What does it tell you about the world that if you want to access the electronic archives of The Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch, one of the planet’s great campaigners for raw capitalism, you can do so for free, via your local council’s website; but if you want to access the electronic archives of The… Read More Stout v Porter: a northern perspective
In April 1776 James Boswell noted the “strange opinion” of Samuel Johnson that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” As a professional writer, I stand alongside Johnson on this one. Being paid to put words in a readable order beats not being paid to do the same thing. Yet, as Boswell… Read More On being a blockhead
What flavour did the first porters have? Empyreumatic, I reckon – a word you can easily work out the meaning of yourself (that “pyre” in the middle is the clue), which basically translates as “the taste or smell of something burnt”. Henry Stopes, author of Malt and Malting, published in 1885, uses it in his… Read More Legal smoking and drinking
Considering what a huge impact he had on the taste of British beer, astonishingly little is known about the man who gave his name to the Goldings hop. About all we do have comes from a book published in 1798 with the marvellously long title of The Rural Economy of the Southern Counties: Comprizing Kent,… Read More Will the real Mr Golding please step forward
Rarely (but thrillingly) a book comes along that makes everything else ever written on the same subject instantly redundant. There must have been more books written about Guinness, the brand and its brewers, than any other in the world. I’ve got 14, now, four of them written by people called Guinness. But the latest to… Read More Arthur Guinness’s true genetic roots
Big cheers to Alastair Gilmour, who has now pulled off the unique feat of winning four Beer Writer of the Year gold tankards at the Zythographers’ Union annual awards bash in London – nice man, fine writer. This does mean, however, that the UK’s top beer writing trophy has been won by only 10 different… Read More The sixth-best beer writer in Britain …
I love “blue-sky” invitations, unexpected requests for my company, so though it’s only a “virtual” event I was flattered and delighted to be nominated by Alan McLeod of A Good Beer Blog as one of his four guests for a fantasy beer dinner. The “fantasy beer dinner” question was thought up by the American beer… Read More Guess who’s coming to dinner
Karl Pearson, whose sesquicentenary was celebrated earlier this year, is an excellent example of how extremely intelligent people can hold deeply stupid beliefs. Pearson was a huge and important figure in the development of mathematical statistics, he founded the Department of Applied Statistics at the University of London, and his writings on science influenced Einstein’s… Read More The inn-significance of the Red Lion
The Dove in Upper Mall, Hammersmith is one of London’s favourite riverside pubs, famous for good beer, for a fine view of the Boat Race and for what is supposed to be the tiniest public bar in Britain, at just four feet two inches wide and seven feet ten inches long. This is the story… Read More The Dove, Hammersmith – a tiny mystery
They’ll be cracking open the bottles of Young’s Double Chocolate Stout in Bedford today at the news that archaeologists in Honduras have discovered that chocolate was originally just a by-product in brewing beer. What’s more, it looks as if chocolate-flavoured beer, like DC Stout, is one of the most ancient beer styles in the world,… Read More Chocolate beer is 3,000 years old
