Category: Beer

It’s Baltic Porter Day — a good excuse for punching a few Baltic Porter myths in the face …

Today is Baltic Porter Day, an event started by the Polish brewer and porter fan Marcin Chmielarz, and that gives me an excellent excuse to try to kill some Baltic Porter myths. A few facts: ● Baltic Porter, if you want to be historically accurate, should NOT be as strong as an Imperial Russian Stout.… Read More It’s Baltic Porter Day — a good excuse for punching a few Baltic Porter myths in the face …

Martyn Cornell65 Comments

The forgotten love of rural Jamaicans for draught porter

The history of beer is largely working-class history, which means, given the status of working-class history, much of it is forgotten. When it’s black working-class history … Thus the long love of rural (and urban) working-class Jamaicans – and probably other West Indians as well – for draught porter is a subject you will struggle… Read More The forgotten love of rural Jamaicans for draught porter

Martyn Cornell6 Comments

So what happens if you mix the new Guinness 0.0 with Guinness Foreign Extra Stout?

I don’t normally believe in asking for free beer, but when a press release arrived with news of the latest product launch from Dublin, Guinness 0.0, and the only places to buy it were stores nowhere near where I live, I let eagerness to sample over-rule reluctance to blag. It’s not as if Diageo can’t… Read More So what happens if you mix the new Guinness 0.0 with Guinness Foreign Extra Stout?

Martyn Cornell12 Comments

The most dangerous brewery in the world

Breweries can be deadly places: invisible, choking gases, boiling liquids, whirling machinery, fires, falls from great heights for the unwary. But no brewery can have offered more ways to die unpleasantly than the one in what was British Baluchistan, from deadly diseases to murderous tribesmen to devastating earthquakes. The brewery was opened in 1886 by… Read More The most dangerous brewery in the world

Martyn Cornell6 Comments

So, er — when WERE brewers banned from using unmalted grain?

It’s an excellent idea for a historian never to make a claim that cannot be backed up with actual evidence. In particular, it’s a terrible crime to assume, without verifying. Forgive me, therefore, Clio, muse of history, I have sinned: for many years I have been asserting that British brewers were banned from using unmalted… Read More So, er — when WERE brewers banned from using unmalted grain?

Martyn Cornell14 Comments

Manufactured outrage and the missing facts in the Small Brewers’ Relief debate

There is no subject in the world of beer right now that creates more heat and less light than the issue of reforming Small Brewers’ Relief, with vitriolic attacks, calls for boycotts of old-established family brewers and accusations of attempted bullying after the Treasury responded to calls for reform of the system with a proposed… Read More Manufactured outrage and the missing facts in the Small Brewers’ Relief debate

Martyn Cornell12 Comments

The brewer and the slaver gang

Serendipity – I love it. I was searching for something else entirely when I came across this advertisement in a Kentucky newspaper, which is how I discovered that the first successful keg beer in Britain was called Flowers Keg because an English teenager successfully led an armed posse in Illinois in the early 1820s against… Read More The brewer and the slaver gang

Martyn Cornell10 Comments

Today is 299 years exactly since the first known mention of porter

Happy anniversary: 299 years ago today the word “porter” appeared in print for the first time (as far as we know) as the name of a type of beer. The passing mention came in a pamphlet dated Wednesday May 22 1721 and written by the then-23-year-old Whig satirist and polemicist Nicholas Amhurst (1697-1742). Amhurst implied… Read More Today is 299 years exactly since the first known mention of porter

Martyn Cornell5 Comments

Brewers of Britain: hugely tough though this is, you’re making history right now – so if you have a moment when it’s all over, do please try to find time to record for posterity how you coped

Closed pub

This is probably the toughest time the breweries of Britain have ever faced, tougher than the restrictions of the First World War, tougher than the fight against the temperance fanatics of the 19th century. Cut off from their customers because of the lockdown caused by the covid-19 pandemic, brewers are having to find innovative ways… Read More Brewers of Britain: hugely tough though this is, you’re making history right now – so if you have a moment when it’s all over, do please try to find time to record for posterity how you coped

Martyn Cornell3 Comments

Catharina Sour, and other beers in Brazil in those long-vanished times six weeks ago

Was it really only six weeks ago that I was posing for selfies with attractive young Brazilians who were telling me how delighted they were to meet me? Apparently, according to the metadata in my own photographs, it really was. What a very different world Mid-March now seems, only 40-something days ago: coronavirus was a… Read More Catharina Sour, and other beers in Brazil in those long-vanished times six weeks ago

Martyn Cornell7 Comments