George, your glass is empty

Just in time for the holiday season, here are some Christmas drink tips. From 1949.

First is mulled beer.

"GEORGE, YOUR GLASS IS EMPTY"
WHEN the word goes round that the level is low in the glass of your guests, here are a few ideas for refilling them.

HOT MULLED ALE.— This is about the best "one for the road" for a cold Christmas night. We give you two ways in which to make it. One pretty strong, one not so strong. 

One measure of rum (or sherry for the weak version) to six of strong ale (or stout or mild ale for the weak version) but not bitter. 

Heat gently till it steams (a saucepan on the gas ring will do) and add a good pinch of nutmeg and powdered ginger. Cloves are a good idea. too. 

If you have an orange, stick it full of cloves and let the orange float in the liquid. You must keep mulled ale hot; place it in an outer saucepan of boiling water and serve with a ladle.
Sunday Mirror - Sunday 25 December 1949, page 7.

I love the phrase  "If you have an orange". It reveals so much about the times. There was still rationing and not everyone had access to oranges.

Pretty sure I'd go for the strong version.

Now for a cold drink:

COLD CIDER CUP.— This would be a good refresher just before lunch on Boxing Day. 

If you can get it, use still cider for this one, although it is stronger, and it might be a good idea to dilute it with a splash of soda water. If you can only get bubbly cider, stick to the recipe below: 

To each quart of cider, add one wineglass of gin and one of sherry. If you have it, add some sliced fruit — apples, pears, halved grapes, quartered oranges. Better still, soak this fruit in the cider the night before and add the gin and sherry on the following day. Serve as cold as possible.
Sunday Mirror - Sunday 25 December 1949, page 7. 

Gain, it's not assumed that you can get hold of fruit. At least there doesn't seem to have been trouble sourcing the booze. That would have made life more bearable.

Finally, two cocktails.

SHORT DRINK.—This is how to make a real 100 per cent dry martini—the way they do it in America: The important thing is to use French vermouth which is much drier than Italian. Ice is essential for this drink If you have no refrigerator try to get some from your "local" and keep it wrapped in sacking or felt in a draught. Wash the ice before you use it. 

You don't mix a dry martini in a cocktail shaker. Crack plenty of ice and place it in a jug. Pour in the gin and French in the following proportions - the proportions are important — one part of French to five of gin. Stir gently with a fork or hold the jug by the handle and rotate the whole thing gently for about a minute. Place a screw of lemon peel in each glass before serving. 

LONG DRlNK.— Although this is said to be a trick used by crafty bartenders to fool customers into thinking they are drinking champagne it's a perfectly good drink on its own. 

One glass of sherry topped up with one large bottle of tonic water (or one-and-a-half small bottles). Ice the tonic water first if possible.
Sunday Mirror - Sunday 25 December 1949, page 7. 

I don't think many people had a fridge in 1940. So off to the local with a sack it was. Usefully, most homes were so poorly insulated there would be no problem finding a draught.

Pretty sure I wouldn't be fooled into thinking a mix of sherry and tonic water was champagne. Not unless I was well pissed.

Deplorable Fluid Sold as Beer

They aren't my words, but those of a wartime Labour MP. A bit unfair, in my opinion.

And a bit surprising, as he had presumably lived through WW I, when beer quality got much, much worse than it was in 1943. Average gravity was 1034.34º in 1943*. Not that much lower than the 1037º average of when I started drinking in the 1970's. Though admittedly they weren't making brewers use flaked oats and other crap. In the 1970's the brewers threw in all the nasty adjuncts voluntarily.

""DEPLORABLE FLUID SOLD AS BEER"
A Labour M.P. (Mr. Wilmot, Kennington) told the Commons to-day that he had heard many complaints about "deplorable fluid sold as beer" and said the heavy tax involved some obligation that the beer should be of reasonable quality.

His remark was made during a debate on the Budget, when the Finance Bill was considered in Committee.

Sir William Wayland (C., Canterbury) moved an amendment to omit Clause One, which dealt with the duty on beer. Since 1914, he said, the duty on a standard barrel had risen from 7s. 9d. to 28s.

The duty bore most hardly on old age pensioners, the poorer section of the middle classes, and agricultural workers.

He asked the Chancellor to arrange for beer and tobacco to be sold at reduced rates to old age pensioners in exchange for sweet points.

" TAX CIDER"
"I cannot understand why the Chancellor allows cider to go free. It often contains more alcohol than mild ale," he added.

Sir Ernest Shepperson (C., Leominster): "It is not the industrial workers who are poor. It is we who are poor, workers have money spend luxuries.

Sir Kingsley Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that he was not a temperance reformer or a killjoy.

"I desire to see as many people as possible, within reasonable limits, enjoying themselves in this way, as I do occasionally myself.

"This Budget might go  down as the pay if you like Budget because no one need pay any of these taxes."

He would call Sir William Wayland a "beer diehard." He was sure that between now next year a reasonable consumption could be provided.

Production of cider for 1940 was a rather small figure, some 12.5 million gallons, a considerable number of farmers made cider, and to see that they all made returns for the collection of the tax might cause difficulties. Sir William, Wayland withdrew his amendment."
Gloucestershire Echo - Wednesday 02 June 1943, page 1.

There's something reassuring about the continued political squabbling in parliament during WW II. Was it indicative of a desire to get on with life as normal or were they just incapable of behaving any other way?

Some of the debate is slightly odd. Like the way a Tory MP sticks up for pensioners and agricultural workers. And their right to drink beer. But hang on, he was MP for Canterbury. In Kent. Which gives him a vested interest in the brewing trade. I quite like his proposal, though, that pensioners should get cheap beer in return for their ration coupons for sweets. That would have been perfect for me, aging, non-sugar-eating pisshead.

That stuff about the beer tax having gone up from 7s 9d to 28s is also odd. Wrong, I should say. Wildly wrong. The tax hit 100s. per barrel in 1921. It was 80s at the outbreak of WW II and 240s 7.5d in 1943. So he was out by almost a factor of 10 in the current tax on beer. Weird. How could he be so poorly informed when they were discussing legislation on that very topic?

I like the reason for not taxing cider: too much trouble. It's difficult today to remember how little cider used to be produced in the days before it was industrially manufactured. 12.5 million gallons is a little under 350,000 barrels. To put that into context, 26 million barrels of beer were brewed in the UK in 1943*.


* Brewers' Almanack 1955, p. 50.

Cider, Health Beverage

How could I not reproduce an article with a title like that? I'm sure noy everyone today would agree, but the author has some compelling arguments.

One I used myself quite recently. "It's only apple juice, after all, Andrew." Cider is sort of apple juice. All the goodness couldn't have been lost in the making of it.

"CIDER, HEALTH BEVERAGE.
Sometimes wish that those who write about eider would drink a pood deal more of it, and then they might write with more knowledge, and certainly with more discretion. It is remarkable what an amount of ignorance prevails with regard to the products of a tree quite as old as the establishment Glastonbury Abbey, if believe in old traditions. Joseph of Arimathea, are told, when came to what is known as Glastonbury, leaned on his staff, which, his weight, went down in the soft, rich, yielding soil, and there took root, and in due time became the holy thorn. Whilst loaning on his staff, Joseph drew from his wallet eastern fruit and proceeded eat it. In doing so, he scattered the pips, and from these sprang up those apple trees that furnish the blood-red cider, no other county England producing the like. There is no doubt that the holy thorn grew in Glastonbury, and so do the apple trees. We know that good cider has been made, and is still being made, in Somerset, and I have seen many a good old labourer march off with his two-gallon bottle the morning and bring it back and set it down empty beside the cider house door in the evening; and be ready take his pail on lis head to milking o'clock next morning. Why he could do this was because it was pure cider, and not a concoction that he had drunk. Now, a town dweller gets knocked over because he has drunk five pints of cider. He is given twenty-one days in which to reflect, and at the same time cider gets bad name. If there is is one thing that I detest, it is to see drunken person, and, happily, we see fewer them today. We see hardly any in country districts and cider is still freely drunk there. I trust it will, for many year to come. I am no braggart, but I think that I have sampled cider made in most of, or from most of, the cidermaking countries of the globe, and I believe that my old friend, Mr John Ettle, of Weston-super-Mare, will bear out my statement that, once having tasted cider that was made in Germany, be it in time war or peace, never want to make its acquaintance again, whether at home or in Holland. I think that I have sampled most of the show ciders that have been exhibited in England during the past 15 years, and I have had to taste and sample and place in order merit as many as 184 bottles and casks day. If cider were so terribly intoxicating, what should I have been like at the finish ? The fact is, cider does no harm long as it in pure. Cider is not a teetotal beverage, though containing much less alcohol than so-called non-intoxicating beverages. Here open challenge. Let anyone obtain 20 bottles of ciders not more nor less than six weeks old; also 20 bottles of brewed stone-ginger beer of the same age from 20 different makers, and send them to the Bristol University for analysis. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that the stone-ginger would show the greater quantity of alcohol, either by weight or volume. The regulations at the Bath and West of England, the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and the Brewers' Exhibition in London, require that cider shall shown pure, and the chemist either precedes or follows the judge. Now, in all the long years these competitions have been held, a first prize has never been awarded to cider showing 6 per cent, of alcohol. At the Royal champion honours have been to a cider containing under 2 per cent, of alcohol. It will generally be found that there have been more ciders shown containing 3 to 4 per cent, alcohol than any other figures. Thanks to modern investigations, the contents of cider are fairly well-known, particularly the solids, and when these and the amount of alcohol are out of recognised proportion, well, the judge begins to think of either added sugar or added spirit, or both.

"Chambers' Encyclopaedia" states that cider contains from 4 to 10 per cent absolute alcohol. I wish its able editor would only send me a few grafts of the apple that has a sufficiency of solids in the form of sugars, to convert into 10 per cent. of absolute alcohol in the cider, even if it was fermented to comply with the regulations of the dry class at the Bath and West. Few realise that cider is, or should be, the purest beverage on earth. The juices are drawn from the soil, filtered by passing the trunk of the tree and through the branches, refined and perfected by sunshine, the greatest purifier of all. The apple is then crushed, the liquids squeezed out from the coarser parts, skin, core, & c . The juice is then put a clean barrel. The yeasts that are on the skins of the apples are then set to break up the fruit sugars, and fermentation takes place. This goes on until sufficiency of alcohol has been developed to act as a preservative. As the alcohol becomes more pronounced, the yeasts become weaker, until they are killed off the very product they have developed. The resultant liquor is all that cider should be, needs to be. If bright-looking cider is required the filter may be used. This, of course, takes from, rather than adds. If water be used to dilute the beverage, all kinds of fakes are used to restore the body — sugar candy, burnt sugar, caramel, boiled parsnips, beet roots, even beef, gingerbread, and anatto, just, of course, for appearance sake. Then the cider so weakened that anti-ferments, or preservatives, are added. The Devonshire practice of matchng or sulphuring leaves its distinctive trace on the tongue. Then there is salicylic acid, and others more harmful, as, I have cause to remember when I was not quite so well experienced as to cause and effect as now. The cider-makmg industry is a most important one to west England farmers particularly, and this being so, I have endeavoured show that whilst cider cannot mask as a non-intoxicant, yet, on the other hand, with ordinary table consumption, it can hardly hardly be styled an intoxicant. Of course. to sit and empty couple of bottles at a sitting would be different from taking half a gallon into the hayfield. The latter might be more than excusable, even necessary. Apart from being a mere beverage. Cider has decided medicinal properties of great value.
Western Daily Press - Thursday 31 December 1914, page 3.

Drinking two gallons of cider during the day, but still able to get up before dawn to milk. They don't make farm labourers like they used to. Two gallons. Even if it were just 3 or 4% ABV, that's still a fair amount of booze to get through in a day. 

That's not such an appetising list of adulterants. Boiled parsnips?  I prefer mine roasted. Talking of which, I did some really nice ones on Sunday. Caramelised, but not quite burnt. Yummy. Wouldn't want them in my cider, though.

Did you notice the dig at the germans there? Saying how crap German cider was. Though, to give him his die, the author does seem to know a thing or two about cider.

Home brewing in WW I

Though I don't mean the type of home brewing in the modern sense. Domestic brewing is probably a better description of it. Where farmers or other large households brewed for their own consumption and those of their workers.

It had been very widespread in the 18th century, but gradually declined in the 19th century, due to a number of factors. The greatest probably that between 1830 and 1880 private brewers had to pay the full tax, as duty was levied on the raw materials. The only real economic advantage the domestic brewer had was being able to use ingredients banned in commercial brewing, such as raw grain.

The increasing gap between the quality of home-brewed and commercial beer was another important factor. There had been little difference in the equipment and techniques employed in a domestic brewery and a commercial one in the early 18th century. Technological advances, which had mostly passed the private brewer by, had given commercial brewers much greater control of the brewing process. Put simply, home-brewed beer could seldom match commercially-brewed beer in quality.

Commercially-brewed beer had also been relatively cheap before the outbreak of war. The increased excise duty changed that.

"HOME BREWED.
The "haapenny the haupint bexter" has filled the Essex and other East Coast peasantry with economic ideas, as how to circumvent such an outlay, to wash the hayseeds and the wheat and barley "hiles" from their throats. And this has taken the form of reverting to the old practice of brewing their ales, an excellent practice that the farmers will not condemn. The average home-brewed is made from malt and hops only, but that malt and hops are not so easily obtainable as they were a few years ago. I wonder how many calls would have to be made to Bristol a sack of malt and seven pounds of hops could be obtained. And then the smell and taste of sweet wort, the aromatic perfume of the hops in the old farmhouse copper, or as the liquor is set out to cool. The nine gallons of "stingo" that would prevent frostbite on a winter's morning, and the big barrel of small ale that got harder and harder as the summer drew on, until it veritably made one's eyes strike fire to drink it. A quart of West Countree "crab vergis" was mild as compared with it. Of late years this home-brewing has been a very declining industry. The popular taste has tended towards the lighter, more palatable non-deposit beers being produced by our modern brewers; but to have to pay eightpence duty on what has hitherto been sixpence per gallon harvest ale will certainly turn many a farmer's thought in the direction of his own mash-tub in non-cider-making counties. Happily, the practice of giving drinks at harvestide to agricultural workers is being replaced by extra money, a gain alike to the farmer and the labourer. And bearing this in mind, we shall not see the Excise increased to deal with the issue of licenses for brewing on the premises for home consumption only."
Western Daily Press - Thursday 31 December 1914, page 3.

The author points out the one big problem of starting to home brew again: getting hold of the materials. Difficult as it might have been in 1914, it would be completely impossible later in the war as brewing materials were rationed and allocated to brewers.

Note that this only applies to "non-cider-making counties". For the obvious reason that in cider-making counties cider still played the same role that beer once had in other parts of the country. And apples, unlike malt and hops, would always be obtainable.

Why no tax on cyder?

Brewers were used to paying large amounts of tax. And were, in general, pretty resentful about it. Unsurprisingly, they didn't like the idea of anyone else getting away without paying tax. Like cider producers.

WHY NO TAX ON CYDER?

Those who before the war were advocates for the taxation of cyder now have become claimants. The thrice raised beer duty resulting from the present conflict buttresses their case so that it becomes invulnerable. Cyder was taxed from 1916 to 1923, since when it has been allowed a privileged position, which, frankly, is inexplicable. Those who have a mind for what is academic will be interested to have recalled to them this passage from the Report of the Royal Commission on Licensing (England and Wales) 1929-1931, page 263.

"From 1660 onwards intoxicating liquors began increasingly to be regarded as a source of State Revenue. In that year certain impositions on beer, ale, cyder, perry, metheglin or mead, vinegar-beer and strong water, or aqua vita-, as well as on coffee, chocolate, sherbet and tea, were granted to enhances the Revenue of the King for life. The taxation was increased from time to time and intoxicating liquor was found an increasing and easy source of revenue for State purposes."

So that cyder, which was taxed in 1660 to provide revenue for the King, stands untaxed in 1910 in the time of the country's greatest financial need.

When war broke out draught cyder was sold in many rural areas at 3d. or 3.5d. per pint. The alternative was beer at 4d. per pint: to-day, because of additional taxation, that beer is costing 7d. per pint. The additional 3d. per pint imposed on beer since the war has served to place cyder at a distinct advantage. We are well aware that in some areas brewers do not favour a cyder tax. Their main reason is that cyder gives to the agricultural labourer and to the poorer elements in the community a chance of patronising the local inn and consuming an alcoholic beverage at a low price. Further, that not infrequently such people are accompanied to their favourite hostelry by others who prefer to drink beer or alcoholic beverages other than cyder. Hence the, turnover of the licensed house is increased beyond what it would be were the prices of the national beverage and cyder brought nearer together by taxation of the latter. The vast majority of brewers, however, hold strongly to the view that it is unfair to penalise beer — solely because it is an alcoholic beverage — whilst leaving cyder entirely untaxed. For in the matter of alcoholic content, cyder is no mean opponent of beer. A Monthly Bulletin, in its July issue, reports that soldiersin some districts are drinking cyder because it is "stronger than light ales." Our contemporary states that it has received from a laboratory a table showing the amounts of alcohol in the cyder produced by a well-known firm and in the light ales of
three well-known breweries, as follows :—

	Flagons of Cyder,	Flagons of Light Ale.
Price.	11.5d.	1s. 5d.	1s. 5d.	1s. 5d.
Alcohol by weight	3.7	2.7	3	2.8
Alcohol by volume	4.7	3.1	3.8	3.5
Proof spirit	8.2	6	6	6.1

These figures serve to illustrate once again that cyder is an alcoholic beverage in this respect more than holding its own with beer. Until the Government take action by taxing cyder brewers will continue their agitation. Meanwhile they would do well to consider "rationing" their tied houses in the matter of a beverage which from price considerations is allowed to compete so unfairly with beer.

"The Brewers' Journal 1940" pages 631 - 632. (Published August 21st, 1940.)

I suppose I can understand brewers' frustration at cider being spared the big tax rises of the early war years. It is odd that for so long cider was untaxed. (It still is for those who produce fewer than 70 hl a year). I can remember when the cider tax was reintroduced in 1976. Teenagers and the homeless were crying on their park benches.

4.7% ABV seems quite low for cider. Still, it's a good bit higher than the Light Ale.Quite why they picked Light Ale for the comparison is a mystery. Perhaps because it came in flagons like cider. I'd have thought that a beer of similar alcoholic strength to the cider would have made a better comparison.

The reason for cider being untaxed is an intriguing one: to give the rural poor a cheap drink. Sounds a fair enough objective to me. This would explain why the cider tradition was mostly concentrated in the less prosperous parts of Britian, such as the West Country. Consumption of cider was much lower and much more localised than it is today. Somewhere I've some nice shiny figures to back that up. Ah, here they are:

Consumption of alcoholic drinks in the UK
	Spirits(100% alcohol)	Wines	Beer	Cider
	per head (litres)	per head (litres)	per head (litres)	per head (litres)
1962	0.75	2.41	88.6	1.6
1963	0.8	2.54	89	1.6
1964	0.85	2.86	92.6	1.6
1965	0.91	3.09	91.9	1.7
1966	0.83	3.09	93.7	1.8
1967	0.83	3.09	94.8	2.1
1968	0.83	3.68	96.6	2.1
1969	0.83	3.73	100.4	2.4
1970	0.9	3.7	103	2.6
1971	1	4.4	106.2	2.6
1972	1.1	5	107.6	2.6
1973	1.4	6.3	113.3	2.8
1974	1.5	6.7	116.1	2.8
1975	1.5	6.3	118.5	3.3
1976	1.6	6.5	120.7	3.8
1977	1.4	6.3	119.1	3.6
1978	1.7	7.5	121.3	3.7
1979	1.9	8.1	123.4	3.8
1980	1.8	8.2	118.9	4
1981	1.7	8.6	113	4.4
1982	1.6	8.7	109.8	5.2
1983	1.6	9.5	111.2	5.8
1984	1.6	10.4	110.6	5.8
1985	1.7	10.9	109.3	5.6
1986	1.7	11.3	109.3	5.7
1987	1.7	12	111.3	5.7
1988	1.8	12.4	114.2	5.5
1989	1.8	12.7	114.4	5.7
1990	1.7	12.5	113.9	6.4
1991	1.6	12.3	109.7	6.5
1992	1.5	12.6	105.9	7.6
1993	1.5	13.2	102.6	7.8
1994	1.6	13.6	104.8	8.3
1995	1.4	13.4	102.1	9.6
1996	1.4	14.1	103.2	9.7
1997	1.5	15.2	105.1	9.5
1998	1.4	15.7	100.9	9.5
1999	1.6	16.6	100.7	10.3
2000	1.6	17.3	97.2	10.2
2001	1.6	18.2	99	10
2002	1.7	19.6	100.6	10.1
Sources: Statistical Handbook of the British Beer & Pub Association 2003 p.35

As you'll see, in 1962 there was bugger all cider drunk compared to beer. I'd also like to think that the peak in beer drinking in the late 1970's was in some small way due to my own efforts.