It was terrific to see a positive story on the BBC about beer, with the coverage of the Great Baltic Adventure, the project to take Imperial Russian Stout back to Russia by boat, just the way it was done 200 and more years ago. But what’s this claim here, at 1:05 by BBC reporter Steve… Read More Imperial Stout – Russian or Irish?
If a 21st century time tripper stepped through the door into the public bar of a London pub in 1900, what would be the biggest surprise? Probably not the sawdust on the floor, or the lack of seating: most likely, I’d guess, the draught ginger beer on handpump. The existence – and importance – of… Read More The 1900 Pub – the biggest surprise
It’s now less than one month to go to the official publication of Amber, Gold and Black, The History of Britain’s Great Beers, the first book devoted solely to the development of beer styles in Britain, from bitter to porter, covering every aspect of their history, what they were when they started , how they… Read More Order the definitive book on British beer styles now
I feel bad about this, really bad. Pete Brown’s having a “let’s be nice” month over on his blog, and all I can do is be mean, nasty, negative and carping. (And it’s not because I didn’t win anything in the BGBW awards, ’cos I didn’t enter this year, so there.) Someone has produced a… Read More The ‘beeriodic table’: beautifully executed, fatally flawed
One of the top 10 questions people who end up at this site put into search engines such as Google is a query about how to distinguish between porter and stout, something I’ve not actually tackled head-on yet. So – what difference is there between the two beers? Er … None. Not now, anyway, not… Read More So what IS the difference between porter and stout?
In February 1961, 47 years ago, Guinness paid the London brewer Watney Combe Reid £28,000 – equivalent to more than £400,000 today – to discontinue brewing its Reid’s Stout. It was part of the Irish firm’s drive to put its newly perfected nitrogen-serve Draught Guinness into as many pubs as possible: Watney’s also had a… Read More The Hunting of the Stout
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
Where and when was the first Guinness brewery opened in England? If you answered “Park Royal, 1936”, whoops, the loud noises and flashing lights have gone off, that’s the WRONG answer, by more than 100 miles and just under 100 years. In 1838 John Grattan Guinness junior had been sacked from the brewery business in… Read More Bristol-fashion Guinness and the roast barley question
Plugging different beer-related key words into the search facility in the Times newspaper archive 1785-1985 is continuing to turn up gold. In June 1843 a series of small ads began to appear in the newspaper for Bavarian Pale Stout – put that one in your BJCP guidelines – brewed, not in Munich, but by Beamish… Read More Pale Stout
Not particularly a propos of drinking Courage Imperial Russian Stout as brewed at the Anchor Brewery, I called at the Anchor Tap in Horselydown Lane, round the back of the old Courage Brewery and a tourist’s gob from Tower Bridge, just for an update. Architecturally it’s a fine old pub with an interior layout dating… Read More Anchor-ite
