The earliest use of the term India pale ale was … in Australia?

The continuing fantastic expansion in the number of old documents scanned, OCR’d and available on the internet is presenting the lucky historical searcher with constant opportunities to push back the boundaries. The latest terrific find is an ante-dating of the first use of the expression “India pale ale” by almost six years, taking it from Liverpool in January 1835 to Sydney, Australia in August 1829.

Advertisement for East India Pale Ale, Sydney Gazette, Saturday August 29 1829

That advertisement for East India pale ale comes from the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser of Saturday, August 29 1829. Unfortunately it doesn’t mention whose East India pale ale Mr Spark was selling at his stores. However, the “Taylor’s” also mentioned in the ad is almost certainly the London brewer better remembered as Taylor Walker, which was well-known in Australia, having been exporting its stout and porter to the colonies from at least 1822, but which had also been exporting pale ale to New South Wales since early in the decade, an advert in the Sydney Gazette from Thursday 20 November 1823 shows.

EIPA, ‘the best summer drink’, in the Colonial Times, Hobar,t February 19 1830

The 1829 ad seems to say that Mr Spark had two sorts of pale ale on sale, Taylor’s and East India. If there were two, the other one might have been the unhoppy version of pale ale that London brewers had long been making (see later). On the other hand, an ad just a few months later in the Colonial Times of Hobart in Tasmania on Friday, February 19 1830 lists “Taylor’s Brown Stout, East India Pale Ale (the best summer drink) and XXX Ale for sale”, meaning that whatever interpretation you put on that 1829 ad, Taylor Walker’s still (currently) takes the prize for the earliest named beer to be called an IPA (oh, all right, an EIPA – same difference). The XXX ale, meanwhile, probably WAS pale, lightly hopped ale.

We can be fairly certain that the EIPA in the 1829 ad wasn’t Hodgson’s, the best-known of the hopped pale ales exported to the East before 1830, because the Bow brewery’s beer was highly admired and regularly praised, and would have been specifically named by anybody selling it: another Sydney newspaper, the Monitor, complained in April 1828 that “Colonial beer” was “not so good as” Hodgson’s pale ale, and adverts in Australian newspapers for Hodgson’s pale ale from at least 1823 called it “celebrated” and “highly esteemed”. (Though a “Letter to a Gentleman in London” printed in the Australian newspaper in Sydney on Wednesday 16 July 1828, talking about being served Hodgson’s and Taylor’s beers on board ship on the five-month voyage out to the colonies, complained that these were “names that I had never heard of when in London”.)

East India pale ale, brewer unnamed, continued to be advertised in newspapers in Sydney to 1831 (including one mention of “India fine pale ale in casks”. Then in October 1832 the Sydney Herald carried an ad for “Barclay and Perkins’ East India Ale”, in hogsheads, showing that another big London porter brewer, like Taylor Walker, was now in the India pale ale business. (In November 1833 the Herald printed a notice for “Thirty-five Hogsheads of ‘Taylor’s’ BROWN STOUT fifteen ditto of ditto East India Pale Ale”.)

Barclay and Perkins’ East India Ale, Sydney Herald, October 29 1832

The next month, on December 20, the Hobart Town Courier included an advert for, among a long list of other items “landed in good order by the barque Forth from London”, “Ind & Smith’s India pale ale, and best brown stout in Hhds [hogsheads, 54-gallon casks] and in bottle.” Ind and Smith were the brewers from Romford in Essex who, in 1845, became Ind Coope, and who went on to open a brewery in Burton upon Trent in 1856, at least in part, it seems, to serve the export trade.

The names missing from exports of something called India pale ale to Australia, you’ll have spotted, are the major Burton upon Trent brewers Bass and Allsopp, who were, from 1823 onwards, pushing Hodgson out of the pale ale trade in India itself. Bass pale ale does not seem to appear in ads in any Australian newspaper until 1830, years after Hodgson and Taylor’s.

It’s perhaps not THAT surprising that Australia should have started using the name India pale ale earlier than Britain. Although “pale ale as prepared for India” was on sale in London in 1822, it did not become a widely available drink in the UK until after the Burton brewers started using their new railway connections to ship their bitter pale ales to London, in 1841. Only at that point was it necessary to differentiate between the hoppy pale ales the Burton brewers made and the mild pale ales that the ale brewers of London, such as Charrington’s, Mann’s and Goding’s, had been producing for many years, and calling the hoppy version “India pale ale” was a good way of doing it.

In Australia they were getting the well-hopped beers made by Hodgson AND the lesser-hopped ales, like Charrington’s XX pale ale, both on sale in Sydney and elsewhere in the Australian colonies in the 1820s, 15 or 20 years or more before Britons began seeing hoppy pale ales in quantity. Hodgson’s was well-known to Australian consumers and known to be bitter, so perhaps didn’t need calling something to flag its bitterness. Taylor’s, Barclay’s and Ind’s pale ale, however, might have been mistakenly thought by Australian consumers to be the sweeter kind of lesser-hopped ale, like Charrington’s, and so perhaps needed to be called an India pale ale to make it clear these were well-hopped, bitter drinks, something British consumers didn’t need flagging up because they weren’t getting the new hoppy pale ales yet. (I confess I don’t find that argument hugely convincing, but it has its points. And remember, when IPA-like brews did finally take off in Britain, a new term had to be invented for them by the consumer: bitter beer.)

Addendum: in the light of comments below, I should add, because it’s not clear from what I said above, that I strongly suspect the “East India pale ale” designation was strictly a retailer’s usage, in Australia, and not one used by the brewers themselves, or even by the shippers. So I wouldn’t expect to see any brewer’s records, or shipping records, talking about IPA this early.

Sydney in 1828, incidentally, had seven operating breweries, though their average output per month was only around 120 barrels each, despite “Colonial beer” selling for six pence a quart and London porter at 20 pence a quart.

(Hat tip to the Foods of England website for pointing me to “India Pale Ale” ads in early Australian newspapers.)

A label registered in Australia by Ashby’s brewery of Staines, Middlesex, England in 1876

In Bruges

In Bruges

I first drank in the Brugs Beertje in Bruges in 1985. I didn’t realise at the time that it was then only a couple of years old: it already felt like a classic beer venue, small, comfortable as an old suede gardening glove, welcoming as your favourite cousin, the walls lathered in Belgian brewery memorabilia, the selection of hopped beverages extensive and eclectic.

At the time, it was pretty much unknown outside Bruges: I was guided to it by a pamphlet listing the city’s beer outlets that I picked up in the Bruges tourist office while trying to find a hotel. Would the tourist office in any British city have carried a list of good local bars and pubs in 1985? Would the tourist office in any British city carry a list of good local bars and pubs today? Not, I think.

Despite Britain and Belgium each being soaked in beer culture to their respective marrows, there still, 40-plus years after the founding of an organisation specifically set up to encourage appreciation of British beer, seems something much more celebratory about Belgium’s relationship with beer than you find among the British generally. Belgians seem far keener to announce to everybody their beery wonders, than we do in Britain, eager to hand you the massive beer menu when you sit down in the bar, cafe or restaurant, happy to let you know that this little country of 11 million is one of the four or five greatest brewing nations in the world, and pleased to point out that they make more unusual beer styles than anywhere else, too.

Revival of ancient barley variety thrills fans of old beer styles

Chevallier barley, revived after seven decades

In a move that has thrilled beer style revivalists, a beer has been brewed from what was Victorian Britain’s most popular barley variety for the first time in at least 70 years.

What is most interesting for historians of brewing is the way the revived malt acts when used to make beer, putting a new slant on the interpretation of old beer recipes, suggesting they produced beers using the ingredients available at the time that were both fuller in the mouth and less bitter than the same recipes using modern malts, and also beers that needed longer to mature than those made using modern malts do.

The new-old beer, a nut-brown bitter ale made using Chevallier barley, which once went into the vast majority of pints sold in Britain, will be on sale at the Duke of Wellington pub on Waterloo Road, Norwich this coming weekend in time for Camra’s annual members’ meeting in the city. But hurry: there’s only one firkin available.

Chevallier barley was revived by Dr Chris Ridout of the John Innes Centre in Norwich, an independent grant-aided plant and microbiology research centre, which hold seeds from 10,000 varieties of barley at its genetic resources unit.

Dr Chris Ridout growing Chevalier barley at the John Innes Centre

The reason for reviving Chevallier was to look again at its malting quality and yields, both of which were good enough to see the variety dominate British barley growing and spread around the world. Dr Ridout and his team have now discovered that Chevallier also has resistance to Fusarium ear blight, which, if it can be cross-bred into other varieties, could be very valuable in the fight against a fungal disease that can devastate grain crops.

In defence of old men with beards

It happened, I’m guessing, about the time that the first wave of Camra members were hitting their late 50s and early 60s, that is, at the beginning of this century. If “real ale” had been pejorated almost from the beginning as the drink of men with beards, generally accompanied by sandals, soon after the millennium the cliché became old men with beards, sitting in a corner of the pub clutching a half-filled glass of something tepid, lifeless and tan-coloured in their wrinkled, liver-spotted hands.

Rooney Anand, viridian monarch at Greene King, seems to have been one of the first to favour the expression, complaining in 2002: “It’s time to explode the myth that real ale is for old men with beards. It’s not, it’s for everyone.”

Since then, the meme has trundled on, gathering speed: “Cockermouth brewer Jennings hopes to use Cask Beer Week to shatter the stereotype that bearded old men are the only ones who drink real ale” (Times and Star, Cumbria, September 2004); “real ale … seen as only for old men with beards and beer bellies” (BBC website, December 2005); “pubs full of old men with beards who drink real ale” (Farmers’ Weekly, April 2008); ” real ale drinkers … smelly old men with beards” (Metro, October 2008); “Normally when people think real ale, they picture old men with far too much facial hair, reeking of pipe smoke” (Metro again, August 2011); “real ale drinkers … crusty old men with beards” Hull Daily Mail, October 2011; “Real ale … for old men with beards and woolly jumpers” (Scotland on Sunday, October 2011); “real ale … a flat, warm brown liquid that old men with beards drink” (Bristol Evening Post, April 2012); you’re getting the idea.

When Brick Lane was home to the biggest brewery in the world

Black Eagle sign, Brick Lane

The huge sign on the outside of the building on the corner of Hanbury Street and Brick Lane is clear enough: Truman Black Eagle Brewery. Nobody passing by could have any doubt what used to happen here, even though no beer brewing has taken place on the premises for more than 20 years. But what few people know is that for a couple of decades in the middle of the 19th century, this was the biggest brewery in the world.

Today Brick Lane, Spitalfields, in the East End of London is bustling and cosmopolitan, the heart of what is sometimes called “Banglatown”. For hundreds of years Spitalfields – filled with cheap housing, in large part because it was to the east of the City, so that the prevailing westerly winds dump all the soot from the West End over it – has been a place where poor immigrants to England come to try to scrabble a living, generally in trades connected with making clothes: Huguenot silk weavers from France fleeing Catholic oppression,  Irish linen weavers fleeing unemployment in Ireland, Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in Russia, Bangladeshis fleeing poverty, all adding their tales to a place crowded with both people and history. But it wasn’t always thus: the author Daniel Defoe, who was born in 1660, remembered Brick Lane from his childhood in the early years of the Restoration as “a deep, dirty road frequented chiefly by carts fetching bricks into Whitechapel”.

Over the decade after Charles II returned to England, as London expanded, development spread up Brick Lane itself from the south, and new streets were laid out in Spitalfields where previously cows had grazed. Two of these streets, on the west side of Brick Lane, were named Grey Eagle Street and Black Eagle Street. Thomas Bucknall, a London entrepreneur, is said by some to have built the Black Eagle brewhouse in about 1666, the year of the Great Fire of London, on land known as Lolsworth Field, Spittlehope belonging to Sir William Wheler. However, it remains unclear whether Bucknall actually was a brewer: the best that can be said is that on the land he leased “in 1681-2 the lay-out of buildings on this part of Brick Lane approximated to the present arrangement of brewery buildings round an entrance yard, and that this lay-out may date back to 1675.”

Baird beer and breakfast

Beer’s not my usual breakfast tipple, though I’d agree with Tim Martin, founder of the Wetherspoon pub chain in the UK, that Abbot Ale is an excellent accompaniment to the traditional Full English. But I couldn’t keep away from an invitation to “brunch” with Bryan Baird, the American founder of the eponymous brewery in Numazu, 80 or so miles west of Tokyo.

The event was organised by the Globe bar in SoHo, Hong Kong and featured six different Baird beers, all paired with different dishes and introduced by Bryan Baird himself. Like all brewers, Bryan is hugely enthusiastic about his trade, and he was well served by the Globe, which served up some excellent matches to his beers, to go with a six-course breakfast.

We kicked off with cured ocean trout, cream cheese and cucumber, served with Baird’s Single-Take Session Ale: a fine pairing, a little more classy than the traditional breakfast kipper, the only problem here being that I really, really wanted a whole pint of Single-Take, rather than a small glass. It’s a Belgian-style beer, according to Bryan, made with Belgian yeast, but “inverted” – low-alcohol, high-hop, rather than the other way round, 4.7 per cent abv and plenty of hop flavour from dry-hopping. The hops are whole-hop Tettnanger and New Zealand varieties, and the name and label are inspired by Neil “single take” Young: the label is meant to show young Mr Young performing “Rocking’ in the Free World” on Saturday Night Live in 1989. And if you look at that video, you can see the woman who designs Baird’s woodcut-style labels has indeed captured a clip from the show.

Twenty beer quotes that deserve to be better known

There are plenty enough well-known quotes about beer. Some of the best-known, unfortunately, are made up. However, it’s still possible to come across great, genuine yet little-known snippets. Here are 20 of my favourite beer quotes in need of wider broadcasting:

“If [beer] is … the people’s beverage – and nobody, I take it, will deny that it is just that – its history must of necessity go hand in hand, so to speak, with the history of that people, with the history of its entire civilisation.”
John P Arnold, Origin and History of Beer and Brewing, 1911

If I ever worry that the history of beer is a little trivial, I re-read this passage from the American-German beer writer John Arnold and feel that, yes, I’m recording part of the story of my people, my civilisation. OK, people?

“See that ye keep a noble house for beef and beer, that thereof may be praise given to God and to your honour.”
Advice given to Leonard, titular sixth Lord Dacre, in 1570

Leonard Dacre was one of the leaders of the Northern Rebellion, a revolt designed to put Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne of England. But he managed to lose the battle of Gelt Bridge in Cumberland in 1570 despite outnumbering the Elizabethan forces two to one with his private force of 3,000 armed men, raised from the local tenantry. He subsequently fled to Flanders via Scotland, dying three years later. Part of the motive behind his taking part in the rebellion seems to have been his failure to claim the title of Baron Dacre of Gilsland after the death of his nephew, the fifth Lord Dacre. In the manoeuvrings before the rebellion took off, Leonard was sent a letter by one of his dependants, Richard Atkinson, telling him how to maintain the loyalty of the Dacre tenants in Cumberland, which included the excellent advice above about beef and beer.

Winston Smith buys an old prole a round of mild

Designed in Japan, brewed in Belgium, drunk in Hong Kong

For a young Japanese entrepreneur, Shiro Yamada has a perhaps unlikely-sounding hero: Baron Bilimoria of Chelsea, lawyer, accountant, son of an Indian army general, and the first Parsi to sit in the British House of Lords. Bilimoria’s establishment credentials were enough to get him in the Royal Box at the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations last year. “He’s like Steve Jobs to me,” Yamada says.

Bilimoria earned Yamada’s admiration for being the man who founded Cobra Beer in 1989, to be the curry eater’s beer: designed specifically to complement food, with lower carbonation and a smoother taste. Yamada, who had worked as a venture capitalist, and been involved in dot-com start-ups in Japan, was studying for an MBA at the Judge Business School, part of Cambridge University, around 2005 when Bilimoria, himself a Cambridge graduate, came to deliver a presentation to students at Judge on the Cobra operation.

Yamada had already become interested in beer after going drinking with fellow students around Cambridge, and taken trips to Belgium and Munich to widen his beery knowledge. Listening to Bilimoria talk about his desire to brew a beer that would match up with Indian food, Yamada had a revelation. What about a beer specifically brewed to match up with Japanese food?

The Japanese have been brewing beer since the mid-1870s, after Seibei Nakagowa came back to the town of Sapporo having spent two years learning how to make lager at the Tivoli brewery in Kreuzberg, Berlin. Today, despite a reputation in the West for mass-produced blandobeers, Japan is the home of a thriving microbrewing scene with some excellent products – Yo-Ho Brewing’s SunSun lager was one of my personal beers of the year for 2012.

However, no one seems to have thought to do anything for Japanese food what Bilimoria did for curry: design a special beer to fit in with and enhance the different dishes. That, Yamada, decided, would be his task. “I drank a lot of beer from all over Europe when I was in the UK,” Yamada says, “beer from Britain, from Belgium, from Germany, and what hit me was that beer had a history in each of those countries, but if you look at Japan, it’s not like that. So what I decided I would like to do is to develop an original Japanese beer with a taste to fit in with Japanese culture and food.”

Where to find Britain’s Viking brewhouses

Merryn and Graham Dineley, she an archaeologist specialising in exploring ancient ale-making, he a craft brewer specialising in actually making ancient ales, have produced a fabulous downloadable poster on the visible remains of Viking brewhouses in Britain, which you can find here.

The poster points out that structures which have been interpreted as Viking “bath houses” or “saunas” are much better interpreted as brewhouses, not least because they were right next to the site of the drinking hall, as at Jarlshof on the Mainland of Shetland and Brough of Birsay, a now uninhabited island off the Mainland of Orkney. And really, what do you think a Viking would rather have – a bath or a beer?

To quote from the poster:

We know that the Vikings drank ale. There are numerous references to it in the Sagas. We also know that the ale was made from malt. In the 10th Century AD, Haakon Haroldson, the first Christian king of Norway, decreed that Yule be celebrated on Christmas Day and that every farmstead “should brew two meals of malt into ale”. One brew was for family, the other for guests. There were fines for non-compliance. If they failed to brew for three years in a row their farm was forfeit.
Ale was an important part of the Yule celebrations. Every farmstead had the facilities to make it. The ale was stored in huge vats, close to the drinking hall. The Orkneyinga Saga tells us that Svein Breastrope was ambushed and killed by Svein Asleiferson, who had hidden behind a stone slab by the ale vats in the entrance of the drinking hall at Orphir, Orkney. Since huge ale vats are not easily moved, then the ale must have been mashed and fermented close to the ale store.
The products and by-products of brewing ale are ephemeral, leaving no trace in the archaeological record. Ale is drunk, spent grain is fed to animals and residues are washed down the drains. Only the installations and perhaps some equipment may survive.

The REAL 20 most influential beers of all time

‘Guys, you’ll never believe this “20 most influential beers” list’

An American website called First We Feast has just announced what it declares are “The 20 most influential beers of all time”, a list put together by a “panel of beer-industry pros – brewers, distributors, publicans, and importers, as well as a few journalists.”

You’ll have some idea of the validity of this list when I tell you that half the beers on it are brewed in the US. I don’t want to diss the panel that chose these beers, but I only recognise one name on it, apart from him there are none of the commentators I turn to for insight into the North American brewing scene, let alone anyone from outside the US, and there doesn’t appear to be a single brewing historian among any of them. Which is presumably why they came up with such a totally crap list, with far, far more misses than hits.

The First We Feast attempt at naming the 20 most influential beers of all time

Gablinger’s diet beer, Rheingold, New York
Blind Pig IPA
Westmalle Tripel
New Albion Ale
Fuller’s London Pride
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Goose Island Bourbon County Stout
Pilsner Urquell
Anchor Steam Beer
Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
Ayinger Celebrator
Generic lager
Cantillon Classic Gueuze
Anchor Old Foghorn
Reissdorf Kölsch
Draught Guinness
Allagash White
Sam Adams Utopias
Saison Dupont
Schneider Aventinus

I mean, Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye is more influential in the history of beer than Bass Pale Ale or Barclay Perkins porter? Don’t make me weep. Allagash White trumps Hoegaarden and Schneider Weisse? (You may not like Hoegaarden or Schneider Weisse, but I hope you won’t try to deny their influence.) Gueuze, Saison and Kölsch are such important styles they deserve a representative each in a “most influential beers of all time” list, while IPA and porter are left out? I don’t think so. And the same goes for Schneider Aventinus: where are the hordes of Weissebockalikes? Sam Adams Utopias has influenced who, exactly? “Generic lager”? I see where you’re coming from, in that much of what has happened over the past 40 years in the beer world is a reaction against generic lager, but still … And I love London Pride, but it’s not even the third most influential beer that Fuller’s brews.

Gablinger’s Diet Beer is about the only smart choice on the FWF list, because although it’s pretty obscure now, it was the inspiration for all the “lite” beers that, through big brands such as Miller Lite and Bud Light, came to dominate the US beer scene. Pilsner Urquell is a must: you could argue (and I will, in a moment) over whether there has been a more influential beer, but no “all-time greats” list could ignore the pale lager from Plzen. Westmalle Tripel: Duvel, surely, is more important. Guinness: I really don’t think Guinness is influential: it’s so sui generis, it’s just carried on being itself, without influencing anybody.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale I’m prepared to consider, as the pioneer of “hop forward” American pale ales, and the same consideration may be due to Blind Pig IPA, the first “double” IPA. Anchor Old Foghorn was itself too influenced by other beers, especially the English old ale/Burton Ale tradition, to be on a “most influential” list itself. If Goose Island Bourbon County Stout was, as it appears, the first “aged in barrels used for something else” beer, then for all the brews that has inspired, it deserves a “most influential” mention. But having both New Albion Ale and Anchor Steam on the list is far too California-centric: indeed, if you’re looking for a beer than inspired the boom in American craft brewing, them I’d put on a steel helmet and announce that it’s Samuel Adams Boston Lager: I bet that inspired far more drinkers to try something other than the mainstream than any other early American “craft” beer.

So: what ARE the real 20 most influential beers of all time? Judged purely on the size of the effect they had on subsequent beer history, I reckon they are: