with your barely fermented spent hop St...