Emotion

I've become much more emotional as I've aged. At least overtly so.

Though devastated, I can't recall crying at my father's death. While at my mother's funeral. I could barely sing. My throat choked and my eyes streamed.

It's not that I loved my father any less than my mother. I'd changed.

Looking back, my younger self seems cold. Suppressing my feelings? I don't know.  

Tears didn't come to younger me. Having children changed that.

I'm sure that having children tipped me emotionally. I don't know why, or how. But it did.

I never used to cry. Now I do all the time. Not from sadness. But from joy. From empathy. Music, beauty. All can invoke tears.

Teenage me would have been ashamed, embarrassed. Wanted to hide such a raw expression of emotion.

Adult me couldn't give a shit about hiding my feelings. Other than from my kids. Who wants to see their father cry?

Music sets me off most. A melody so wonderful that my eyes leak uncontrollably. Like Face à la mer.

Emotion? I think it's a good thing.

Class

It's the reason I don't live in the UK. I never felt comfortable. Always something nibbling away at me. A monkey on my back. Class.

My mum told me that her mother wouldn't let her brother Norman take the 11 plus. Not because he wouldn't have passed. She knew he would. But because she couldn't afford to send him to grammar school. Uniforms an all that. What a waste of talent.

We could barely afford grammar school after my dad died. Without free uniforms and school meals, we'd have been fucked. And my mum being incredibly good with money.

I'm proud to have been born working class. I had to work for everything I've achieved. Unlike the useless, privileged toffs. Who run the UK.

So happy I've escaped.

Primings

Time for another super-fascinating post. Perhaps even more thrilling than Containers. 

After a few weeks of laziness, I'm seriously attacking my WW II book again. I reassured myself that I was researching. In reality, I was dodging writing certain sections of the book. The ones where a whole load of raw source material  requires transformation into a coherent narrative. 

And I just couldn't be arsed. Daunted by the minimal intellectual effort required, I sought refuge in transcribing reams of William Younger brewing records and OCR'ing The Brewing Trade Review. Far more time and effort than just cracking on and writing a few thousand words.

That's what happens when you have whatever you call the craziness that goes on in my head. Being lazy entails countless hours of tedious, repetitive labour.

And I would have said, unproductive labour. That ludicrously detailed - and mostly pointless - research. Except, it did throw a few tasty dumplings my way which I might have missed. Had I been less obsessive. (And I do love me a dumpling. I dream of making suet dumplings like my Mum's. How did she get them that fluffy?)

Vaguely amusing bit over. Now the tedious, unedited, book preview. Some of the things what I wroted this week. Enjuyulate.

During the WW II draught beer was almost all in cask form. As it had been for centuries. About the only change to the process since the early 19th century had been the introduction of sugar primings, which really took off at the beginning of the 20th century.

Primings were a sugar solution with an OG of 1140º to 1150º added at racking time with the principal aim of providing readily fermentable material to condition the beer in the cask quickly. Additionally, the primings could also add colour through the presence of caramel. 

With as much as a gallon of primings being added per 36-gallon barrel, they could significantly boost the effective OG of a beer by as much as 10%. The increase was especially prominent in low-gravity beers like Mild Ale.

Frustratingly, most breweries didn’t record details of primings in their brewing records. Those few that do, show how sophisticated a procedure had become. 

Barclay Perkins primed many of their beers, not just draught ones, but some of the bottled, too. Here’s how it all looked a couple of years into the war:

Barclay Perkins primings in 1941
Beer	Style	primings (gallons)	OG before primings	OG after ptimings
A	Mild	0.25	1028.7	1029.5
X	Mild	0.75	1031.8	1034.2
XX	Mild	0.75	1037.7	1039.9
KK	Burton	0.5	1051.4	1052.7
LS draught	Stout	0.75	1040.8	1043
LS bottled	Stout	1	1040.8	1043.7
IBS	Stout	0.75	1055.6	1057.4
Source:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/01/624.

IBS is Russian Stout. If you're wondering why I've used an image of the Cossack bloke.

Braugold, Erfurt

With the end in sight for my Scottish book, there's not much time for writing blog posts. A sane man would stop posting every day. Draw your own conclusions.

It's frustrating because, without external interference, the book would be done by now. And annoying filling in the last few bits. The good news is that I've only post-WW II boiling and Scotch Ale. Shouldn't take more than a day or two.

An tired and tested way of banging out a post is to resort to DDR labels. If nothing else they look pretty. Prettier than my words, if I'm honest.

I really rated Braugold back in the Happy Days. Angerbräu was pretty damn good, nice and bitter. And a decent draught Pils I remember drinking in a pub opposite the cathedrals in Erfurt itself. With my Mum, brother and various other members of our wedding party. My brother's friend Eddie got separated from us when he was distracted by a group of Russian soldiers.

Love the blood splatter on the last label.

End of year round up

Everyone does these things. So what the hell. I need to get a couple of posts in before the end of the year. I don't what this year to be a record low.

What have I rounded up for the end of the year? A couple of bottles of port for a start. We forgot to drink them at Christmas. Too busy with that infernal jigsaw. Which we did eventually finish. Some of the pieces are pure white with a single black line. Here's proof we did finish it*:

See how near-blank some pieces are?

The hours of frustration it cost. But, on the upside, we were so distracted from ever other human activity - including eating and drinking - that we've loads of booze left over. Enough to make it a very merry New Year indeed. As I told the kids, you need to finish off all the drink before the New Year. It will all go off the minute the clock strikes midnight. As least that's how my Mum explained everyone drinking like crazy on New Year's Eve to me. So it must be true.

My treat bottle of Westvleteren 12 is sitting safely behind me. Though the minikeg of Adnam's Christmas Ale is almost done. Dolores likes it, as I expected she would. She's a big fan of British beer, especially in cask. How simpler that makes my life. As does her love of curry.

The kids have barely touched their Christmas rum, three-year-old Havana Club**.

Sherry, Amstel Bock, Limoncello. More stuff I've rounded up for the end of the year. There must be a cocktail in there. No Adnams any more, though. Dolores has just served herself the last two-thirds of a pint. She deserves it.

That's enough rounding up to last me until next year. I've rounded up well enough for a good time before all the booze turns bad. As it does on the turn of the year.




* The jigsaw is safely framed and hanging on our living room wall. In the vague possibility that you were interested.

** Alexei says that he hasn't finished his birthday Zubrovka yet. Though he's drinking it as I type. Bastard. He hasn't offered me any.

Oh dear!

Mother's Day here today.

Been thinking about my Mum. As I often do. She died in 2007. Not long after this blog started.

But she's always in the back of my head. Tutting, mostly. Occasionally clapping. Or laughing. I could always make her laugh.

This beer's for you, Mum.

John Smiths beers 1960 - 1967

This is a totally unscheduled post. Something that sort of created itself out of a Facebook conversation.

It started when someone posted this John Smiths price list from 1971:

I remembered that I had a wealth of analyses of John Smiths beers from the Whitbread Gravity Book.

John Smiths beers 1960 - 1967
Year	Beer	Style	Price	size	package	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	colour
1960	Pale Ale (sold in Belgium)	Pale Ale			bottled	1055.5	1013.7	5.22	75.32%	17
1961	Golden Keg Ale	Pale Ale	22d to 24d	pint	draught	1039.1	1009	3.76	76.98%	19
1964	Double Brown	Brown Ale	24d	pint	bottled	1047.3	1016.7	3.82	64.69%	80
1964	Milk Maid Stout	Stout	16.5d	half pint	bottled	1042.2	1022.2	2.50	47.39%	325
1964	Golden Keg	Pale Ale	24d	pint	draught	1039.1	1009.4	3.71	75.96%	23
1964	Draught Magnet	Pale Ale	20d	pint	draught	1043	1007.4	4.45	82.79%	35
1964	Bitter	Pale Ale	18d	pint	draught	1038.3	1007.6	3.84	80.16%	23
1964	Mild Ale	Mild	15d	pint	draught	1030.9	1008.5	2.80	72.49%	30
1964	Magnet Pale Ale	Pale Ale	14.5d	half pint	bottled	1043.5	1007.2	4.54	83.45%	16
1964	Light Ale	Light Ale	10.5d	half pint	bottled	1031.9	1009.6	2.79	69.91%	29
1965	Pale Ale (sold in Belgium)	Pale Ale			bottled	1056.1	1011.8	5.54	78.97%	13
1967	Magnet Pale Ale	Pale Ale	24d	pint	draught	1043.5	1008.7	4.35	80.00%	33
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001.

There's a personal connection with one of these beers. Milk Maid Stout was a Warwick & Richardson brand. And the beer my Mum used to drink. The label appers prominently on the cover of  The Home Brewer's Guide to Vintage Beer.

There's not a huge difference between the prices in the two lists. Take Golden, for example. 24d = 10p, meaning it had gone up 4p between 1964 and 1971. But that would soon change. The early 1970's were a time of high inflation.

That's it. Just a pile of random crap. Oh, except one last thing. Golden and Bitter were probably the same beer. Note how much worse value the keg beer is.

Mum again

There are some odd features of British legislation. Especially the way some items are specifically mentioned by name long after they had disappeared from the real world. Did nothing except confuse the hell out of everyone. Mum is a good example.

"MUM.
Many of our readers must have wondered when reading Customs and Excise Regulations, what was the meaning of the word "Mum" in the sentence "Mum, spruce or black beer, Berlin White Beer," etc. In May last, when the House was debating the Finance Bill (Committee stage), Captain Waterhouse, in order to obtain information on this point, moved to delete the word "Mum," not, as he explained, because he objected to it, but because he wanted an explanation of the entire phrase in which  it occurred. Mr. Pethick-Lawrence replied, "At the present time there is no beer being imported under the description 'Mum,' but there has been, in the past, a special kind of German beer called 'Mum,' which came into this country, and was of the same category as the black beer manufactured in this country. The form of beer which is covered by this description is not a beverage in the ordinary sense, but is of the same character as beer, and is used partly as a medicine. It has been for many years included under the Beer Duty, and it is not the intention of the Government to change the practice adopted all this time. The reason why the word 'Mum' is continued is because, though actually at the present time no 'Mum' is being imported, we have to be prepared in case it should be imported, in which case, if the amendment were carried, it would be very unfair to British producers, and would be the exact reverse of a protective duty." Further information as to "Mum" was supplied by Mr. Leif Jones, the well-known temperance advocate, who stated that the word was at least as old as the 14th century, and that it appears in some Statutes as far back as 1594. It was, he said, an old-fashioned remedy of the 17th and 18th centuries, and was imported from Brunswick. The concise Oxford dictionary describes it as a kind of beer originally brewed in Brunswick, its name being derived from the German "mumme," while Thorpe's dictionary of Applied Chemistry describes it as a kind of fat ale (sic) brewed from wheat and bitter herbs. Chamber's Encyclopaedia, on the other hand, says it is a kind of beer made from wheat malt, to which some brewers add oat and bean meal. Those who would like to pursue the matter further will find information on this question in " Notes and Queries" for November, 1881, page 376."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 36, Issue 4, July-August 1930, page 325.

It's quite weird that parliament continued to pass legislation with words no-one understood the meaning of.

I wonder when Mum was last imported into Britain? Must have been sometime in the 19th century. I'm not sure they were really making Mum in Germany any more by then.

Even weirder that they should be getting information about Mum from a temperance campaigner.

This is the relevant section from the 1930 Finance Act:

2.-(1) In lieu of the duties of customs payable on beer of the descriptions called or similar to mum, spruce or black beer, or Berlin white beer, or other preparations, whether fermented or not fermented, of a similar character imported into the United Kingdom, there shall, as from the fifteenth day of April, nineteen hundred and thirty, be charged, levied, and paid the following duties, that is to say :-
For every thirty-six gallons of beer where the worts thereof are, or were before fermentation, of a specific gravity:	£ s. d.
Not exceeding one thousand two hundred and fifteen degrees	20 14 0
Exceeding one thousand two hundred and fifteen degrees	24 5 0
(2) In lieu of the duty of customs payable on every description of beer other than those specified in the preceding subsection imported into the United Kingdom there shall, as from the fifteenth day of April, nineteen hundred and thirty, be charged, levied, and paid the A.D. 1930 following duty, that is to say:-	£ s. d.
For every thirty-six gallons where the worts thereof were before fermentation of a specific gravity of one thousand and fifty-five degrees	5 3 6

That's a very high rate of duty - a British-brewed beer with a gravity of 1215º would have paid £15 12s duty per 36-gallon barrel.

I'm puzzled as to what possible connection Berlin White Beer (assuming it means Berliner Weisse) could have with Mum. A beer with a gravity of, at most, 1030º. Let me know your thoughts.

Montana Red Dog

I played cards a lot as a child. No TV, video games or internet back in those days. You used to have to make your entertainment. As my mum always told me when I did something as new-fangled as listening to the radio.

Bored during the summer holidays, me and my brother learned all the two-handed games in a book we'd borrowed from the library. Crazy, old-fashioned games like bezique and pinochle. If we'd had computers, we'd have had our backs turned or been in different rooms

Then there were the times at the caravan. Without electricity or TV, radio and cards were our only entertainment once the sun had gone down and we couldn't play cricket. Not just me and Dave, but Mum, Dad, Aunties and Uncles, too.

I remember playing Newmarket with Uncle George and Aunt Florrie. She was full of great stories. "I always got a clout every Christmas." That's how they mostly started.

I'd have suspected they let me win. Except they were old school. That's how I learned to play whist and solo. It was one of my Mum's principles. If you play a game, you play it properly. No special indulgences for the kids.

Maybe that's why I still love playing cards. When I played with the adults, we were equals. No special favours for anyone. For once, we were all playing to the same rules.

I taught my kids Montana Red Dog yesterday. A game I learned from Alias Smith & Jones. And got me suspended from school.

For an hour or two, they forgot the digital world. As did I.

Crying on the bus

I barely shed a tear when my father died. Not that I wasn't upset. I was devastated. I just didn't cry as a teenager.

As the years have passed, my emotions have bubbled closer to the surface. The slightest shake and they rise and pop. Don't ask me why. If I understood that sort of shit I wouldn't be sitting at a desk typing stuff no-one will ever read.

In takes little to summon tears. A beautiful morning autumn sky and Bargain was enough at the bus stop today.

I used to worry about looking weak or girlish. Not any more. I didn't try to stop or hide the tears on the bus. Who cares what the other passengers think? I don't care about them.

I cried an ocean at my mother's funeral. Tears enough to wash both parents to heaven, nirvana; a quiet place.

Since then I care little for what others think of my tears.

My best writing is stained with tears.

Olde Ale for your Xmas Pudding

For a slight change of pace, I've a recipe for you today. Two recipes, in fact. Courtesy of  Anchor Magazine, Barclay Perkins' in-house rag.

It was published in the November 1936 issue, supposedly to give the puddings time to mature. Personally, I think that's far too short a time. My mum used to make hers in January. She reckoned it needed a full year to mature.

There was always something a little sad about Christmas pudding. After a morning of snacking and chocolate, followed by an enormous roast turkey dinner, something as rich as a Christmas pud was the last thing you needed. I still managed to force it down, because, well, I never left any food as a kid. We were virtually on starvation rations. I spent the whole of my childhood hungry.

Wartime rationing had a lasting impact on my Mum. She only ever cooked exactly the right amount of food for the number of people present. The portion sizes were fixed and there were never any leftovers. For her generation, wasting food was the greatest sin.

But enough of childhood reminiscences and on with the recipes.

"Olde Ale for your Xmas Pudding
Now it is time to make your Christmas Pudding so as to give it plenty of time to mature before the festive day. We give below two recipes for very good puddings, the second being cheaper to make than the first. Each mixture will make about three puddings but of
course all the ingredients can be proportionately reduced to make a smaller quantity.

1st recipe
1 lb Bread Crumbs
1 lb flour
2 lbs finely chopped Suet
1 lb Currants
1 lb Sultanas
2 lbs stoned Raisins
0.5 lb chopped Candied Peel
1 lb Moist Brown Sugar
12 eggs
0.5 lb chopped Blanched Almonds
Grated Rind of two Lemons
1 grated Nutmeg
0.25 oz. Mixed Spice
0.25 teaspoonful Salt
2 wine glasses Brandy
0.75 pint Southwarke Ale

2nd recipe
0.5 lb Bread Crumbs
0.5 lb flour
0.25 lb Moist Brown Sugar
1 lb stoned Raisins
0.5 lb Currants
0.5 lb Sultanas
1 lb chopped Suet
0.5 mixed Peel
1 grated Nutmeg
0.5 teaspoonful Salt
1 pint Olde Ale
3 eggs
Rind and juice of one Lemon
4 ozs. chopped Almonds

Mix all ingredients thoroughly. Add well beaten eggs, brandy and ale. Place in greased bowls which must be filled without pressing the mixture down too much. Cover with greased paper and then with a floured cloth. Boil for 7 hours the first day, then store the puddings. Before eating boil again for three hours."
Anchor Magazine, November 1936.

Mum steamed her puddings in a muslin bag suspended with string over a pan of water. Not sure why I told you that. I can remember the deep, fruity smell filling our kitchen on Wilfred Avenue. Funny how smells stay with you. I can still conjure up that christmas pudding smell, even after four decades.

The beer in question was KK (Bottling) sold as Southwarke Olde Ale. I bet you want to know more about it, don't you? OK then:

17th Sep 1936 Barclay Perkins KK (bottling)
	qtrs	%
pale malt	7	18.68%
crystal malt	2.25	6.00%
PA malt	18.75	50.03%
no. 2 sugar	8	14.23%
caramel	0.71	1.27%
flaked maize	3	8.01%
malt extract	1	1.78%
mash at	154º F
sparge at	170º F
Hops (lbs)	429
hops	EK Goldings and MK Goldings
dry hops (oz / barrel)	8.00
dry hops	Saaz
lbs hops/ qtr	10.54
hops lb/brl	2.92
boil time (hours)	2.5
Pitch temp	61.5º
max. fermentation temp	73.5º
OG	1068.6
FG	1022.0
ABV	6.17
App. Attenuation	67.95%
colour	100
Source:
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/01/621

Quite an interesting beer and, with almost 3 lbs of hops per barrel, quite a bitter one, too. And, with those Saaz dry hops, also quite aromatic.

How oddly this has turned  out. I started with the intention of giving you Christmas pudding recipes and ended up giving you a beer recipe as well.

New cover

My publisher has put together a new cover for my book that's coming out in January, The Home Brewer's Guide to Vintage Beer. I have to admit it brought a tear to my eye.

Why? Because it includes the label of the beer my mum used to drink. At least until it was discontinued. See if you can guess which one it is.

Steamed pudding

How crazy is this? More than five year's after my mother's death, I'm still trying to please her.

If only I could have such influence.

I made my first steamed pudding on Sunday. This is it:

I think Mum would be pleased.

Wall

Feeling lazy

There's something that's been worrying me for a while. It's not something that would concern most of the population, but it's been niggling away in the back of my mind for weeks. Between 1830 and 1880 was only barley malt allowed in British beer? Or were malts made from other grains also permitted?

I've seen references to other types of malt in this period. But you have to exercise great caution when looking at the 19th century. Untangling private and commercial brewing can be tricky. And, of course, the rukles were very different for private brewers.

Which gets me to the lazy bit. I know I should be more committed, but I really can't be arsed to go hunting down the text of the relevant piece of legislation. Not at the moment. I'm far too busy tracking down mentions of oats in WW II.

Do any of you fancy looking up the exact restrictions on ingredients 1830 to 1880 for me? Bit of a cheek, I know. But you get nothing if you don't ask, as my mum used to say.

Old and Mild

Could be a description of me. Old and Mild. Could be. But, after the crazy interweb arguments I've got myself into, perhaps only the first adjective applies.

I'll tell you what got me thinking about Old and Mild. It's a short, but dull, story. Skip to the next paragraph if you can't be arsed with it. I prompted Jeff to tell me which beers he'd have on next Tuesday, when, after another archive excavation, I'd be nipping into his boozer for a pint or seven. There. I told the tale in just one sentence. Except the beer bit. Shit. Landlord, Harvey's, Moorhouses Black Cat, Old Peculier. That doesn't count. Not a sentence. No verb.

Takeaway draught beer. You don't get it many places. Not any more. In the 19th century everyone drank draught at home. The better off bought in barrels of it. Those of lesser means fetched it in jugs. Either from an off-licence or a pub. Victorians being what they were, it wasn't mum or dad who went. A servant. Or one of the kids.

They got into a bit of a tizzy in the last couple of decades of the 19th century. About impressionable infants and serving girls having to mix with the hoi poloi in the public bar while fetching supper beer. The solution? Not to make the man of the house do the job. They were far more practical than that. Pubs acquired a separate off-sales entrance, where the innocent were shielded from the inebriate masses.

Sipping. That was another problem. Kids having a taste of dad's beer on the way home. It still didn't persuade the authorities to make it illegal for minors to buy beer. They had a solution for that, too. The publican put a seal over the top of the bottle or jug. In theory, the thirsty teen or tiny couldn't take a tope unnoticed.

My mum was born in 1916. As a girl, she was sent by her mother to fetch beer. So late 1920's, early 1930's. From the local pub. I'm pretty sure it was an Ansells house. In Handsworth*, where they lived. A whole tribe of Candelents. She had 11 brothers and sisters, my mum. Most lived on or around Newcombe Road. You can see it in the photo.

I never met my maternal grandmother. She died around the start of WW II. But we have more in common than just a few random genes. Our taste in beer. Old and Mild. My mum fetched her a pint of that every evening. Old and Mild. Just what I like to drink. Though not usually mixed.

Black Cat Mild. Old Peculier. Have to give it a try. In the genes.



Couldn't help thinking. Granny, born around 1880. Started drinking pre-WW I. Was mixing Old and Mild an attempt to re-create the Mild of her youth?

*Part of Birmingham.

Mum or Mumme

Mumme is another of those old German beer styles which comes with a variety of spellings. Annoying, isn't it? Not quite as bad as Koyt or Broyhan.

Still more from David Booth. Though he admits at the start of this section that his knowledge of Mumme is second-hand. So not 100% reliable as a source.

"Mum is seldom mentioned in this country, except in the Excise Laws, where it appears loaded with an importation-duty, amounting to a prohibition. It is a German manufacture, and particularly of Brunswick. It seems also, from the same Excise Laws, that a sort of beer, by the name of Mum, had, at one time, been made in Ireland; but whether or riot any beverage now exists there under that denomination, we have not been able to learn. This must, however, have been an imitation, for the designation is undoubtedly German: and there, too, it must have been of early origin; for there they say, doubtfully, that Mumme is a sort of beer, so called after Christian Mummen, its inventor.

At Brunswick, where it is chiefly manufactured, and from whence it is exported to various parts of Europe and even Asia, they brew two kinds of Mum: the Stadtmumme, or common liquor for home consumption, being distinguished, by its inferior strength, from the Schiffmumme, which is fitted for exportation. From the German recipes for its manufacture, the Schiffmumme ought to be a very powerful liquid. It is described by Adelung as " thick, strong, and of a dark brown colour;" qualities which it must necessarily possess, if, as is said, a barrel of the worts contains the extract of more than a quarter of grain. It is probable, however, that the two qualities spoken of are drawn from the same goods; as is the case, in many parts of this country, with regard to strong and table beer. The proportions of the mash are stated thus:

7 bushels of wheaten malt;
1 bushel of oatmeal;
and 1 bushel of beans.

These quantities of grain, when ground, are brewed with a hogshead of hot water (?); anil the worts are directed to be boiled until a third of the liquid is evaporated.

The mass of ingredients which the Brunswick Receipt (said to be preserved in the Archives of the Town-house) proposes to be put into the cask, " after it is tunned and in a working state," is enormous: " the inner rind of fir, three pounds; tops of fir and birch, each one pound; carduus benedictus, three handfuls; flowers of rosa solis, one handful or two; burnet, betony, marjoram, avens, pennyroyal, wild thyme, of each a handful and a half; of elder-flowers, two handfuls, or more; seeds of cardamom, bruised, thirty ounces; barberries, bruised, one ounce.—Put the herbs and seeds into the vessel when the liquor has wrought a while; and, after they are added, let the liquor work over the vessel as little may be ; then fill it up. Lastly, when it is stopped, put into the hogshead ten new- laid eggs, unbroken or cracked; stop it up close, and drink it at two years' end."

It were useless to attempt any commentary upon such a farrago of materials. The Herb-ale of our ancestors was nothing to this. Doubtless the modern Brewers of Brunswick have improved in their trade, as well as those of this country; but still this absurd and almost libellous description of their method of brewing runs the round of the British Cyclopaedias ; and we have not, hitherto, been favoured with any other. Those scientific works generally subjoin (we know not on what authority) the following remark: " Our English Brewers use cardamom, ginger, and sassafras, instead of the inner rind of fir; and add also walnut-rinds, madder, red sanders, and elecampane."

This surely cannot be ! We are not acquainted with any manufactory, either in Great Britain or Ireland, where such a liquor is brewed. Indeed, it could never have been legally done, under the cognisance of the Excise."
"The Art of Brewing", by David Booth, 1834, Part IV pages 49-50.

I think that's enough of Booth. Unless I can't find anything else to write about in the next couple of days.

Parenting a beer obsessive

I never got to share a beer with my dad down the pub. He died when I was 14. It's one of my greatest regrets. Maybe that's why I'm so keen on taking my own kids to the pub.

Mum and I shared plenty of pub time. From Montego Bay to Sydney. But I only ever saw her tipsy once - after drinking rum punch in Kingston. Tea was her drink of choice. Rum and black, on a special occasion.

Being the mother of a beer obsessive isn't easy. I should know. I dragged my poor mother around so many smoky pubs. She rarely grumbled, even though her asthma left her gasping for breath. "Ronald, don't you think you've had enough?" That was her catchphrase. "Just one more, mum, then we can go." That's what I want to say to her now: "Just one more, mum, before you go."

I didn't get that last beer with her. But I'll drink every beer now as if it were that one lost last beer with mum. This sip's for you, mum. I'll be thinking of you every time I lift a glass. And when my feet become unsteady, I'll hear your gently chiding voice: "Ronald, don't you think it's time to go?" And you'll be right, as you always were.

I don't believe in god. Or heaven. But if there's one person whe deserves heaven, it's my mum. I hope I'm wrong and she's sitting there now, smiling down at me. And saying "Ronald, ............"