What flavour did the first porters have? Empyreumatic, I reckon – a word you can easily work out the meaning of yourself (that “pyre” in the middle is the clue), which basically translates as “the taste or smell of something burnt”. Henry Stopes, author of Malt and Malting, published in 1885, uses it in his… Read More Legal smoking and drinking
Big cheers to Alastair Gilmour, who has now pulled off the unique feat of winning four Beer Writer of the Year gold tankards at the Zythographers’ Union annual awards bash in London – nice man, fine writer. This does mean, however, that the UK’s top beer writing trophy has been won by only 10 different… Read More The sixth-best beer writer in Britain …
I love “blue-sky” invitations, unexpected requests for my company, so though it’s only a “virtual” event I was flattered and delighted to be nominated by Alan McLeod of A Good Beer Blog as one of his four guests for a fantasy beer dinner. The “fantasy beer dinner” question was thought up by the American beer… Read More Guess who’s coming to dinner
They’ll be cracking open the bottles of Young’s Double Chocolate Stout in Bedford today at the news that archaeologists in Honduras have discovered that chocolate was originally just a by-product in brewing beer. What’s more, it looks as if chocolate-flavoured beer, like DC Stout, is one of the most ancient beer styles in the world,… Read More Chocolate beer is 3,000 years old
The Tudor physician, traveller and former Carthusian monk Andrew Boorde is most famous in brewing history for his attack on hopped beer, calling it, in his A Dyetary of Helth, published in 1542, a naturall drynke for a Dutche man [by which he meant Germans] … of late days … much used in Englande to… Read More West Country White Ale, a lost English beer
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
It’s a mark of the low status given to working class history that the role in London’s life and economy played by the city’s thousands of street and river porters, the men who gave their name to the beer, is almost completely forgotten, only 70 or so years after the last of the porters died.… Read More The forgotten story of London’s porters
It was fantastically satisfying to see the front page splash in The Times declare what I’ve been saying for years – that the government’s “safe drinking guidelines” of 21 units of alcohol for men and 14 for women a week have no basis in fact, and were literally made up on the spot with no… Read More I Told You Those Lying Bastards Were Making It Up
Sky TV rang me up at 1.45pm today to come into their studio in Isleworth to rant at the latest rubbish from the anti-alcohol brigade. Drinkers in middle-class areas are more likely to consume “hazardous” amounts according to the North West Public Health Observatory, commissioned by the Department of Health. But “hazardous amounts”, according to… Read More More anti-alcohol brigade rubbish
A mention over on Patto’s blog about Government ale reminded me of one of my favourite beer songs – Ernie Mayne’s Lloyd George’s Beer from 1917. Click that link and check it out – it’s fantastic. Mayne was a 20-stone (that’s 280 pounds for Americans) music hall artist who died 70 years ago this year,… Read More Government ale
