The patron saint of brewers is usually given as St Arnold of Flanders or his near-namesake St Arnould, bishop of Metz. But English brewers have their own (unofficial) saint: Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury assassinated in the 12th century in his own cathedral by four knights acting on the supposed instructions of King Henry… Read More The patron saint of English brewers
Before we dive more fully into the tangled roots of the words “ale” and “beer”, we have to tackle one particularly knotted strand first, caused by the curious fact that, four hundred years before English adopted the word bier from the Continent to describe a malt liquor flavoured with hops (altering the spelling to “beere”),… Read More Words for beer (2) – was ‘beer’ originally cider?
Someone has put Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “John Barleycorn”, a “lament for, and a celebration of, the Great British Pub”, from the BBC Culture Show programme, up on YouTube: you can find it here and, if you haven’t heard it yet, I feel confident in saying you’ll enjoy it greatly. Duffy’s poem is a rare… Read More Poems on beer, good and bad
Bottled beer was invented in Hertfordshire some 440 years ago, the most popular story says, by a forgetful Church of England rector and fishing fanatic called Dr Alexander Nowell. While Nowell was parish priest at Much Hadham in Hertfordshire, around 20 miles north of London, in the early years of Elizabeth I, it is said… Read More A short history of bottled beer
Back in Victorian times, no polar explorer worth the name set north without as much Allsopp’s Arctic Ale stashed in the hold of his ship as it could carry. This was a mighty brew, more than 11 per cent alcohol, descended from the strong, sweet ales Burton upon Trent once exported to the Baltic. Now… Read More Arctic Ale: a 158-year-old adventure revived
Since it appears that at least three fellow zythobloggers have named this site their favourite beer blog in end-of-year roundups, I feel obliged to hand out a few end-of-year gongs myself. So here we are: Best pub or bar of 2009 No contest – the Harvester, Electra Street, Abu Dhabi, the absolute Everest of rough… Read More ‘… shoulder aside the prostitutes …’
There are four or five competing theories for the origin of the word “beer” and, frankly, none of them is particularly convincing. The same is true of the word “ale”, as it happens: despite “ale” and its sisters, such as öl in Swedish and alus in Lithuanian, being found in languages from Britain to the… Read More Words for beer
Enough of the snidery of the last two posts: let’s get back to what this blog is famous for quite well known for around the world among a very small number of people: shining a torch on obscure bits of brewing history. Regular readers may remember a post from last year about the “double drop”… Read More Pontos in America
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
If my sense of boiling indignation is ever dying down, I like to hunt out a “beer quiz” on the interweb. Almost inevitably they’re full of shite, looking as if they’ve put together by someone who seems to have read one book on beer and misinterpreted most of that. Now, I realise that the people… Read More Stupid beer quizzes
