China is easily the biggest beer market in the world, almost twice as large as the US, the next largest, and in 2010 China drank very nearly a quarter of all the world’s beer. But annual consumption per head, at around 30 litres, while rising at some five per cent a year, is still almost a third of the US figure (81 litres). In addition, most of that consumption is of pale, undemanding lager.

What that means is that the Chinese DO drink beer with food, but it will be Tsingtao, or Blue Girl (from South Korea) or something equally bland and dull. Fortunately, Hong Kong takes advantage of its position as one of the biggest trading centres in Asia by importing good beer from all over the world: you won’t find Gale’s Prize Old Ale in Chiswick right now, for example (there’s none in stock in the Fuller’s brewery shop and I bought the last two bottles they had in the Mawson Arms next door back in October) but you WILL find it in stock in Hong Kong bars run by the El Grande group, such as the Happy Valley Bar and Grill – or at least you will until I buy up their complete current holding and the 2012 version gets shipped out. And, amazingly, Prize Old Ale is a beer that goes fantastically well with Chinese food, so well it could almost have been brewed for it.

There is probably a proper expression for this, but I don’t know it, so let’s call it “food imagination”, or “food intelligence”: the ability to summon up in the mind two different tastes and decide how they would go together, even if you have never actually matched or paired them in life. I’m sure it’s possible to test “FI”, with questions like: “what beer would you recommend with fennel?”* Good chefs need “FI”: good brewers, too. Great chefs (and brewers) have “food imagination” in wagons. You need to have at least a little “food imagination” to match beer with food, to even be able to write about beer and food matching: someone like Garrett Oliver obviously has “high FI”, and I think I have a reasonable “FI quotent”, or I wouldn’t dare write about beer and food together myself. So some of this is based on experience, some on speaking to Chinese beer lovers in Hong Kong, and some on “FI”.

Roast pork and Guinness soy sauce with glutinous rice balls and stir-fried broccoli, pak choy, mushrooms and Chinese chives

Of course, “Chinese food” is about as misleadingly general an expression as “European food” would be: Cantonese cooking is as different from eg Szechuan as Greek from Scandinavian. But you can still put down some general rules. Roast pork is an excellent match for stouts in any cuisine, and perhaps even more so in Chinese traditions, with the flavours of soy sauce in particular chiming very well. I just marinaded a small piece of pork in the local version of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout (6.8 per cent abv) with a dessertspoonful of soy, a splash of anchovy sauce and a good shot of five-spice powder, then, while the pork was roasting, turned the marinade into a thick sauce. Sliced the pork and spooned the sauce over it, alongside glutinous rice balls and stir-fried pak choi, broccoli, mushrooms and Chinese chives.

Authentically Chinese? Not at all, but delicious: there was a surprising sweetness in the sauce. Beers to go with: Prize Old Ale (the sherry of beers, its sweet/sharp flavours and its depth of finish complement Chinese sauces brilliantly) and Samuel Adams Boston Lager: any malty darker lager would do well with dark-meat Chinese dishes. I haven’t tried a Vienna-style lager with Chinese roast duck yet, but I’d be confident that would work: better than stout, maybe even better than POA. Although for Peking duck, I think it would have to be the Gale’s. A funky Belgian abbey beer, such as Orval, would also work with roast duck: and if I ever get the courage to eat conch meat or cuttlefish (available still swimming about at the fish stalls down by the piers in HK), it will be Orval or Chimay I’ll be looking to partner it.

Cuttlefish: not just for budgies

Also on my wish-to-try list: tangerine beef and something like Fuller’s Vintage Ale, or ESB, both with that marmalade-y “house” character that should fit well with such a dish; Chinese steamed fish with St Austell Clouded Yellow; and a match suggested to me by Marc Chung, assistant manager at the Hong Kong beer and wine importer Bacchus in Sheung Wan, chicken with lemon sauce paired with a Belgian cassis beer.

Talking of Belgian brews, one of the most popular draught beers in HK is Hoegaarden, particularly, apparently, among Chinese women: I’m not sure if they’re drinking it with food, but they should. Cantonese food is not over-spicy, and a beer that brings its own spicy flavours to the table is a great match, while the “mildness” of wheat beers also suits the local cuisine. Bavarian wheat beers, in particular, with those banana and clove flavours, and good grease-cutting ability, line up very well alongside spring rolls.

You can also go in completely the other direction and line up a good hop-stuffed American double IPA with rice-based, quite bland dishes, such as Hainan chicken (which is boiled whole in a pot), where the floral, citrusy flavours of the beer are going to be the dominant partner over the food – but in a good way.

Much authentic Chinese food is what might be called, in the European tradition, broth-based, and right now (this being Chinese New Year) a huge number of families will be sitting down to a traditional New Year dish known as hot-pot, or steamboat, which is a bit like fondue without the cheese: each diner has a selection of raw food which is dipped into a boiling pot of broth in the middle of the table to cook. This is where you DO need lighter beers: malt-forward British-style pale ales, for example.

Blue chicken: tastier than it looks

One of the people who helped me put together a piece on Chinese food and beer for the South China Morning Post last week was Annie Lam, a former metals trader who has been importing British beers to Hong Kong for 10 years via her company The Beer Bay. She recommends straight pale ales with Chinese chicken and fish dishes (you certainly don’t want anything too hoppy or assertive with the often delicate flavours of, eg, fish ball soup, but if you’re roasting one of the local, they’ll take something more powerful), and IPAs with stronger-tasting dishes such as smoked duck or barbecued pig with hoisin sauce (smoked duck – there’s a dish I might be persuaded to break a habit and try a Rauchbier with, and a whisky-barrel-aged stout would be an interesting, if perhaps too combative a combination). Stronger, darker, more malt-oriented ales – we’re talking Adnam’s Broadside, Fuller’s XX – “these beers would be fantastic with all kinds of red meat, with strong flavours, like beef, lamb: they would really bring the flavours out with oyster sauce, soy sauce, every kind of sauce, Peking-style, Shanghai-style, even Szechuan style food,” she says. And I’m not going to disagree.

I also went to Bacchus, which specialises in Belgian imports, where Marc Cheung quickly matched a list of Chinese dishes with beers. Roast pork with plum sauce, he suggested, paired well with Gulden Draak or a similar dark tripel (although I’d like to try Rodenbach Grand Cru: sadly, I’ve not seen this in Hong Kong); beef with hot chilli pepper Marc matched with a couple of strong Belgian ales, Dulle Teve and Lucifer; and for stir-fry clams with garlic and black bean sauce he lined up the Belgian “champagne beer” Deus: at HK$250 a bottle (£21/US$32 currently) this would not be my immediate first choice, on cost grounds, and I think I’d rather try Deus with those fish balls. For spicy/garlicky food, FI suggests to me a good abbey triple. Finally, for the typical Chinese dessert of deep-fried egg whites with red bean paste filling, Marc shoved forward what I always think of as the red-nosed, baggy-trousered clowns of the beer world, Mongozo Banana and Mongozo Coconut. Don’t know about those two: but Wells Banana Bread Beer might be an interesting pairing.

* Not a lot, but a porter or stout with liquorice as one of the ingredients would be an interesting match.

Antoine-Joseph Santerre

In the autumn of 1775, Henry Thrale, owner of one of the biggest porter breweries in London, took his family on a trip across the English Channel to Paris. With them went Dr Samuel Johnson, the dictionary-writer and author, and one of the great literary figures of 18th-century England, who had been good friends with Thrale and his wife Hester for 10 years. In Paris the Thrales and Johnson toured the sights, visited palaces, churches and gardens, and educated themselves with a trip to a manufacturer of mirrors. Henry Thrale also called in on Paris’s biggest brewer, a man called Antoine-Joseph Santerre, taking Johnson with him.

Johnson’s notes of the visit say that Santerre’s Hortensia brewery, in the Rue de Reuilly, part of the Faubourg St Antoine, although the largest of 17 brewing establishments in the city, brewed just 4,000 barrels a year. This was barely a 20th of the annual output at the time of Thrale’s own Anchor brewery in Southwark. Johnson also recorded that Santerre made his own malt, and used about as much malt per barrel as Thrale did; and he sold his beer for the same price as Thrale, though he paid no malt tax, and only half as much beer tax.

Johnson – an oak-hard Tory, who had recently produced a pamphlet attacking the American colonists for their rebelliousness against the British crown – would have been horrified to learn that he was shaking hands with a man who, 14 years later, would aid the mobs of the Faubourg St Antoine in their successful assault of July 14 on the Bastille, and who, four and a half years after that, would escort the King of France, Louis XVI, from his prison to the guillotine.

Johnson was five years dead when the French Revolution broke out, but Hester Thrale remembered Santerre, and suggested after the Parisian brewer became notorious that he had become a revolutionary because of an incident that happened around the time the Thrales were in Paris. A fine horse belonging to Santerre got in the way of a royal procession and an officer in the army drew out his pistol and shot the animal dead, an act that, according to Hester, filled Santerre with anger.

Antoine-Joseph Santerre was the third of six children born to Augustin Santerre, a brewer from the small town of Saint Michel in Thiérache, just seven miles from the modern Belgian border in Northern France. Augustin had moved to Paris in 1747, buying in December that year the Magdeleine brewery in the Rue d’Orléans, in the Faubourg St Marcel, from a widow called Marguerite Poussy. Four months later he married his cousin Marie-Marguerite, whose family were also brewers, from Cambrai, another town in north-east France. Augustin’s business later moved to Rue Censier, on the Left Bank, where Antoine was born in 1752, and where he served his apprenticeship as a brewer. Antoine’s parents both died in 1770, but in 1772, aged only 20, he was able to buy the Hortensia brewery in the Faubourg St Antoine from a Monsieur Acloque for 65,000 francs.

Santerre was fascinated by la bière Anglais: his brother François, who also ran breweries in and around Paris, visited London and studied brewing techniques there, bringing some back to France, where Antoine adopted them. According to his biographer, Antoine Carro, writing in 1847, Antoine Santerre was the first brewer in France to use a thermometer to measure accurately the temperature of his mashtun liquor, rather than the “uncertain gropings” of before, when brewers would judge the temperature by how long they could hold their hand in the water. He was the first to dry his malt English-style, with coke rather than wood, coke being so little known in Frances, Carro said, that it did not even have a name in French: Santerre called it “l’escarbille“, “cinders”, the name under which coke was apparently “long known” subsequently by French brewers. Santerre was also the first French brewer to install a steam engine in his brewery, which replaced four horses, Carro said. In addition he and his brother analysed English ale and porter so successfully that they were able to “perfectly imitate them”, and become, for a long time, the only brewers in France to make the two English styles, in a brewery run by François in Sevres, some six miles from the heart of Paris.

A rather less flattering picture of Santerre in his uniform

Santerre, five feet four inches tall, with brown eyes – “the left significantly smaller than the right”, according to Carro – and chestnut hair, “always well powdered and arranged with care”, was hugely popular with the poor people of the Faubourg St Antoine, one of Paris’s more industrialised districts. In part, it was said, this was because of his bluff personality and what was described as “a sonorous, easy eloquence”, and in part because he gave out large sums of money in the district, as well as handing out provisions: during one famine he distributed bread to the poor worth three hundred thousand francs, and in the winter of 1792, it was said, he bought up all the rice he could find and “flocks of sheep” and turned the brewery coppers into stewpots, with his workmen preparing enormous stews for the poor. He was famous as a horseman, and reckoned, according to later accounts, to be the second-best rider in the kingdom, after Louis-Philippe, Duc d’Orleans. All the horses in the brewery stables were “magnifique”, according to Carro, including one giant called “Sans pareil”, and Santerre had a reputation for being able to take animals rejected elsewhere for being too rebellious and taming them for work between the shafts.

In May 1789, as Louis XVI struggled to control a financial crisis caused by the costs of supporting the American Revolution and the failure to properly tax the French nobility, the king had convened a meeting of France’s ancient parliament, the Estates-general. It quickly became clear that the “Third Estate”, the representatives of the people, wanted a great deal of power to be surrendered by the king before they would agree to any solution to the problem of funding the state. In the middle of July the tensions between the king, completely unwilling to see his privileges and power eroded, and the Third Estate, who had formed themselves into a National Assembly, exploded into violence. The Parisian mob, fearful that troops would be used against the National Assembly, stormed the royal fortress of the Bastille, on the edge of the Faubourg St Antoine, to get hold of the gunpowder that was stored there. Santerre led the attackers (although his later detractors disputed this), was supposedly wounded in the assault, and cemented himself in the hearts of the local people as a hero of the revolution. When, very soon after, an armed people’s militia, was formed, the National Guard, Santerre was given command of the Faubourg St Antoine battalion.

Over the next three years Santerre’s brewery became a meeting place for the most revolutionary group in French politics, the Jacobins, who were led by men such as Robespierre and Danton. As France struggled to turn itself from absolutism into something closer to a constitutional monarchy, Santerre was involved in a couple of unsuccessful insurrections evidently bent on eliminating royal power completely. Then, on August 10 1792, he led an armed mob many thousands strong from the Faubourg St Antoine into the Tuileries, the royal palace. (Strangely, one of Louis’s staunchest defenders on the day of the Tuileries invasion was another brewer-National Guard commander, called Acloque – the son of the man from whom Santerre bought the Hortensia brewery, whose own brewhouse was in the Faubourg St Marceau.) The invasion of the Tuileries culminated in the flight of Louis XVI into the arms of the National Assembly; the massacre of the Swiss Guards; Santerre’s elevation to commander in chief of the whole of the Paris National Guard with the rank of general; and, six weeks later Louis XVI’s overthrow and arrest.

As commander of the National Guard, Santerre was in charge of the ex-king during his imprisonment and trial, and it was Santerre who came to take Louis to the guillotine on January 21 1793, allegedly telling him: “Monsieur, it’s time to go.” What happened when the ex-king mounted the steps to the guillotine in the Place de la Revolution has been argued over for two centuries: Louis turned to the huge crowd, declared his innocence and forgave his enemies. Before he could say any more, the military drummers around the scaffold started up, drowning out any further words, and Louis was forced to lay his head upon the block, the blade of the guillotine descending upon his neck. Most records say it was Santerre the brewer who ordered the drummers to begin playing, with at least one account claiming that Santerre had shouted out as the king tried to speak that that he had not brought Louis “there to declaim, but to die.” For that he was declared by the English politician Edmund Burke to be a “nefarious villain”, while others called him “inhuman”, “a monster of cruelty”, “infamous” and “execrable”.

The execution of Louis XVI

There are at least three other candidates for the man who told the drummers to start up and block the sound of Louis’s last speech, however. Santerre’s family later claimed that the brewer actually silenced the drums, to enable Louis to speak to the people, and that General Jean Francois Berruyer, the army commander in Paris, who was in sole command at the execution, ordered the drums to begin beating again. Berruyer allegedly said later that as Louis began speaking, “Santerre did not interfere, and if I had not ordered an immediate drum roll to smother the voice of the tyrant, I do not know what would have happened!” Some have claimed it was Santerre’s aide-de-camp, a comic actor called Dugazon, who gave the order. Another tradition says that the man who exclaimed: “Strike the drums!” was Berruyer’s chief of staff, Louis Charles Antoine de Beaufranchet, Comte d’Oyat – whose mother was Marie-Louise O’Murphy, former 15-year-old mistress to Louis XV, and whose father, it was alleged, was Louis XV himself, which would mean the Comte was Louis XVI’s illegitimate great-uncle.

All the same, years later, in 1802, Santerre told an English visitor to Paris called (somewhat ironically) Mr King, who had arranged an interview ostensibly to see a “brewing machine” the Frenchman had invented, that he had indeed ordered the drums to roll: “He said it was expected there would be a cry of mercy, and he had received peremptory orders to fire on those who called for mercy; he saw several well-known aristocrats surrounding the scaffold and preparing to cry out; an immense body of Marseillois watched them, and meant to answer it with a contrary exclamation. If this contest had ensued, thousands would have perished in; it he perceived what was passing and, from the most humane motives, and not to drown the King’s voice and distress him in his last few moments, he ordered the drums to beat; and, though the duty of seeing the King’s sentence executed devolved on him, it was impossible he could rejoice at an event that, however necessary, was distressing and lamentable; he deplored it as much as any man in France.”

All the while Santerre was in charge of the National Guard in Paris, his brewery business was still running: in April 1793 he obtained a tax rebate of 40,603 francs in beer duty on the grounds that that the beer made by his brewery in the years 1789 to 1791 had been supplied free to National Guards and the “patriotic populace”. Shortly before, Santerre had brought ridicule upon himself by having placards put up around Paris urging people to get rid of their pets, saying that the city’s cats and dogs ate enough food to feed 1,500 men. One joker urged him to get rid of all the sparrows from Paris as well.

Meanwhile the Vendée, in the far west of France, had exploded into revolt, and Santerre was appointed a Brigadier-General and placed in charge of an army of 14,000 men sent from Paris to put the counter-revolutionaries down. Unfortunately he was a terrible general: he was beaten in battle at Saumur on June 9 1793 and Coron on September 18 1793 (his enemies claimed Santerre ran away the first time the Vendeans opened fire on the Parisian guards) and two thirds of the revolutionary troops were killed. Santerre was recalled to Paris in disgrace, faced with accusations from his cavalry commander, Joachim Murat (later one of Napoleon’s most loyal supporters, who became the future Emperor’s brother-in-law and, from 1808 to 1815, King of Naples) of drunkenness, ignorance and cowardice, and claims that he was a secret Orleanist – supporter of the Duc d’Orleans, cousin of Louis XVI, now calling himself Phillipe Egalité, but who was suspected of wanting the throne of France for himself. Santerre was sent to prison, where he remained until the fall of Robespierre in July 1794.

An Italian caricature of Santerre, with hops around his sword

His enemies had joked at the time of his military failures that the brewer-general had “n’eut de Mars que la bière“, a pun on “bière de Mars“, French for “March beer”. No longer a general, Santerre tried to return to brewing. His wife, however, had fled Paris leaving the brewery shuttered up, and the business never recovered. In January 1796 it was sold to a Monsieur Cousin. Santerre managed to obtain a post buying horses abroad for the Directory, the post-Terror government of France, and went into property speculation, at first successfully. His influence with the people was still great enough that when Napoleon Bonaparte enacted his coup of 18 Brumaire in 1797, which put Bonaparte over France as “First Consul”, he sent a message to Santerre saying that if the Fauberg St Antoine was not kept quiet “I will have him shot before another hour passes over his head.”

All the same, in 1800 Napoleon restored Santerre’s rank of Brigadier-General to him, albeit only on half-pay pension. Santerre carried on buying and selling property. However, in 1805 he made a stretch too far, buying a chateau in western Normandy for 1.8 million francs. The expenses of the purchase bankrupted him. He was forced to live with his eldest son in an apartment in Paris, hiding from his creditors.

By 1807 Santerre was losing his grip: he was convinced the people of the Vendée were after him with an iron cage in which they wished to roast him alive. Yet he was still able to write a book, L’Art du Brasseur, the art of brewing, dedicated to his sons Augustin, Alexandre and Théodore, and covering every aspect of the brewing process, from malting onwards, including the vital role of supervision of the workforce. “You have to be the inspector of everyone, and without pause, if you want to succeed completely,” Santerre told his sons. The following year he suffered a stroke, and he died in February 1809, aged 55. Not one friend came to his funeral.

After his death, and particularly after the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne of France, Santerre continued to be regarded as the most villainous brewer that ever lived, for his alleged actions at the execution of Louis XVI. He is also, because of his roles in the death of Louis XVI and the uprising in the Vendee, the real-life brewer who appears in the most works of fiction: Victor Hugo, Antony Trollope, Baroness Orczy (creator of the Scarlet Pimpernel), Alexander Dumas and ten or a dozen more authors have included Santerre as a character in novels set at the time of the French Revolution.

It’s a great tale, repeated often, and I never dissected it until I read it again in the Oxford Companion to Beer, where it appears in the entry for “drinking customs”:

“The diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706) mentions a yard of ale being used to toast King James II but the vessel has more plebeian origins. It was designed to meet the needs of stagecoach drivers who were in a rush to get to their final destinations. At intermediate steps the drivers would be hand ale in a yard glass through an inn window, the glass being of sufficient length for the driver to take it without leaving his coach.”

Perhaps because this occurs just four paragraphs after a claim that King Edgar, a pre-Conquest king of England, tried to limit villages to only one alehouse each in an attempt to cut drunkenness, which is definitely a pile of Anglo-Saxon pants (the permanently established alehouse as a village institution was probably at least three centuries away when Edgar was on the throne, and there wasn’t the infrastructure in his time to enforce such a law anyway – and nor is there a single parchment scrap of evidence for such a decree), myths were at the front of my brain, which is why this time when I read about coach drivers and yards of ale I finally went: “?”

I’m lucky, living in West London, a very short walk from a train station. I can get up to the British Library at St Pancras in less than the 50 minutes advertised time between ordering books via the online catalogue and those books being brought up from the shelves. Turn right out of King’s Cross past the stores built for Thomas Salt, brewer of Burton upon Trent, in the 19th century to keep shipments of pale ale in, up the Euston Road and into the BL, one of my favourite places on the planet (it even has a couple of hop plants growing up one wall). Check my coat in the downstairs lockers, up the wide stairs, walk through the doors of the Humanities A reading room, find a seat among a couple of hundred or more other scholars researching who knows what, go up to the collection desk and pick up the haul: half a dozen or so Victorian and Edwardian books and periodicals.

A footed ale-yard

There was certainly a fair amount of interest in the “ale-yard” glass, though as H Symer Cuming, who presented a paper on “The Ale-Yard or Long Glass” to the British Archaeological Society in 1874, declared: “The ale-yard and its parts form a singular group of vessels which are far more spoken about written about.” Symer Cuming, who gave the capacity of a yard of ale as a quart, said he had “searched in vain in printed books” for the history of the ale-yard: and I have searched in vain myself for any mention at all from earlier than my lifetime of stage coach drivers drinking from yards of ale.

Symer Cuming definitely doesn’t mention stage-coach drivers, though he gives a nod to the Alma beerhouse, near Galley Hill, Swanscombe, Kent, built in 1860, which in his era had a sign saying: “London Porter and Ales Sold by the Yard” (a joke also found at the George Inn, Bexley High Street, Kent, according to a writer in 1889, although see later). He mentions the mock “corporation” at Hale, Cheshire (now in Trafford, Manchester) that had the “Hale-yard” as its mace (another repeated joke: in Hanley, in the Potteries, the mock “corporation” swore in each new member with a ceremony that involved drinking from a yard-long glass, though the contents were apparently port when the ceremony began in 1783, before changing to beer and, by the start of the 20th century, champagne. Over the years the Hanley revellers broke their ale-yard at least twice). Symer Cuming also says that yard-of-ale glasses came in both footed and footless forms, the latter the familiar bulb-ended version. But coachmen in a hurry: not a word, though Symer Cuming was writing within 20 years of the last mailcoaches being driven off the road by steam trains.

The magazine Notes and Queries, Victorian England’s answer to Wikipedia, covered the subject of the yard of ale glass, or yard of beer glass, multiple times in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s. One of the first mentions, in 1869, describes the ceremony of the “long glass” at Eton, when “RHBH” wrote:

There still exists at Eton the custom of drinking a yard of ale, or, as it is called there, the long glass. Once a week, in the summer half, about twenty to thirty of the boys in the boats, or of the principal cricket or foot-ball players, invited by the captain of the boats and the captain of the cricket eleven, assemble in a room at a small public house for luncheon. The luncheon, or “cellar”, as it is called, consists of bread and cheese, salads, beer and cider-cup. At the conclusion of the luncheon, a boy, previously invited for the purpose, is requested to step forward; he sits down on a chair, a napkin is tied round his neck, and the long glass filled with beer is presented to him. Watches are pulled out, and at a given signal he begins to drink. If he does it in good time he is greeted with loud applause; but if he leaves a drop at the bottom of the bowl it has to be refilled and he has to drink again. Two or three fellows are asked to drink at each cellar, and after this initiation they are entitled to be asked on future occasions. This is a very old institution.

These were schoolboys, of course, aged probably between 15 or 16 and 18. The “beer bong” is not new. (A brief article in the Lincolnshire Chronicle in April 1899, incidentally, agrees the Eton glass held a pint, indicates the “long glass” ceremony still took place, and says the record time for emptying it was nine seconds.)

Another N&Q correspondent, “Ellcee”, in 1869 said that for public houses, possession of, and flaunting, a “yard of ale” glass was “not at all an uncommon mode of inducing custom fifty or sixty years ago”; that is, around 1809 to 1819, and a third pointed out that the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) possessed what it called a “forfeit glass” a yard long and with a bulb at one end, which was apparently made in Venice in the 17th century, and had been donated by the Duke of Bucchleuch. Others mentioned ale-yard glasses that could be seen at places such as Knole House in Sevenoaks, the Red Lion, Retford, a pub in Sandgate, Kent, the Wrestlers Inn, Cambridge, and elsewhere. In 1882 a description was given of the custom associated with the yard of beer glass around Bexley, Kent:

In several houses may be seen an advertisement that “Beer is sold by the yard.” And so it is, in accordance with a local custom. There is a glass vessel exactly three feet in length, with a very narrow stem, slightly lipped at the mouth and a globular bowl at the bottom … This is filled with beer, and any one who can drink it without spilling it may have it for nothing, but if he spills one drop he pays double. It looks so easy and it is so difficult, not to say impossible, to a novice. You take the vessel in both hands, apply the lip to your mouth and then gently tilt it. At first the beer flows quietly and slowly, and you think how admirably you are overcoming the difficulty. Suddenly, when the vessel is tilted a little, more the air rushes up the stem into the bowl and splashes about half a pint into your face. The cheapest plan is to treat the barman to a yard of beer and see how he does it. He will be only too happy to oblige you, and the Bexley ale vanishes with a rapidity only equalled by that of the beer consumed at Heidelberg among the students. The custom has extended far beyond Bexley and not only in the neighbouring villages but even near Oxford the yard of beer is advertised.

(A later correspondent revealed that it was only, again, the George Inn, Bexley that provided the yard of ale, and even it had stopped doing so “within the last twelvemonth” when the glass was accidently smashed.) But again, not one writer talked of coach drivers in connection with yards of ale.

The same absence of evidence occurs in specialist books on drinking glasses. The history of the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers, published in 1898, has a drawing of the Eton “long glass”, but no coach drivers. Beverages Past and Present by Edward Randolph Emerson, published in 1908, calls the ale-yard “decidedly original” to the English, describing it as “a trumpet-shaped glass exactly a yard in length, the narrow end being closed, and expanded into a large ball.” Emerson gave a good account of the problems of drinking from a yard of ale:

Its internal capacity is a little more than a pint, and when filled with ale many a thirsty tyro has been challenged to empty it without taking it from his mouth. This is no easy task. So long as the tube contains fluid, it drains out smoothly, but when air reaches the bulb it displaces the liquor with a splash, startling the toper, and compelling him involuntarily to withdraw his mouth by the rush of the cold liquid over his face and dress.

Nowhere, however, does he mention coach drivers.

Emerson’s claim as to the difficulty of draining a yard of ale is challenged by Percy H Bate, author of English Table Glass, published in 1905, who describes ale yards (and half-yards) as coming in two forms,

those with feet and those without. Those without feet generally have a bulb at the base … and this bulb is supposed to render the emptying of them at one draught very difficult, the ale leaving the bulb with a rush and drenching the drinker. But, so far as I know, the difficulty is more imaginary than real; at any rate I have not found it at all difficult to empty the only one I ever had in my possession.

Bate added that

Being used as tests of skill at merry-makings and convivial assemblies, in which horse-play was not an unknown factor, most of the many that must have existed have been destroyed, and they are now distinctly rare.

Among the vessels Bate mentions are footless “travellers’ glasses”, which, he said, would be filled with spirits as the coach arrived at an inn for a change of horses, emptied by the passengers “without delay”, and “the coach would roll on.” (Apparently some inns would trick the passengers with glasses that, when filled with gin, looked of normal capacity, but which actually had extra-thick walls and contained much less than the tuppence-worth of spirits charged for. The whole operation was done so quickly that the coach was off out through the archway before the passengers realised they had been diddled.) But on the coach drivers themselves, and how they might have been refreshed, he is again, silent.

Specialist books on coach travel also fail to supply references to coach drivers and ale-yards. Stage-coach and mail in days of yore by Charles H Harper, published in 1907, says the coach-horn was known as the “yard of tin”, but that is the closest it gets. The yard of ale continues to be mentioned as a curiosity through the first half of the 20th century, along with the difficulty of drinking from it – “gardyloo!”, a correspondent in the Western Mail writes in March 1934 in a description of an ale yard to be seen at Exeter museum – but still the coach driver makes no appearance in the story.

An engraving of a painting by the great 17th-century Dutch brewer-painter Jan Steen, 'Le Roi Boit!', which is sometimes said to show a yard of ale: it doesn't, that glass is clearly only 15 or so inches long

The earliest reference to the coach driver legend I have found is from 1952, just 60 years ago, in a report of a day trip by the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art:

On the return journey the party visited the ancient coaching inn at Hatherleigh [west Devon], this proving one of the most attractive features of the excursion, for the hostelry dates from 1450 … To enter the rooms is to recapture the spirit of ancient times: for on the old walls are hung scores of objects of former use, powder-flasks, leathern bottles, mulling-slippers, and many other implements, particularly the “yard of ale” and “yard-and-a-half of ale” glasses handed to drivers of stage coaches.

(Mulling slippers, incidentally, are not what you put on your feet while wearing your thinking cap, but tin or copper slipper-shaped containers for filling with mulled beer and poking into the coals of a fire to warm the contents.)

By the 1960s, barely a decade after this first mention, the “yard-of-ale was a means of quenching a stagecoach driver’s thirst at an inn stop so that he could remain in the box” story seems to have become mainstream, and any inn worth its fake oak beams had a yard of ale on the wall as well. Here’s a description from the Brewing Review of a “pub” built as part of a British Week exhibition in Copenhagen in 1964 – read and weep:

It was entirely built of wood with a false ceiling and a roof of realistic wooden tiles, and contained a collection of sporting prints, a darts-board, a yard of ale glass, horse brasses and post horns and in every way typified the traditional “local”.

Along with the yard of ale glass on the wall came the revival of the yard-of-ale drinking contest, so that pubs from Boston to Sydney had men drenching themselves in beer as they tried to emulate the Eton wet bobs and dry bobs of the 19th century and finish their yard in under 10 seconds. (The current record is five seconds, apparently.)

But with all that, I hope you’ll agree, we have found no evidence that the yard of ale was originally “designed to meet the needs of stagecoach drivers” in a hurry. In fact, there is no evidence that the yard of ale was ever used to refresh coach drivers at all (and if it had been, it certainly wouldn’t have been handed up to the driver through an inn window, which would be an excellent way to either spill the ale or smash the glass). Instead, I think, it seems clear that the yard of ale was (1) produced as something of a show-off, for the glassmaker and the owner, and (2) primarily or almost solely supplied and bought as a “forfeit glass”, for use in drinking games and contests of skill, just as it is today.

However, the point of all this is not to show that the OCB is wrong, again. It’s to show how difficult it is to verify, or not, even the most widely known “fact”. Given that the coach driver/yard of ale meme has been repeated so often over the past 40 or 50 years, and it takes up only a couple of sentences in an OCB article of several hundred words, the writer was actually perfectly justified in not searching out references to back the claim up. For those two sentences, at the OUP’s rate of five cents a word, the writer would have earned about £1.75. It cost me three times that to travel up to the British Library and back, and I only live in West London. Factor in the time it all took, and researching every sentence you write rapidly becomes woefully cost-ineffective.

The problem is: you can’t afford to check everything. But at the same time, as we have seen, you can’t trust anything, certainly nothing written a century and a half or more after the times it claims to describe. Primary research is paramount, and secondary sources are not enough to be sure. The motto of the historian has to be: “Non lego, non credo“. So, pinned by the horns of this dilemma, what do you do? I don’t know. Certainly, if you are writing a short article, I think it’s entirely forgivable to use solely secondary sources: you don’t have time to do anything else. Not so much if you are writing a book. But the problem with the OCB is that, magnificent though its intentions are, it is really only a collection of short articles, few or none of which were written by people with any time to conduct primary research, and who were not being paid enough to conduct primary research anyway. So, understandably, they repeated the secondary sources: which is unfortunate when, as with the yard of ale/coach drivers story, those secondary sources appear to be completely wrong.

1) It’s only beer.

2) It’s all about the taste.

3) You like what you like. I like what I like.

There: who could possibly object to any of that? You agree? Excellent. Now I’m going to test you. Have a brown paper bag handy, and read this, which is a genuine comment grabbed from the web during 2011:

So, under the recommendation of a few people online, I bought myself a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale. And I have to say… It’s one of the best beers I’ve ever had. Normally I stuck to more mainstream pale lagers, such as Corona Extra, Budweiser and Peroni, so was a bit cautious about trying this, and as I opened it up, the rich beer smell really hit me, and I was expecting a bitter, overpowering flavour. Nevertheless, I tried a gulp of it… And it went down like water! Yet, the flavour was there, and strong, but not overpowering by any means. It’s fairly refreshing, although I will say you should only drink it when it’s cold, it tastes much better to me.

OK, blow into the brown paper bag and place it over your nose and mouth … breathe in and out slowly … repeat after me: “It’s only beer … It’s all about the taste … You like what you like. I like what I like.” Feeling better now? Good.

Really, if people like things you don’t like, it doesn’t matter. And nor does it matter if they don’t like things that you adore. There are, in fact, amazingly few things a majority of people can agree on, and almost none that everybody votes for: we live in a world of pluralities and minorities. You can live with that, or you can drive up your blood pressure. If you enjoy something that someone else doesn’t, well, just enjoy your enjoyment. And if they enjoy something you can’t see the point of, that’s really not your problem. Have a good year.

If you search through 19th century newspapers, it quickly becomes clear that the trinity of beef, heavy dried-fruit-stuffed pudding and good ale was at the heart of the Christmas festivities everywhere in Britain, literally from palace to poorhouse. Here’s the Liverpool Weekly Mercury for Saturday September 29 1855:

THE ROYAL BARON OF BEEF

This old English joint was this year supplied to Windsor Castle by the royal purveyors at Windsor. The baron was cut from a five-year-old Highland Scot, fed by his Royal Highness Prince Albert, at the Norfolk Farm, and weighed 425lb. The process of roasting occupied 15 hours. It was decorated with holly and ivy, and placed cold on a sideboard in the banqueting-room on Christmas-day, where it will remain, together with the boar’s head and woodcock pie, during the week.

Must have been pretty cold in that banqueting hall, for beef, pie and boar to remain healthy for a week. If you’ve not heard of a baron of beef, incidentally, the excellent Food History Jottings blog explains all: “According to Dr Johnson, ‘a Baron of Beef is when the two sirloins are not cut asunder, but joined together by the end of the backbone’. In other words, the whole bum of an ox!”

Roasting the royal Baron of Beef at Windsor, 1856

Anyway, at the same time as Victoria and the rest of the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas were cutting slices off 30 stone of cooked ox bum, her poorest subjects were enjoying the same sort of treat. The Christmas day workhouse meal of roast beef, plum pudding and ale had become an institution by the mid-19th century: in London on December 25 1860, between 40,000 and 50,000 inmates of the metropolitan workhouses were supplied with roast beef and plum pudding. Even at the lower estimate, that is around 18 tons of beef, without bones, and perhaps 25 tons of pudding. Here’s a tiny snatch of reports of the workhouse festivities around the country plucked from just one year, Christmas 1869, starting with the Bristol Mercury of Saturday January 1 1870

CHRISTMAS TREATS AT THE BRISTOL AND CLIFTON UNION WORKHOUSES

On Christmas-day the inmates at the Bristol Union at Stapleton and the Clifton Union at Fishpond-road were regaled with roast beef and plum pudding. The luxuries of beer, tobacco and snuff were added to the substantial Christmas fare; and the children were not forgotten on the festive occasion. At the Clifton Union there was a very imposing Christmas tree, loaded with books and toys to the value of about £8, for the youngsters … Thanks to the efforts of the master and matron and their assistants, the interior of the building was very prettily decorated with evergreens, mottoes, and artificial flowers. No less than eight hundredweight of beef and eleven or twelve hundredweight of pudding were prepared for the Christmas feast; and in these days of complaints as to workhouse dietry and management, Clifton Union on Saturday last must have shown that even in the gloomy life of a pauper there are some gleams of sunshine.

The Reading Mercury for the same day, talking about events at Maidenhead, said:

CHRISTMAS AT COOKHAM UNION

On Christmas-eve each of the inmates in the men’s and women’s infirmaries enjoyed an extra cup of tea, ham, cakes &c., and just before bedtime each had a glass of mulled wine; this treat was given by the Master, Mr Malyon. In the evening the old men were regaled with a large mince pie and some of Nicholson’s fine old ale, liberally given by Mr W. Nicholson, together with pipes and tobacco, all spending a pleasant evening with songs &c. On Christmas-day a substantial dinner, consisting of roast beef and plum pudding and ale, was given to each inmate.

That was William Nicholson, who had founded his brewery 30 years earlier in Maidenhead High Street: it finally closed in 1959, taken over by Courage & Barclay of London.

Boiling the pudding in a kitchen copper – and yes, you could boil wort in that copper, too

In the York Workhouse, the York Herald revealed,

there were 480 inmates, exclusive of vagrants, on Christmas Day, which is the largest number of inmates ever present on a similar occasion … By the kind liberality of the guardians and their friends this large number of paupers had the opportunity of partaking of the good old English fare with which the advent of Christmas is associated. A most substantial and first-class dinner was provided for them … Upwards of 50 stones of prime roast beef, with mashed potato, comprised the first course, which was followed by 35 monster plum puddings, with brandy sauce, &c. The puddings consisted of 77 1/2 lbs flour, 60lbs suet, 50lbs sugar, 60lbs currants, 14lbs raisins, 7lbs lemon peel, and 180 eggs. After dinner a suitable allowance of ale, tobacco &c. was made to the adults and fruits &c. distributed among the children.

Those puddings, to save you working it out, weighed around eight pounds each. They would have each been wrapped up in a cloth and hung, suspended, on a pole in a copper full of boiling water to cook, that copper being identical to the sort found in any small 19th century brewery, with a coal fire underneath.

In Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, according to the Northampton Mercury,

The Workhouse on Christmas Eve was gaily decorated with various devices in holly, ivy, laurel, and winter flowers. At twelve o’clock on Christmas-day more than 100 old and young people sat down to a substantial dinner of roast beef, boiled round of beef, roast and boiled legs and shoulders of mutton, and a bountiful supply of plum pudding. Each adult male had also one pint of good home-brewed ale … After supper each adult inmate had one pint of ale and one oz. of tobacco. The old women had each one pint of ale, and snuff. The old people thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and repeatedly expressed their thanks to the guardians and ratepayers, also to the master and matron, who were indefatigable in their attention.

Not everybody had roast beef. The local newspaper in Winchester reported after Christmas Day 1859:

MILITARY CHRISTMAS

The soldiers in this garrison had their accustomed treat, viz, a plentiful supply of roast and baked pork (beef being no treat to them), plum pudding and good ale on Christmas day. We need hardly say that the gallant fellows thoroughly enjoyed their fare, and spent a most “jolly” Christmas.

Truly, these soldiers were beef-eaters.

Of course, the royal Christmas dinner, while based on the same principles as those given to the paupers, was distinctly grander: here’s the menu for Christmas Day 1896 at Osborne House, Queen Victoria’s home on the Isle of Wight (which I nicked from here):

The menu for the Royal Christmas dinner, 1896

Kromeskies (which I admit I had never heard of before) are a sort of bacon-and-minced-meat fritter. The baron of beef (cooked at Windsor and brought down by train and ferry), you’ll see, is still on the sideboard with the boar’s head and the pie, just as it was 41 years earlier. More interesting is why the roast turkeys were speaking French (“Les Dindes rôties à la Chipolata“) but the roast sirloin of beef was allowed to be English. And did they really have the plum pudding with the “relevé“, the main part of the meal? Apparently, at least in some places. Here are a couple of reports of workhouse Christmas dinners that suggest this happened elsewhere, starting with the Essex Newsman in Colchester, Saturday 29 December 1900, reporting on what it – correctly – called “the last Christmas of the century” the previous Tuesday. Describing the celebrations at the local home for the mentally handicapped, the Eastern Counties’ Asylum for Idiots and Imbeciles (sic – later the Royal Eastern Counties’ Institution) at Essex Hall: “Letters, cards and parcels were delivered to each patient during the morning. At 12.30 all those who were well enough sat down to an excellent dinner of roast beef and plum pudding, followed by dessert.”

OK, I know you’re trying hard to be PC and not think “Yeah, idiots and imbeciles WOULD have their Christmas pudding at the same time as their roast beef,” but here’s the Isle of Man Times on Tuesday 26 December 1893:

“On Christmas Day the inmates of the House of Industry were again the recipients of the usual good fare, which, at this season of the year, through the kindness of Mr HP Noble, JP, Villa Marina, they have for the last 25 years been privileged to enjoy … At one o’clock over 50 of the inmates were served with the good old-fashioned Christmas dinner, consisting of roast beef, potatoes, plum pudding and the best ale. The dessert consisted of apples and oranges, to which were added tobacco and snuff.

and according to the Liverpool Mercury, when 1,330 sailors and marines from the Channel Fleet were given dinner by the mayor and citizens of Liverpool at St George’s Hall in October 1888, the menu consisted of “roast turkey and sausages, roast goose with onions and apple sauce, roast beef, potatoes and cauliflower, plum pudding, and apples and pears for dessert.”

That last, non-Christmassy reference to roast beef and plum pudding is a pointer to the forgotten fact that, as Food History Jottings says, “roast beef served with plum pudding is the most evocative of past traditions of hospitality. It was once Britain’s prime celebration dish and a potent symbol of the nation’s character and cohesiveness.” Here’s a report from the Bury and Norwich Post of Wednesday 2 January 1805:

On Christmas day, Lord Whitworth entertained the Holmesdale Volunteers, consisting of 700 men, at Seven Oaks in Kent, with a very hospitable dinner consisting of roast and boiled beef, and plum-puddings, with a quart of ale to each man and a half a crown for liquor. His Lordship gave 50l. to be distributed among the families of those who are labouring men.

The Holmesdale Volunteers were named for the Vale of Holmesdale at the foot of the North Downs. Lord Whitworth was a British diplomat whose wife, the former Duchess of Dorset, brought into the marriage a good fortune and ownership of Knole Park, Sevenoaks. Britain was back at war with France: even as the Volunteers dined, Napoleon was preparing an invasion at Boulogne, within sight of the Kent coast. If his barges had sailed, the Volunteers would have been among the Britons attempting to stop him.

A few years later, though Britain was still fighting France, the nation united in celebration for the golden jubilee of George III in October 1810. The king and his family lived at Kew, in the grounds of what is now Kew Gardens, and Kew itself saw a substantial party on October 25:

The preparations for the celebration of this memorable day at Kew were completed yesterday. This morning was ushered in by the firing of cannon and the ringing of bells … After divine service, about 100 persons were entertained with roasted beef and plum-pudding, set out on tables, within a spacious marquee, erected on Kew-Green, opposite the high road. Rounds of beef were likewise cut up for the benefit of the wives and children of such persons as are natives of Kew. Porter, ale, and punch were plentifully distributed. On the health of His Majesty being drank, fifty pieces of cannon were discharged.

Within four years, Napoleon had been defeated, and Britain, as the Norfolk Chronicle recorded on Saturday May 14 1814, could celebrate again, in the usual way:

CATTON FEAST; May 6

To celebrate the glorious success of England and her Allies, the Restoration of the Bourbons to France and the Termination of Hostilities in Europe, a liberal subscription was raised and expended in the following handsome manner:- Six tables, of 20 yards long each, were arranged in the form of a crescent, extending along the front of an elevated and ornamental grove opposite Mr Ives’s lawn … At two o’clock all the inhabitants who could attend, to the number of nearly 500, each wearing a white cockade, sat down to a plentiful supply of Old English fare, roast beef, plum-pudding, and strong ale; the plum-puddings supporting flags, on each of which was wrought some appropriate motto.

Of course, just 10 months later, Napoleon had escaped from exile on Elba, and Britain was back in a war. The victory at Waterloo, however, meant more celebrations. Here’s the Hampshire Chronicle of Monday August 8, 1814:

On Saturday, at the Grainge Park, near Alresford, upwards of 300 of the poor of the adjoining parishes were bountifully regaled by Henry Drummond, Esq, in commemoration of the happy return of peace, with a good dinner, consisting of roast and boiled meat of every description, plum pudding and plenty of good old stingo … Weyhill, on Tuesday the 2nd inst presented a scene truly gratifying for its novelty, taste and elegance. The bells of the parish were ringing, and a band of music playing at an early hour. The Farnham hops booths were decorated with laurel and other emblematic representations of old England’s victories, crowned with a glorious peace. Tables were erected throughout the booths, which were amply supplied with beef, mutton, and plum pudding, where the worthy Rector, and most of the principal inhabitants, who were subscribers, dined together with 400 poor men, women and children, who were all regaled with good ale and strong beer, in which they drank the healths of the King, the Prince Regent and the naval and military heroes, with enthusiastic loyalty.

Weyhill, outside Andover, was one of the great agricultural fairs of England. It was a centre for the sale of all sorts of products, including hops from Farnham in Surrey, then a rival to Kent and Herefordshire for hop growing.

Why roast beef (and plum pudding and ale) stopped being the celebratory menu of Britain, I don’t know. I don’t really blame Dickens. Even in 1893, 50 years after A Christmas Carol was first published, the Northern Echo, talking about the Christmas preparations in Middlesbrough, could still say: “The roast beef of old England is invariably associated with this season of the year … Next to the Christmas beef the plum pudding secures the greatest amount of attention …”

Quite likely the disappearance of the roast beef of old England from the Christmas menu was because, with increasing affluence, roast beef became for many, as it was for those Winchester soldiers in 1859, “no treat” but a weekly occurrence. Similarly, affluence brought wine, rather than beer, to the dining table. And, of course, we no longer have the servant class available to cook vast quantities of beef, and boil huge numbers of plum puddings.

The last reference I have been able to find to the “traditional” celebration comes from the Tamworth Herald of Saturday January 2 1932:

Poor Law Institution

The dining room and wards of Tamworth Poor Law Institution were pleasingly decorated. The service was taken by the Rev AC Smith. A large “family” was catered for, numbering 170 inmates and 28 casuals. The usual Christmas fare was allowed by the Public Assistance Committee and included roast beef, roast pork,and vegetables, and plum pudding, tea and ale. Sweets, tobacco, cigarettes, fruits and nuts were distributed.

The Poor Law Institution – the official name for a workhouse – had actually been abolished in 1930, so the Tamworth Herald should have been referring to the “Public Assistance Institution”.

I doubt too many people, anyway, will be having roast baron of beef this Christmas, probably not even at Windsor Castle. The plum pudding hangs on, hurrah, even though this is the only time of year it is seen now, and its name has changed to reflect this: Christmas pudding. DO people still mostly have this with their Christmas dinner? I hope so. But whatever you’re putting on your Yule table this year (I’m going for duck), may it come with plenty of “good ale and strong beer”.

If you haven’t already, I urge you to read his latest blog post adding, clarifying and correcting the OCB’s Czech-related entries.

Evan has done something few, if any, writers in English about the origins of Pilsner Urquell, the “world’s first pale lager”, have bothered doing. He has uncovered, and read, the document in 1839 which effectively founded the brewery in Pilsen, the “Request of the Burghers with Brewing Rights for the Construction of Their Own Malt- and Brewhouse”, made by 12 prominent Pilsen burghers. He has also read the brewery’s own history, written for its 50th anniversary, Měšťanský pivovar v Plzni 1842-1892.

Among the fascinating facts that Evan has revealed so far, the following seem particularly worthy of note:

• The town of Pilsen was already being “flooded” by bottom-fermented “Bavarian-style” beer in 1839, the 12 would-be founders of the new brewery declared, and it seems one big reason why they wanted to build their own new brewery was to fight back against imports of lager beers from elsewhere, by making their own bottom-fermented brews in Pilsen.
• The builder of the new brewery, František Filaus “made a trip around the biggest breweries in Bohemia which were then already equipped for brewing bottom-fermented beer,” while in December 1839, the brewery’s architect, Martin Stelzer, “travelled to Bavaria, so that he could tour bigger breweries in Munich and elsewhere and use the experience thus gained for the construction and furnishing of the Burghers’ Brewery.”
• The yeast for the new brewery was certainly not “smuggled out of Bavaria by a monk”, as far too many sources try to claim (did anybody with their critical faculties engaged ever believe that?), nor even, apparently, brought with him by Josef Groll, the 29-year-old brewer from the town of Vilshofen in Lower Bavaria who was hired to run the new brewery. Instead, “seed yeast for the first batch and fermented wort were purchased from Bavaria,” according to the 1892 book. (The Groll family brewery, incidentally, no longer exists, but another concern in Vilshofen, the Wolferstetter brewery, still produces a Josef Groll Pils in his memory.)
• The maltings at the new brewery were “dle anglického spůsobu zařízený hvozd”, that is, loosely, “equipped with English-style malt kilns”, according to an account from 1883. That meant indirect heat: the same 1883 account says the kilns were “vytápěný odcházejícím teplem z místnosti ku vaření“, which looks to mean “heated by heat from the boiler-room”. Indirect heat makes it easier to control the heating, and easier to produce pale malt, which is just what the Plzeňský Prazdroj brewery did to make its pale lager.

That still leaves THE big mystery: if the burgher brewers of Pilsen wanted to compete against Bavarian-style bottom-fermented lagers, which would still have been quite dark (think “Dunkel”), why did they make a pale beer? Were they attempting to imitate English pale beers? Since pale bitter beers were only just taking off even in Britain in 1842 (although pale mild ales had been around for a couple of centuries), I don’t personally find that particularly likely.

However, Evan has promised “more on the origins of Pilsner Urquell coming up”, and I am hugely looking forward to reading additional revelations. I was delighted to read that Stelzer had toured the big breweries of Munich before the Plzeňský Prazdroj brewery was built, because I suggested in an article for Beer Connoisseur magazine in the US two and a half years ago that he must have done. In Munich he surely met Gabriel Sedlmayr II, of the Spaten brewery, who had been round Britain looking at the latest brewing and malting techniques being practised in places such as London, Burton upon Trent and Edinburgh, and Sedlmayr would have been able to tell him about English malting techniques. Munich, at that time, was becoming a magnet for brewers in Continental Europe because of the advances in brewing methods being made by Sedlmayr, as he perfected the techniques of lager brewing.

Sedlmayr wasn’t, at that time, making pale malts: however, the man who accompanied him to Britain on one of his trips, Anton Dreher of the Klein-Schwechat brewery near Vienna, DID come back and start producing paler English-style malts, allied with Bavarian-style lagering, which resulted in a copper-brown beer, the first “Vienna-style” lager. Vienna was then, of course, the capital of the Austrian empire, of which Bohemia (and Pilsen) were still a part: it would not be surprising if Stelzer, a citizen of the Austrian empire, also visited Vienna and met Dreher (whose name, it always amuses me to note, translates as “Tony Turner”), and talked about malting techniques, but there seems to be no evidence as yet that he did so.

I’d also love to know why Josef Groll was hired (apparently by Stelzer) to run the new brewery: Vilshofen, while nearer Pilsen than Munich is, is a comparative backwater, and if Stelzer had been to Munich, why did he not bring a Munich brewer back with him to Bohemia? This site claims (on what authority I know not) that Groll studied under both Sedlmayr and Dreher, but both allegedly complained about his rudeness, obstinacy, stubbornness and lack of self-control. If that’s true (I have no idea), it doesn’t look as it Stelzer bothered checking up on Groll’s references before he hired the young brewer …

An artesian well dug at Christie & Co's brewery, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire around 1926

In November 1799 a brief paragraph appear in the Times newspaper:

“A Porter Brewery is about to be established at Portsmouth, by a number of opulent Gentlemen, who have subscribed £5000 each. The Thames water for this undertaking is to be conveyed by shipping.”

The reason for the appearance of the second sentence is that many drinkers, at the time, were convinced that good porter, then easily the best-selling beer in London, and perhaps the most popular style in the British Isles, could only be brewed with water from the Thames. The “opulent Gentlemen” behind the proposed Portsmouth venture clearly felt that if they could say their porter was made with Thames water, it would give them instant credibility.

In fact, although several of the big London porter breweries stood by the banks of the Thames, including Barclay Perkins in Southwark, Calvert’s Hour Glass brewery almost directly opposite Barclay Parkins on Upper Thames Street in the City, and Hoare’s by St Katharine’s dock, even the Thames-side ones took their water from wells, or, like Whitbread in Chiswell Street, on the northern edge of the City, from reservoirs supplied by the New River, constructed in the 17th century to bring water to London from near Amwell in Hertfordshire.

In the “pre-scientific” era, writers on brewing knew that different waters had different effects on the final brew, and regularly recorded myths about which waters were best. A brewing book from 1719, A Guide to Gentlemen and Farmers for Brewing the Finest Malt Liquors insisted that “Upon the whole, the best Liquor to Brew with, is that which is taken from a small clear Rivulet or Brook, undisturb’d by Navigation or Fording,” though

“Possibly much the best Water in England is that at Castleton in Derbyshire, commonly called, The Devils Arss, Which Owzes from a great Rock, covered over with a shallow Earth … I have seen the Ale made of Castleton-Water as clear in three days after it was Barrelled, as the Spring-Water it self, and impossible to be known by the Eye in a Glass from the finest Canary Wine.”

Some had preferences that seem frankly bizarre today. A book called A Treatise on the Brewing of Beer, self-published in 1796 by one E Hughes of Uxbridge, declared that when it came to brewing liquor:

“Many persons very much prefer Pond Waters, such that are frequently disturbed by horses and other cattle, which generally causes it to be in a thick muddy state …”

Hughes was not too keen, declaring:

… but the sediments of this thick muddy water must be found prejudicial; for when the wort is emptied out of the cooling tubs into the working tun, or running from the coolers into the tun, a part of the sediment from the foulness of the water will follow the wort into the tun; consequently the yeast will be in a foul state, and cannot be of that utility in baking as though the brewing had been from pure clean water.

Well, quite. (Incidentally, the sale by brewers of their excess yeast to bakers was probably a regular event, but seems remarkably little recorded.) However, the preference for pondwater was expressed by other writers. William Ellis, author of the best-selling The London and Country Brewer, had a chapter in his 1736 edition called “Of the Nature of several Waters, and their Use in Brewing”, in which he praised pond water for brewing, declaring that water from “Blew-pot Pond on the high Green at Gaddesden in Hertfordshire” and “many others” were “often prefer’d for Brewing, even beyond many of the soft Well-waters about them.” (The Blue Pot Pond was close to Ellis’s home, and doubtless he had drunk ale made from its water.)

Like other 18th century writers on brewing, Ellis preferred what he (and they) called “soft” water from chalky sources, though today we would call this “semi-hard”, since the “hardness” disappears when the water is boiled, as the calcium carbonate dissolved in the water as it runs over or through the chalk comes out of solution as it is heated. “[S]uch soft water that percolates through Chalk, or a Grey Fire-stone [a type of limestone, I believe], is generally accounted best,” Ellis wrote,

“for Chalks in this respect excell all other Earths, in that it administers nothing unwholsome to the perfluent waters, but undoubtedly absorps by its drying spungy Quality any ill minerals that may accompany the water that runs thro’ them. For which reason they throw in, great Quantities of Chalk into their Wells at Ailsbury to soften their water, which coming off a black Sand-stone, is so hard and sharp that it will often turn their Beer sour in a Week’s time, so that in its Original State it’s neither fit to Wash nor Brew with, but so long as the Alcalous soft Particles of the Chalk holds good, they put it to both uses.”

Good river water, Ellis, believed,

“will make a stronger Drink with the same quantity of Malt than any of the Well-waters; insomuch that that of the Thames has been proved to make as strong Beer with seven Bushels of Malt, as Well-water with eight; and so are all River-waters in a proportionable degree, and where they can be obtain’d clean and pure, Drink may be drawn fine in a few Days after Tunning.”

I leave it to brewers to suggest if this could possibly be true.

Ellis (who revealed the ban by brewers on using the word “water” on the premises – “it is Sixpence forfeit in the London Brewhouse if the word Water is named” – was backed in his belief that pond water was the best sort for brewing with by the anonymous Guide to Malt Liquors, which said:

“Pond-Water and other Standing Waters in fat Grounds, if clear and sweet, make a Stronger Drink with less Malt, then Well, Pump or Conduit Water … Thames-Water is by no means fit to Brew Strong Beer to keep, for that, let the Drink which is Brewed of it be never so clear, it is apt on any considerable and sudden change of Weather, to ferment and grow foul. “

George Watkins, whose The compleat brewer; or, The art and mystery of brewing explained was published in 1760, wrote:

“WATER may distinguished into four kinds: Spring, River, Rain and Pond, and what is the worst in appearance often makes the best drink. No water can be fouler than that of the Thames, yet the clearest porter is brewed with it, Many have said no other but Thames water would make this species of drink, but that is plainly an error, for even in London there are porter brewers served from the New River; however none is better for it than that of the Thames, and in most cases the very purest and finest water is, for brewing, the worst of all.

“Our forefathers brewed their strong pale October with Well Water, but the expence in malt was very great, and the beer would have been wholesomer, and better, if they had used river water. The common foul water of large rivers, which differs little from that of ponds, would not have done, but the water of a clear rivulet best of all.

“This may in some measure serve as a direction to the brewer in general terms, and he will find it true that very soft water, such as rain water and that of ponds, and very hard, such as that of springs and wells, are proper in but a few cases; and that for high-coloured drink, river water is the best; and for the pale kinds, that of brooks or rivulets with a swift current. He cannot always have this exact choice but he must come as near it as he can.”

Note the passing reference to strong pale October, in there, incidentally. Watkins was another fan of adding chalk to brewing water, saying:

“A chalky water is essential to fine Dorchester beer; and unless its nature were understood, there might be a great error in the choice, even after the fact was known.

“Therefore if the brewer lives where there is a soft chalky water he need not fear success. But, as this is not the case often, we shall mention how the deficiency may be supplied. Let a load of soft chalk, a little broke to pieces, be strewed over the bottom of one of the large backs or coolers, and upon this pump as much spring-water as will more than half fill; it then let in about half as much soft water as there was pump-water, and let the chalk be stirred a little with an oar. Then leave it four and twenty hours, and the water will be ready for brewing. It will be much clearer than it was when put in; for all the foulness of the soft water will be carried down to the chalk; and it will be just as soft as that commonly used at Dorchester and there about is. This water being drawn off. will be ready for the brewing; and the same chalk being taken out of the cooler and spread to drain, will serve afterwards for the same purpose even better than at first. Chalk seems so far of the nature of quicksilver, that it will communicate a certain quality to water without any change in itself, and will therefore continue to impregnate new waters over and over again in the same manner.”

Dorchester is indeed in the middle of chalk country, the Dorset Downs.

The myth about Thames water did reflect one truth, that the waters found in much of Southern England, being mostly impregnated with calcium carbonate and therefore “semi-hard”, were better for making porters and stouts: the boiled water became soft and was thus better at extracting colour from brown malts.

Conversely, other parts of the country, such as swaths of the North Midlands, where the waters were impregnated with calcium sulphate, and thus had “permanent” hardness (unaffected by boiling), make better pale ales, with less colour extraction from the malt, and among other benefits the hard water gave a less harsh hop flavour.

Brewers in the “pre-scientific” era did not understand much about this, however. Watkins wrote that

“In general the brown malts are to be brewed with the softest waters, because these best take out their strength and flavour; the pale malts should be brewed with spring water, to preserve their fine colour; and the amber with a midling water, such as that of clear small rivers.”

which shows some practical knowledge. Michael Combrune, whose Theory and Practice of Brewing was first published in 1761, the year after Watkins’s book, was dismissive of the idea of differences between rain water, spring water, well water and river water:

“the art of brewing is very little affected by the difference of waters, if they be equally soft … if hitherto prejudice and interest have appropriated to some places a reputation for particular sorts of drinks … the cause opf their excellencies or defects was ignorantly attributed to the water made use of.”

But Combrune appears to have had no impact on Hughes of Uxbridge, who must have startled the brewers of Burton upon Trent, if they read his book, for he insisted:

“Well Waters ought not to be used only in cases of necessity when waters of a softer quality cannot be procured. Spring or River Water is far preferable to Well Water, but river or spring waters differ very much in their softness, and that which will lather best with soap is a convincing proof and is to be prefered for brewing, for:
First It will leave the grains dryer than well water of a harsher quality
Secondly The beer will come to a quicker fermentation in the tun and
Thirdly It will also fine itself much sooner in the cask than if brewed from well water.

“Rain Water such as runs off tiled roofs is undoubtedly to be prefered before well or river water in brewing being of a simple and soft nature. There is one very great object to the interest of the brewer. Beer brewed with rain or river water will be stronger than beer brewed with well water from an equal quantity of Malt, because it will have a freer access to the Malt, and as I said before, it will leave the grains much dryer than well water, which is convincing, the dryer the grains are, the better will be the beer.

“There is a great difficulty often happens in making beer come to a fermentation in the tun; this, I verily believe, is principally owing to the hardness of the water it is brewed with.”

Only one brewery seems to have made a usp of its water, however, and that was at Stogumber, near Taunton, in Somerset. The brewery was founded by George Elers, and was running by 1840, when it appears in that year’s tithe assessment. It used water from Harry Hill’s Well, a spring on the edge of the village, where the local tradition was that some time in the 16th century a man named Harry Hill (no relation to the British comedian) was cured of leprosy by using the waters of this spring, both washing in it and drinking it.

Even in 1844 Pigot’s Commercial Directory was calling the brewery in Stogumber “a considerable brewing establishment”, and saying that its “malt liquor … is held in great estimation.” In 1848 the medical journal The Lancet carried an advertisement for the Stogumber Brewery which declared that

“A Spring of Delicious Water, possessing Medicinal Virtues … similar to that as the Cataract at Launceston, in Van Dieman’s Land, is now being used for brewing pure Pale Ale (from malt and hops only;) first introduced at Exeter in cases of Indigestion, Constipation, and Consumption, through the advice of the faculty, and now drank by the Clergy, Gentry, and most families throughout Devonshire.”

A year later the Stogumber Medical Spring Brewery was advertising in the Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post newspaper of the

“Happiest results from drinking STOGUMBER PALE ALE, brewed with the medicinal water; A very elderly Lady residing in the Western Road, Bath; a martyr to the gout in London; Mrs Hooper of Kilve, Somerset, considered in a decline; a Lady at Exeter, 80 years of age, who had taken medicine daily for 30 years; a Lady near Wells with a heart complaint of three years standing; and many others; all cured in a few weeks with the Ale, which is as pure and delicious as it is renovating and reasonable.
Reference to the Faculty in the West of England
Terms CASH. Address, Henry Watts, Manager”

It was soon being advertised across the country, from Exeter to Edinburgh, at a price of 23 shillings a kilderkin, suggesting an original gravity of around 1055 to 1060. The beer was still being recommended in 1871 as “reputed to cure most diseases”, when its advertising revealed Stogumber Ale to be brewed with spring water, white malt and Goldings hops. The brewery eventually closed about 1910.

In Burton upon Trent, much of the success of the ale – particularly when, in the early 1820s, the town’s brewers began brewing well-hopped pale bitter ale for export to India – was down to the quality of the local well-water. However, the true chemical nature of the well-waters of Burton does not seem to have been properly understood until the Burton brewers brought a libel action in 1830 against the Society for Diffusing Useful Knowledge for claiming, in a treatise on the “Art of Brewing”, that they adulterated their beers with a mixture of various noxious ingredients including “salt of steel” (iron chloride) and “sulphate of lime”, calcium sulphate.

The Court of King’s Bench in London heard that the author of the treatise, David Booth, claimed he could only make beer that matched the Burton brewers’ products by adding gypsum, a hydrated form of calcium sulphate. The Burton brewers, however, produced affidavits from chemists who had analysed their brewing waters, and found that they naturally contained calcium sulphate, derived from the gypsum found in the Keuper marl (a mix of mudstone, siltstone and chalk or lime) below the town.

(A borehole drilled at Worthington’s brewery in 1891 found gypseous marl in bands from 60 feet under the surface down to 360 feet, below the water-bearing rocks at around 330 feet down, while an artesian well dug at the Burton Brewery Company’s premises in 1894 found the gypsum in the marl started at 78 feet down and continued in bands to 194 feet down, with the water-bearing rock struck at around 240 feet below the surface. A boring at Peter Walker & Co’s brewery in Burton around the same time found 20 feet of nearly pure gypsum starting 40 feet below the surface. The water from the bore, coming from 116 feet down, contained a staggering 221 grains of solids per gallon, according to the Burton brewing scientist Dr Horace Brown, almost three and a half times the level of dissolved minerals in the well water at Allsopp’s brewery nearby.)

Brewers had soon realised that it was the geology of the area that made Burton beers so successful. William Tizard, in The Theory and Practice of Brewing Illustrated, published in 1846, wrote: “The Burton ales principally owe their superior qualities and uniform permanency to the nature of the water there used, and which, according to the best evidence, is strongly impregnated with this hardener of water, gypsum or sulphate of lime.”

As Burton-brewed pale ales became more and more popular, other brewers looked for ways to reproduce the effect of Burton well-water. One way was simply to move to Burton yourself: the first outside firm to open a branch brewery in Burton for brewing pale ales was the Romford brewer Ind Coope, in 1856, and it was followed by a host of others, including Charrington’s, Truman’s and Mann’s of London in the early 1870s, Peter Walker of Warrington in 1877, Everard’s of Leicester in 1893 and Magee Marshall of Bolton in 1902.

Another way was to find other places with similar sulphate-bearing water to Burton, which saw brewers turn to Edinburgh, Tadcaster in Yorkshire, Stratford upon Avon, Wrexham in North Wales, and Alton in Hampshire as good places to make pale ale. (Both Tadcaster and Alton still have considerable breweries today, though Alton’s is little-known, since it brews Carling and Grolsch lagers for the UK market.)

The third choice was to artificially add calcium sulphate in some form to the water the brewer was already using, a system first named “Burtonising” by Egbert Hooper in the second edition of his book The Manual of Brewing, published in 1882, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (I’ve not been able to find a copy of the first edition, so I don’t know what that says, but the third edition has a section starting on page 122 that is indeed headed “Burtonising”.)

The discovery of the “Burtonising” technique is frequently credited to the chemist Charles W. Vincent, who is said to have analysed Burton water in 1878 and discovered what salts helped the local brewers make such good pale ales. As we have seen, chemists and brewers had known for more than 30 years before 1878 about the nature of the chemicals in Burton well water that made it so excellent for brewing pale ales; Vincent cannot be said to have discovered this fact, therefore. It is true that he brought out a book that year called Burton Brewing Water: A process invented by CWV , published by J. Holmes of Leeds. Unfortunately this is an extremely rare book today, not helped by the fact that the only copy the British Library held was destroyed by a Luftwaffe bomb (along with 200,00 other books, many of them German, ironically) in May 1941. So I can’t tell you what process Vincent invented, because I haven’t been able to find a copy of that book.

Whatever Vincent invented, it may perhaps have had something to do with a patent he took out in October 1891 to

“imitate at pleasure the various celebrated sodio calcareo, magnesio, sulphuretted, aerated, ferruginous and other waters of France, including Savoy, and Germany, Bohemia Austria &c. To this end, various proportions of sodium sulphate, coal and calcium magnesium or iron carbonate are roasted together. The product, containing chiefly the sulphate, carbonate and sulphide of soda and calcium sulphide, is ground up and used in the proportion of 1oz to 15 gallons of water. If desired, it may be exposed on shelves to the action of carbonic acid gas until sufficiently bicarbonated.”

That patent seems to have been designed to make “artificial” mineral water, rather than liquor for brewing. How similar it was to the process described in Vincent’s book of 1878 remains to be discovered. But he must have been inspired to write that 1878 book, whatever it said, during his time editing a new edition of Chemistry, theoretical, practical and analytical, published in 1877-9. The entry on brewing referred back to an earlier edition of Chemistry, theoretical, practical and analytical, a partwork published in 1853 and edited by James Sheridan Muspratt, a Dublin-born research chemist who studied under the great Professor Justus von Liebig in Germany.

In that 1853 work’s entry on beer, Muspratt wrote that “nearly everyone at all acquainted with brewing knows that water which contains a large quantity of gypsum – sulphate of lime – earthy carbonates and no organic matter is best adopted for his purposes,” and he went on:

“The Editor would suggest that when brewers in certain districts are compelled to use soft water, or that which runs off moors or fens, for want of a better, they should impregnate them at second hand with gypsum, or with such limestones more easily procurable. This plan has been found most serviceable, and the ale obtained from such artificial water has nearly equalled the renowned product of Burton.”

It appears from Muspratt’s comments that just as they had been recommended to do with chalk in the 18th century to imitate the waters of Dorchester, brewers had begun throwing the calcium sulphate, in the form of lumps of gypsum, into their liquor tanks to imitate the waters of Burton. If Muspratt did not actually invent this technique, he certainly deserves credit for apparently being the first person to write about it, and promote it.

Certainly, Whitbread was adding gypsum to its brewing water to make pale ales with by 1866. Brewing manuals in the 1880s were showing how to construct a “gypsum tank” for treating water, and in 1891 Alfred Barnard saw one in action at Fox’s brewery in Farnborough, Kent, filled with “gypsum quarried from the Trent side”. By the early 1890s the brewing journals were carrying a host of ads for “gypsum specially prepared for brewers’ use”, “saline blend for water treatment – used in hundreds of breweries”, “Burton ale salts” and the like. In 1904 it was reckoned that more than 150 tons of gypsum a year were being quarried and used in breweries to Burtonise their brewing liquor for making pale ales.

How successful these early attempts at trying to reproduce Burton well-water by dumping gypsum into tanks of water were must be doubted: for as Hooper pointed out in 1882, “gypsum is not a substance that dissolves very readily in water”, even though in his time “many brewers place small pieces of gypsum … in their cold-liquor tank, and trust to sufficient hardening material being dissolved during the time that the water remains in the tank.”

Hooper’s preferred solution (pun semi-intended) was to add the “hardening material” in powder to the hot-liquor tank, for “the quantity will be capable of exact regulation” (though he admitted that calcium sulphate is actually less soluble in hot water than it is in cold). He gave a recipe for a “hardening mixture giving solids similar to those of the Burton water”, consisting of four parts of gypsum, three parts of ordinary salt and one of Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate), added at “about four ounces to the barrel of water” in the hot-liquor tank, which would be equal to an extra 49 grains of solid matter per gallon. (Bass, for comparison, had just under 79 grains per gallon of solids dissolved in its well-water). However, he warned brewers that adding chemicals to the brewing water cost extra in tax: “each 70 grains of solid matter to the gallon means an increase of one degree of gravity in the wort, and each degree of gravity entails a little more than five farthings per barrel additional duty [and this at a time when tax was still low], which in a large brewery amounts to a considerable sum in the course of a twelvemonth.”

Eventually, in the 20th century, as brewing science became more sophisticated, brewers learned that it was not so much the raw presence of calcium sulphate that was important as the ratio of the different calcium ions, sulphate ions and carbonate ions. These ratios affect what happens in the mash tun and the fermenting vessel and, thanks to a lowered pH caused by the sulphates, in the bottle and cask, extending the shelf-life of the finished beer, as well as affecting its flavour and colour. Better methods than running water through tanks filled with gypsum have been developed (though some are still quite crude-looking – one very well-known English brewery adds a carefully measured quantity of sulphuric acid to its chalky water, to turn the calcium carbonate to calcium sulphate) and most brewers now use ordinary mains water, treated in the brewery, rather than well-water.

Alas, the need to earn a living kept me 6,000 miles away from the dinner, so I never found out until checking Twitter this morning, to see what people were saying about the event, that I’d won the online category. Thank you, Zak Avery, for letting me know. And very well done to all the other victors, especially Marverine Cole and Des de Moor, both first-time category winners, and Ben McFarland, who picked up his third Beer Writer of the Year tankard, a feat which puts him on a par with Michael Jackson and Allan McLean as a three-times winner, and makes him easily the most successful writer in the awards in the past 10 years. Only Alistair Gilmour has won more golds overall, and his first one came in 1998.

I was actually hoping for a runners-up mug – seriously, I’ve never won one of those, and I genuinely didn’t fancy my chances in the online category over-much, so I’d ruled myself out as a category winner: there are currently a large number of VERY good beer blogs from UK operators, all much more accessible than my 2,000 to 4,000-word rants and essays, I thought. Evidently the judges this year disagreed. Yay!

That was the particularly good news of the week: but there was excellent news from earlier, too. I love the British Library: it keeps making my life as a beer historian easier and more rewarding. You may have seen the announcement that thousands of old newspapers from 1700 to 1949, from the holdings of the British Newspaper Library at Colindale (a subsidiary of the BL at St Pancras), have now been scanned and put on line. Suddenly, from my own computer, and while supping a Mackeson XXX (brewed in Trinidad – more on that another time) I can seek answers to all sorts of interesting questions.

Such as? Well, were they really drinking pale ale in London early in the reign of George I? Why yes: here’s a tragic story from the Ipswich Journal of 18 September 18, 1725:

Yesterday about 2 a clock in the morning a Fire broke out at Mr Bishop’s Pale-Ale House in Bell-Savage Yard, Ludgate-Hill; which consumed the said house and damaged some others adjoyning: It began in the Kitchen, but by what means is not yet known: Mr Prisley, an elderly Man, a Prisoner in the Fleet that lodg’d in the House, was burned to Death … The Mistress of the Bell-Savage Inn adjoining was brought to bed the day before; the Nurse upon the Alarm of Fire ran out with the Child, whereupon the poor Mother got out of Bed in a distracted Manner, and ran into the Yard crying Fire, Fire; and is so ill thereupon that her Life is in imminent Danger.

But was this imported pale ale, from Derby or Burton? Did they brew pale ale that early in London itself? Why yes – here’s an extract from the Newcastle Courant of 22 January 1726:

Bankrupts since our last list … James Reilly, of St James’s in Westminster, in the County of Middlesex, Pale-Ale-Brewer

Reilly’s bankruptcy did not mean business was necessarily bad for London’s early pale ale brewers, though it was evidently extremely dangerous: here’s an extract from the Derby Mercury from 13 July 1738:

On Monday a terrible Accident happen’d at a Pale-Ale Brewhouse in Barnaby-street, Southwark, through the Carelessness of a Stoker; who, not considering how high the Copper was charg’d, simply took down the Curb, when the boiling Liquor flush’d out of a sudden on him, an Exciseman, and a Gardener’s Servant who was filling his Master’s Cart with Grains. The latter was carry’d to Guy’s Hospital, but is scalded in so miserable a Manner, that his Life is not expected; and the other two, who are under private Surgeons Hands, are in such Misery that it’s though they can’t recover.

and from the Ipswich Journal of 26 November 1743:

On Wednesday last Mr Drace, a Brewer of Pale Ale at the Greyhound in Hoxton, had the Misfortune to fall into the Copper of boiling Liquor, and scalded himself in such a terrible Manner, that a great part of his Skin came off with his Cloaths; but yet there are Hopes that he will recover.

There’s a load of stuff to analyse there: for example, evidently London brewers sold their grains after mashing to gardeners, presumably (anybody have a better explanation?) for fertiliser. This is a tremendous new resource: it will, it is true, cost you £80 a year to access the British Newspaper Archive (cheaper deals are available for shorter periods), but that’s less than the cost of half a pint a week. And the scanning is a very long way still from perfect: search results can end up with garbage like this:

.KTb~ ~so long ce11~lebrted in RInd, hortuOwbecomeew anaat- 5,oroe mphi great 09011*onotiou litthis country, (where it is~almost in of ouperotdlgeteri’other aert of malt llquor,)ta fllltessre.

which suggests the OCR system being used needs considerable improvement yet.

All the same, the pages themselves are perfectly readable once brought up: and even an imperfect OCR system gives results unbelievably quicker and superior to ploughing through miles of microfilm in Colindale for the tiniest chance of finding something interesting.

The writer is Martyn Cornell, considered the foremost expert on beer in the world …

Great Dionysus, no, no, I’m most certainly not considered that, not at all, not by anybody, not even by me. How did Mr Fraghert make that one up? I wouldn’t call myself even “a leading beer historian”. A following beer historian, quite a lot of the time.

… and the person who worked with the late beer expert Michael Jackson on many of his books.

No I didn’t – I never worked with Michael Jackson at all. I was quoted in one of his books, back in 1990 or so. That’s my only link to any of his publications.

Martyn has been writing about beer for more than 30 years …

Trivially true: I’ve been seriously writing about beer only for 15 years, however.

… has authored over a dozen books

No I haven’t – three, that’s all.

… is the founder of the British Brewing Guild …

No I’m not. There’s no such organisation. I was at the meeting held to set up the British Guild of Beerwriters, but so were a lot of other people.

… and is a multiple award winner of the British Beer Writer of the year award.

No I’m not. Once. Eight years ago.

He is currently in the news doing his best to discredit Garrett Oliver’s efforts as a editor with Oliver’s Oxford Companion to Brewing.

No, I’m, definitely, absolutely not doing that at all. I have no wish to discredit Garrett Oliver, for whom I have great admiration.

Cornell is definitely not a student.

Well, THAT he got right. But now these “facts” about me are out there, how soon before they get repeated, and turn up at the top of every Google search? Let’s hope I never get a Wikipedia page …

It was the kind of “meet the brewer” show common in the US but almost unheard of in the UK that we really should be seeing repeated across this country. And it’s good to see London’s brewers working together in the 21st century to support each other in exactly the same way their ancestors did almost eight centuries ago, when the Brewers’ Guild was founded at All Hallows’ Church, London Wall.

It was also good, for me, to see that the Brewery History Society had a stall there: the LBA clearly has an interest in London’s history as a world-class brewing city, and everybody needs to be reminded of this almost forgotten heritage. I’d argue that, historically, London has an excellent claim to be regarded as the greatest brewing city in the world. Yes, I AM a Londoner, so of course I’m biased, but I dare you to deny that over the centuries London has given the world more new beer styles than any other brewing centre on the planet:

Porter
Developed around 1718 by London’s brown beer brewers and taking its name from London’s street and river porters, the strong, hoppy, aged porter eventually became the world’s first widely drunk beer style, and was imitated by brewers from America to Russia.

Stout
The stronger forms of porter were known as brown stout, eventually shortened to just “stout”. London remained a centre of stout brewing until after the Second World War.

Russian Imperial Stout
Several London brewers developed particularly strong versions of stout for export to Russia in the late 18th and 19th centuries, in a style that eventually became known as Russian Imperial Stout.

India Pale Ale
The Bow brewer George Hodgson was the first brewer to make a name for exporting well-hopped pale ale to India, from at least the 1790s, and Hodgson’s was the first beer to be called an India Pale Ale.

Brown Ale
In 1902 Thomas Wells Thorpe, the newly appointed managing director of Mann, Crossman and Paulin in Whitechapel, introduced the first modern bottled brown ale, Mann’s Brown. After the First World War brown ale became an increasingly popular style, with almost every brewer in the country eventually producing one.

London was also home to the UK’s first lager-only brewery, in 1882 and, until the 1870s, home to a succession of the biggest breweries in the world, including Barclay Perkins, Whitbread and Truman.

The crowd at the London Brewers Alliance beer festival 2011. There are at least two well-known beer writers half-hidden: can you spot them?

The first London Brewers Alliance festival, last year, featured a “co-operative” porter brewed using the combined resources of alliance members, and this one included a “joint effort” production of London’s other great innovation, IPA. Now, here’s where I DO have some criticism: the IPA was served on a stall by itself with, effectively no publicity, nothing to explain what this beer was, nothing to explain the significance of the links between IPA and London, and nothing about this particular brew, the hops, the grain bill, the fact that it was being served (IIRC from my chat with Kieran, a nice young man from the Windsor and Eton Brewery) at least eight weeks old, nicely matured. That was all a bit of a fail. My impression is that there’s a growing appreciation of heritage, of authenticity, of local roots among beer drinkers under 35 (indeed, among young consumers of anything at all), and they love learning that sort of stuff.

I’d also suggest that the “half pint minimum” serve is an improvable idea as well: third-of-a-pint glasses would enable drinkers to have 50 per cent more samples in their four-pint “free” (for the £20 admission) allowance. (And to be honest, half a pint was much more of a couple of the beers available than I wanted to drink. The standard of beers was generally very high, but there was at least one that really shouldn’t have been on sale: an English bitter should NOT taste like someone dropped a shot of Scotch into it.)

That apart, it was a great evening, and my egotistical little heart overflowed when I spotted that the Tottenham-based Redemption Brewery, one of 2010′s start-ups, had on its stall a beer called Fellowship Porter. “You know your brewing history,” I said to the guy on the stall, who was evidently Andy Moffat, the Redemption head brewer. “Yes,” he said, “I got the name from a book by Martyn Cornell.”

Considering that only five years ago, London was down to just 10 breweries, the smallest number since the all-time low of nine in 1976-1978, and a long way from either the post-Second World War peak of 34 in 1998 and the 25 that existed 60 years ago, there has been a tremendous resurgence in brewery numbers in the past couple of years. Currently more than 20 breweries are actually running, or will be running shortly, within the Greater London area. What is a tad depressing is that only two of those breweries date from before 2000. But hey – even Fuller’s was a start-up once.

The BHS guys asked me to produce a couple of London-specific items, so I put together a rough map showing the major London breweries of 1850 – actually a low point in the 19th century for brewery numbers, but interesting because it was still a time where you could differentiate between the big porter brewers, such as Barclay Perkins, Reid, Meux, Whitbread and Truman, and the by-now fast-growing ale brewers, such as Mann, Goding, Charrington and Courage. Here’s that map – double-click on it to see it full-size. Anyone who wants to, please feel free to reproduce it. Below the map is the London brewing time line, I did for the event: again, London brewers, feel free to use this yourselves. And finally, here’s a little verse:

London’s brewing, London’s brewing
Rise up early! Grind the malt!
Pour on water, good hot water
Stir the mash tun, stir the mash

London’s brewing, London’s brewing
Sparge the mash tun! Drain the grains!
Fill the copper, tip the hops in,
Boil the wort and cool it off.

London’s brewing, London’s brewing
Fill the vat high, pitch the yeast!
Watch the foam rise, see it settle
Rack in hogsheads, drink it up!

London brewing: a brief timeline

1118 Thomas Becket, patron saint of the Brewers’ Company, born in London around this year.
1286 The brewery at St Paul’s Cathedral made 67,814 gallons of ale in a year.
1342 The Brewers’ Guild founded by John Enfield at All Hallows’ Church, London Wall.
1372 Henry Vandale bought four barrels of “beere” in London, the first known mention of the hopped drink in the city’s history (it was probably made in the Low Countries).
1419 Richard “Dick” Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, angry that the brewers ate “fat swans” at their St Martin’s Day feast, ordered them to sell their ale for a penny a gallon the next day. Around this time London had around 290 commercial brewers.
1424/5 London’s ale brewers complained about “aliens” (from Continental Europe) “nigh to the city dwelling” (probably in Southwark) brewing beer.
1483 London’s ale brewers, trying to maintain the difference between (unhopped) ale and (hopped) beer, persuaded the city authorities to rule that ale must be made only from “licour, malt and yeste”.
1542 Henry VIII’s royal brewers – he had at least two, one for ale, one for beer – were supplying more than 13,000 pints a day to Hampton Court palace.
1574 There were 58 ale breweries in London and 32 beer breweries. The biggest Elizabethan London beer brewer consumed 90 quarters of malt a week, enough to make around 14,000 barrels of beer a year, very roughly.
1578 The Brewers’ Company wrote to Queen Elizabeth apologising for the annoyance caused by the smoke from the seacoal used in their breweries, and offered to burn only wood, rather than coal, in the brewhouses closest to the Queen’s home, the Palace of Westminster.
1580 The Hour Glass Brewery in Thames Street looks to have begun some time before this year: later, as Calvert’s and then the City of London Brewery Company it ran through until brewing stopped on the site in 1922.
1616 The Anchor Brewery, Southwark, later Barclay Perkins, founded around this year.
1635 Thomas Cole began brewing in or before this year in Twickenham: the Coles only stopped brewing in 1892.
1666 Brewers’ Hall, the home of the Brewers’ Company, was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, along with 16 brewhouses, all in and around Thames Street, close to the fire’s heart. The same year, or thereabouts, the brewery that became Truman Hanbury and Buxton opened in Brick Lane.
1700 London had 190 breweries, producing a total of 1.7 million barrels of ale and beer.
1718 Around this year London’s brown beer brewers started to hop their beer more, and store it longer, eventually developing a drink that took the name of its keenest customers, the city’s many street and river porters.
1748 The biggest London brewers were now the specialist porter manufacturers, with the largest making more than 50,000 barrels a year. Their profits enabled them to buy themselves country estates.
1780 Around this time Southwark replaced Stourbridge fair, just south of Cambridge, as the biggest hop market in England.
1784 Henry Goodwyn of the Red Lion porter brewhouse at St Katharine’s, Wapping (later Hoare’s) installed the first steam engine in London.
1786 The top 12 London porter brewers made up half the capital’s beer production, leaving another 150 brewers to supply the rest.
1793 The first record of George Hodgson of the Bow brewery exporting pale ale to India. This would eventually develop into the beer that became known as India Pale Ale.
1814 The Great London Beer Flood: on October 17 a 22-feet-high vat at Meux’s porter brewery off Tottenham Court Road burst, releasing 3,550 barrels of beer, weighing 570 tons, into the slums behind the brewery. Amazingly, only eight people were killed, all women and children.
1815 The 12 “principle” porter brewers now made 75 per cent or more of the city’s beer. The combined output of all the seven biggest ale brewers in London totalled just 85,000 barrels, the same as one porter brewer, Barclay Perkins, could produce on its own in just four months.
1823 Porter output in London hit 1.8 million barrels, the highest it would ever be.
1832 The London excise district contained 115 brewers, though most of the beer was produced by the 20 or so largest.
1833 Increased sales of mild ale started to force the London porter brewers to brew ale as well, while London’s ale brewers, such as Mann, Charrington and Courage, began to grow in size.
1835 First known use of the expression India Pale Ale, in an advertisement by Hodgson’s of Bow.
1850 More than 40 London breweries had closed in the previous 20 years.
1872 Meux & Co, of the Horseshoe brewery, off Tottenham Court Road, long one of the biggest brewers of porter, started brewing ales as well.
1877 Reid & Co of the Griffin brewery, Clerkenwell, the last porter-only London brewery, began production of pale and bitter ales alongside the black beer.

Derek Prentice of Fullers studies a page from a 1930s brewing book at the BHS stall

1880 New openings had pushed the number of London breweries up to the levels of 1830 again.
1882 Britain’s first lager-only brewery , the Austro-Bavarian Lager Beer and Crystal Ice Company, began brewing in Tottenham High Road.
1887 Porter now made up only a third of the London trade.
1893 London’s brewers owned an estimated 3,000 horses.
1898 Three of the former big 12 London porter brewers, Watney, Combe and Reid, merged to form one firm, with breweries in Pimlico and Mortlake.
1902 Thomas Wells Thorpe, the long-serving head brewer at Mann, Crossman and Paulin in Whitechapel, introduced the first of a new kind of beer, Mann’s Brown Ale.
1904 London still had 90 breweries, out of a total of 1,503 in England and Wales. It also had just one pub still brewing its own beer, although in the rest of the country there were another 3,108 home-brew pubs.
1921 Meux’s brewery in Tottenham Court Road closed, with production moving to Thorne Brothers’ brewery, Vauxhall.
1922 The last brewery in the City, the former Calvert’s brewery in Upper Thames Street, known since 1860 as the City of London Brewery Co Ltd, closed and transferred production to Stansfeld & Co’s Swan brewery in Fulham.
1933 Hoare & Co, the Red Lion brewery, by St Katharine’s Docks, another former porter giant, was taken over by Charrington’s and closed the following year.
1936 Guinness opened a brewery in Park Royal to supply much of England with its stout.
1940 Brewers’ Hall was destroyed for a second time, in a German air raid.
1941 Whitbread brewed porter for the last time at its brewery in Chiswell Street.
1952 London still had 25 operating breweries, run by some 19 or so companies, out of around 560 breweries in the whole of the UK.
1955 Barclay Perkins merged with Courage.
1958 Watney merged with Mann Crossman and Paulin and closed the Pimlico brewery the following year.
1959 Ind Coope of Romford acquired Taylor Walker in Limehouse, closing it early in 1960.
1967 Charrington of Mile End merged with Bass to form the biggest brewing concern in the country.
1974 Watney Mann merged with Truman Hanbury & Buxton.
1975 Brewing stopped at Charrington’s.
1976 Brewing stopped at Whitbread’s brewery in Chiswell Street. London hit an all-time low of just nine breweries.
1977 Godson’s brewery, the first of London’s new generation micro-breweries, opened, originally in Clapton, before moving to Bow in 1979. The venture ultimately closed in 1987.
1979 Brewing stopped at Mann’s in Whitechapel. The same year David Bruce opened the Goose & Firkin in Southwark, London’s first home-brew pub for many decades.
1981 A flurry of pub-brewery openings saw the number of London breweries rise from 11 to 20.
1982 The Courage brewery by Tower Bridge closed.
1989 Truman’s brewery in Brick Lane closed.
1992 Ind Coope in Romford closesd.
1998 The growth of the Firkin chain helped push London’s brewery numbers up to a post-war high of 34.
2000 The closure of the Firkin chain the previous year saw brewery numbers drop back down to just 20. The Meantime brewery opened in Greenwich.
2005 Guinness Park Royal closed.
2006 Young’s brewery moved its operations from Wandsworth to Bedford.
2007 London’s brewery numbers hit their second post-war low, of just 10.
2009 Plan to close the Stag brewery at Mortlake announced (though this has apparently been postponed until 2014).
2010 Brewery numbers starting to climb again, up to 14, with new brewers such as Kernel.
2011 A surge in new openings pushes brewery numbers in London back up to 21, the highest this millennium: of those 21 breweries, all but three have opened since 2000.