Category: History of beer

How Michael Jackson drank a beer that inspired a Yorkshire delicacy and never realised it

Sometimes it takes 20 years and more before the significance of something you read become apparent. In January 1997, What’s Brewing, the Campaign for Real Ale’s monthly newspaper for members, ran a piece by Michael Jackson on a trip he made to what was then the Pripps brewery in Bromma, just outside Stockholm (closed by… Read More How Michael Jackson drank a beer that inspired a Yorkshire delicacy and never realised it

Martyn Cornell4 Comments

Thousands of Londoners pass through a historic brewery every day without realising it

Every weekday morning hurrying tech workers rush out, hundreds at a time, from Shoreditch High Street station in East London, turning left down Bethnal Green Road, past Boxpark Shoreditch, clutching cups of take-away coffee, ready for eight hours of keyboard-stabbing. None of them realises, as they head towards their desks and computers, that as they… Read More Thousands of Londoners pass through a historic brewery every day without realising it

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How long have UK brewers been using American hops? 200 years, you say …

I’ve written before on how American hops were being imported to the UK in the late 1810s, after a couple of years of dreadful summer weather wrecked the English hop harvest, but this is the first time I’ve come across a specific advertisement by a brewer for American hops. This is from the Belfast Newsletter… Read More How long have UK brewers been using American hops? 200 years, you say …

Martyn Cornell7 Comments

Brewer accused of getting excise men drunk in order to avoid paying tax

A few days since, two Excise Officers came to Mr Harwood’s Brew-house near Shoreditch to Gage the Liquors, but instead thereof, finding several of his Men drinking hard therein, sate down with them, and tipled so heartily with them, as to be thoroughly fudled. In the meantime the Surveyor came, and finding a Guile of… Read More Brewer accused of getting excise men drunk in order to avoid paying tax

Martyn Cornell3 Comments

Fjord fiesta: the Norwegian farmhouse ales festival 2017

In Hornindal, in beautiful remotest Western Norway, if you tried to explain to the locals the fuss being made about cloudy New England IPAs, they would laugh, or look bemused. There are around a hundred or so people in the area who make beer, in a tradition going back hundreds of years. All of it… Read More Fjord fiesta: the Norwegian farmhouse ales festival 2017

Martyn Cornell7 Comments

What’s a brewer’s bucket? No, you’re wrong …

“He shall charge you, and discharge you, with the motion of a pewterer’s hammer, come off and on swifter than he that gibbets on the brewer’s bucket.” Sir John Falstaff, Henry IV part 2, Act III, Scene 3, by William Shakespeare Better brains that yours or mine have failed to identify what Falstaff meant by… Read More What’s a brewer’s bucket? No, you’re wrong …

Martyn Cornell8 Comments

When one family ran the world’s two biggest breweries

In a shiny 12-storey building in Bishopsgate, on the edge of the Square Mile, is a company that represents the last faint echo of a time when one family ran the two biggest breweries in the world. The City of London Investment Trust is, today, a £1 billion business with investments in everything from pharmaceuticals… Read More When one family ran the world’s two biggest breweries

Martyn Cornell13 Comments