I am always alert for any comments about how beers tasted in the past. They don’t appear very often, but they’re fascinating when they do. So I leapt upon a line out of a recent blog by Ron Pattinson, in a description from 1889 of an obscure style called Adambier, which Ron had translated from… Read More So you think you know what porter tastes like …
I did try to promise myself I wouldn’t return to the subject of the Wikio beer blog rankings again. Frankly, there aren’t more than 50 people in the country interested in them. If that. (Of which navel gazing, more later.) But I indicated, I believe, when I raised the subject before that Wikio’s presentation of… Read More Can you drink beer and stare at your navel at the same time?
The people that provide my blogging software, WordPress, have just added a slideshow capability, so I though I would try it out with some pictures from what was the second-to-last ever trip round Young’s brewery in Wandsworth, South London, in September 2006. The following week brewing ceased on the Ram Brewery site after, probably, at… Read More Young’s brewery: the penultimate trip
Well, that was all rather too much: nearly 4,000 words and more footnotes than a Jerry Lee Lewis concert. So here’s the executive summary on what we know, what we don’t know, what we can justifiably assume and what we can’t assume about the history of India Pale Ale, and I promise to keep it… Read More IPA: the executive summary
(Note: three years on from this post, the earliest mention of the phrase IPA has been pushed back another six years: see here.) This is a truly historic document: the first known use of the expression India Pale Ale. It comes from an advertisement in the Liverpool Mercury newspaper published January 30 1835, a remarkably… Read More The first ever reference to IPA
Brewers’ advertisements in Victorian newspapers are almost always strictly utilitarian: a list of up to around a dozen beers in three main styles, mild/old ale, pale/ale bitter and porter/stout, each style shown available in three or four strengths, and with their prices listed per gallon/firkin/kilderkin. That’s it. If you’re lucky you might get a reproduction… Read More Victorian Britain’s finest beer ad
If you’re resident in the US or Canada and you’ve thought about buying a copy of my new book Amber Gold and Black, the British beer styles bible, but you’ve been put off by the cost of shipping it from the UK, good news – my publisher tells me the book will be available in… Read More Amber Gold and Black on sale in North America
What did Pliny the Elder actually say about hops? Not what you’ve been told, probably – and quite possibly he said nothing about hops at all. Thanks to the chaps at the Russian River brewery in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California, who named their extremely hoppy, strong “double IPA” after him, the Roman author, lawyer… Read More So what DID Pliny the Elder say about hops?
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 was lucky, I think, in having my first pint of Bengal Lancer IPA, Fuller’s latest offering, in the Prince Blucher in Twickenham, where it was in excellent condition: a couple of subsequent trials elsewhere in West London haven’t been quite as good, so to borrow an Americanism, “your mileage may vary.” But I don’t… Read More Two horsey beers and a short kipple
