Category: Brewery history

Thousands of Londoners pass through a historic brewery every day without realising it

Every weekday morning hurrying tech workers rush out, hundreds at a time, from Shoreditch High Street station in East London, turning left down Bethnal Green Road, past Boxpark Shoreditch, clutching cups of take-away coffee, ready for eight hours of keyboard-stabbing. None of them realises, as they head towards their desks and computers, that as they… Read More Thousands of Londoners pass through a historic brewery every day without realising it

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How long have UK brewers been using American hops? 200 years, you say …

I’ve written before on how American hops were being imported to the UK in the late 1810s, after a couple of years of dreadful summer weather wrecked the English hop harvest, but this is the first time I’ve come across a specific advertisement by a brewer for American hops. This is from the Belfast Newsletter… Read More How long have UK brewers been using American hops? 200 years, you say …

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When one family ran the world’s two biggest breweries

In a shiny 12-storey building in Bishopsgate, on the edge of the Square Mile, is a company that represents the last faint echo of a time when one family ran the two biggest breweries in the world. The City of London Investment Trust is, today, a £1 billion business with investments in everything from pharmaceuticals… Read More When one family ran the world’s two biggest breweries

Martyn Cornell13 Comments

Caley’s self- crafted approach to being craft

Are you a mature but still lively Victorian brewery? Do you worry that younger breweries, with their weird American hop varieties, shiny stainless steel lauter tuns and one-off wacky recipes, are luring your customers away? Is your 150-barrel minimum brewlength too inflexible to make experimental brews on? Worry no more: install your own microbrewery on… Read More Caley’s self- crafted approach to being craft

Martyn Cornell7 Comments

Goodbye to the last of London’s million-barrel breweries

It is one of history’s ironies that just as London hits more breweries than at any time in the past 110 years, its brewing capacity is more than halved with the closure of the last of the capital’s remaining megabreweries, at Mortlake. That the brewery at Mortlake, which has been pumping out hundreds of thousands… Read More Goodbye to the last of London’s million-barrel breweries

Martyn Cornell7 Comments

A short account of the surprisingly long history of putting beer in cellar tanks.

Tank beer – “tankova” – may be a hot new trend in London, with Meantime in Greenwich and Pilsner Urquell delivering fresh unpasteurised beer to pubs in beautiful shiny big containers, but the idea of putting beer in cellar tanks to deliver better quality is, even in London, more than a century old. The first… Read More A short account of the surprisingly long history of putting beer in cellar tanks.

Martyn Cornell10 Comments

Ciao Biella: an Italian family brewery woos the bloggerati

You can hardly get fresher beer than from a bottle snatched off the production line by the managing director of the brewery, only seconds after it had been filled and capped – and, indeed, it’s excellent, cold, refreshingly flavourful and welcome, even at 10.30 in the morning. Mind, there are few or no Anglo-Saxon breweries… Read More Ciao Biella: an Italian family brewery woos the bloggerati

Martyn Cornell8 Comments

Remembering the victims of the Great London Beer Flood, 200 years ago today

Wherever you are at 5.30pm this evening, please stop a moment and raise a thought – a glass, too, if you have one, preferably of porter – to Hannah Banfield, aged four years and four months; Eleanor Cooper, 14, a pub servant; Elizabeth Smith, 27, the wife of a bricklayer; Mary Mulvey, 30, and her… Read More Remembering the victims of the Great London Beer Flood, 200 years ago today

Martyn Cornell19 Comments