Huge guffaws from me at the news that Punch Taverns is to bring back to life for a third time the name Taylor Walker, a former London porter brewer that had strong links with the earliest days of brewing in Philadelphia. Clearly, to be a marketing man you have to have every irony-containing cell filleted… Read More Taylor Walker, the brewery name that just won’t die
It’s a comment on the public perception of beardy beer buffs that people who know I like pongy ale* frequently look surprised when they discover that I drink lager too. My response, of course, is that there’s plenty of great beer not brewed to traditional British criteria, that often a cold one from the fridge… Read More So what WAS the first purpose-built lager brewery in the UK?
Here’s a top contender for “vanished beers I wish I’d tasted” – Meat Stout. A mixture of serendipity and synchronicity led me to discover Mercer’s Meat Stout this week, a brew I’d never previously heard of. Serendipity (the art of finding something valuable while looking for some other thing entirely) because I was actually searching… Read More Mercer’s Meat Stout
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
Those few of you who caught my 15 seconds of fame tonight on the London ITN regional television news, talking about the announcement that AB InBev is going to close the Mortlake brewery, I’ll tell you a secret: that wasn’t the Thames at Mortlake behind me. It was actually about nine miles down river at… Read More London: from brewing hero to practically zero
It’s a little-known fact that the biggest brewer in London is Anheuser-Busch. Far more people have seen the brewery than know it’s run by A-B: it’s right by the finishing line on the Thames at Mortlake for the annual Oxford versus Cambridge University Boat Race, one of the televised highlights of the British sporting year.… Read More Takeover bid for London’s biggest brewer
Rarely (but thrillingly) a book comes along that makes everything else ever written on the same subject instantly redundant. There must have been more books written about Guinness, the brand and its brewers, than any other in the world. I’ve got 14, now, four of them written by people called Guinness. But the latest to… Read More Arthur Guinness’s true genetic roots
An absolutely have-to-see exhibition has just opened at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly, London featuring the very best – Constable, Turner, Reynolds, Stubbs, Gainsborough and the like – from the finest collection of British art outside Europe, a collection that owes its foundation to the unhappy marriage made by the granddaughter of the man that… Read More What art appreciation owns a brewer’s daughter
What do the following people have in common: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, celebrity chef and TV presenter; Helena Bonham Carter, Oscar-nominated film actress; Lord Brocket, failed insurance fraudster and I’m a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here contestant; and Kirstie Allsopp, presenter of the television programme Location, Location, Location?
