In the mid-1970s I had a girlfriend who was a student at Liverpool University. The campus pub-of-choice was (and still is, I believe) the Cambridge on the corner of Mulberry Street, which was, back then, a Burtonwood Brewery outlet. Its popularity was partly down to its closeness to the university, of course, but also for the excellent,… Read More What colour was mild?
This is going to bring me large numbers of search engine hits from people looking for something else entirely, but I’m going to talk about the joy of X, which inevitably means mentioning XX, and XXX of course, and XXXX and so on, right up to Simonds of Reading’s strong stout, Archangel XXXXXXX. The usual… Read More Everything you wanted to know about X
In February 1961, 47 years ago, Guinness paid the London brewer Watney Combe Reid £28,000 – equivalent to more than £400,000 today – to discontinue brewing its Reid’s Stout. It was part of the Irish firm’s drive to put its newly perfected nitrogen-serve Draught Guinness into as many pubs as possible: Watney’s also had a… Read More The Hunting of the Stout
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
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
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 …
Karl Pearson, whose sesquicentenary was celebrated earlier this year, is an excellent example of how extremely intelligent people can hold deeply stupid beliefs. Pearson was a huge and important figure in the development of mathematical statistics, he founded the Department of Applied Statistics at the University of London, and his writings on science influenced Einstein’s… Read More The inn-significance of the Red Lion
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
Whatever the score in the Rugby World Cup tomorrow, it’s a result for me, thanks to Fuller’s. The Chiswick brewer created a poster based on its “Wallaby” ad for London Pride at the time of the 2003 World Cup, this time featuring a picture of a Springbok and the words “frequently found stuffed”. Rather than… Read More England v South Africa: 36 (bottles) – nil (pounds)
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
