Do you gyle your ale after it leaves the cooler and finishes fermenting in the vat or krausen your beer post-coolship when it’s run out of the foeder?

I had a small Twitter spat yesterday with Duration Brewing after they said they were installing a coolship and foeders at their brewery in Norfolk. A wave of grumpy old mannishness washed across me, and I tweeted that we don’t have coolships and foeders in Britain, we have coolers and vats. Why use a foreign… Read More Do you gyle your ale after it leaves the cooler and finishes fermenting in the vat or krausen your beer post-coolship when it’s run out of the foeder?

Martyn Cornell18 Comments

How even giant multi-national brewing corporations can screw it up by lazily copying and pasting

Rule number one in the history writing biz is: don’t just copy-and-paste stuff off the internet (or from anywhere else), because the chances are high that what you have copied is wrong, and some fecker (me, in this case) will come along and hold you up to ridicule and abuse. I’m talking about you, today,… Read More How even giant multi-national brewing corporations can screw it up by lazily copying and pasting

Martyn Cornell5 Comments

Yes, it’s VERY possible to define a ‘sessionable’ craft beer

I was thinking of ignoring the “what does sessionable mean” debate, even through I was dragged into it by my ear by having my research quoted. Then I saw a tweet yesterday from someone talking about “a sessionable 5.5 per cent smoked oatmeal stout”, and the world swam and dissolved before me as I plunged… Read More Yes, it’s VERY possible to define a ‘sessionable’ craft beer

Martyn Cornell24 Comments

Why oh why is the Good Beer Guide STILL getting British beer styles so totally, shambolically wrong?

I apologise for greeting the new edition of Camra’s Good Beer Guide, with a spittle-flecked rant. A little. But not much. Because SIX YEARS after I pointed out that the “British beer styles” section of “the UK’s best-selling beer and pub guide” was choked with errors, the 2020 edition of the guide, just out, is… Read More Why oh why is the Good Beer Guide STILL getting British beer styles so totally, shambolically wrong?

Martyn Cornell25 Comments

Mani hands make light beer

I’ve been going on holiday with my family to the Mani, in the middle “finger” of the Peloponnese, pretty regularly since 2006: it’s a beautiful, almost entirely unspoilt place, the beaches are broad and sandy, the sun almost continuous, the people are friendly, the food is excellent, locally sourced and cheap. The beer, until now,… Read More Mani hands make light beer

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The ‘I was a teenage under-aged drinker’ 50th anniversary pub crawl

How many people in Britain ever waited until their 18th birthday before they ordered their first alcoholic drink in a pub? Not you, I bet, and not me, certainly. In fact this year marks half a century since I started regularly drinking in pubs, and as I’m still a little shy of 68, you may… Read More The ‘I was a teenage under-aged drinker’ 50th anniversary pub crawl

Martyn Cornell16 Comments

If you want craft beer in Munich, it’s pure Helles

Should you wish to know the differences between the craft beer scenes in London and Munich, Burchard Stock is a good man to ask. For two years he was a brewer with the pub brewery chain Brewhouse & Kitchen in Britain’s capital, ending up in charge of the Islington branch, close by the Angel: indeed,… Read More If you want craft beer in Munich, it’s pure Helles

Martyn Cornell5 Comments

The Great Manchester Beer Flood of 1831

Anything they do in That London, Manchester can do as well, including the catastrophic collapse of a giant vat full of maturing porter. Admittedly the Great London Beer Flood of 1814 was rather bigger than the event in Lancashire 17 years later, with the vat that burst at Meux’s brewery, off Tottenham Court Road, containing… Read More The Great Manchester Beer Flood of 1831

Martyn Cornell6 Comments

The land where working-class men drink milk stout from quart bottles, and the curious case of Mackeson porter

It’s a beer fact guaranteed to make British drinkers boggle in disbelief: one of the biggest selling beer styles among black working-class South African men is milk stout While milk stout has seen a tiny renaissance in the UK, with craft beer brewers producing examples of the style, it is still mostly thought of, if… Read More The land where working-class men drink milk stout from quart bottles, and the curious case of Mackeson porter

Martyn Cornell13 Comments