Beers, like animals, can be endangered species: some can even go extinct. Nobody’s seen West Country White Ale in the wild for more than 125 years. Camra, I’m very pleased to say, has recently decided that it could be doing much more than Make May a Mild Month for promoting endangered beers, and has set… Read More Endangered beers
I don’t normally get involved in exploring American beer history, not just because there are people far better qualified than me to do the job, but also because I know how easily I could make a fool of myself for lack of local knowledge: like the American who wrote a book about Guinness and said… Read More American Brown Ale: the pre-prohibition years
The ability to deny the evidence of your senses is widespread. There’s the dictator insisting to television interviewers that his people love him, while across the country those long-oppressed people are taking up arms and waving the flag of liberation. And on a much less serious plane, there are people who will insist two beers… Read More Why there’s no such beer as ‘English brown ale’
I feel bad about this, really bad. Pete Brown’s having a “let’s be nice” month over on his blog, and all I can do is be mean, nasty, negative and carping. (And it’s not because I didn’t win anything in the BGBW awards, ’cos I didn’t enter this year, so there.) Someone has produced a… Read More The ‘beeriodic table’: beautifully executed, fatally flawed
How long did ale and beer remain as separate brews? Most* drinkers, I think, know that “ale” was originally the English name for an unhopped fermented malt drink, and beer was the name of the fermented malt drink flavoured with hops, a taste for which was brought to this country from the continental mainland about… Read More The long battle between ale and beer
