There’s nothing new about collaboration beers; international brewers have been working together for centuries. Pilsner, for instance, was born when British and Bavarian brewing technology intersected with Bohemian raw materials.
There’s an unbroken history of Porter brewing in Germany going back around 200 years. Porter was the first style to be a huge international hit and was brewed all over the world.
Of Newark-upon-Trent’s 35 pubs, only four served cask. All owned by Nottingham brewer Home Ales. Modern geeks wouldn’t have loved them. But they had a few things drinkers loved. They were cheap. And their cask beers were always in good condition.
Northern Germany was once home to dozens of top-fermenting beer styles. Most drowned under the tsunami of lager that flooded the region at the end of the 19th century. A few tenacious ones managed to cling on past WWII, fewer still until today.
It’s clear that Guinness, although popular, was far from dominant in the British Stout market. And there were many Stouts not just as dry as Guinness, but far drier.
The name Watney conjures up very different emotions either side of the Atlantic. Many North Americans nurture fond memories of Red Barrel as a quality import. Older Brits mostly harbor a lingering contempt. But what’s the truth about Watney’s beer? Was it really that bad?
Carlsberg’s Carl Jacobsen had clearly been impressed by what he’d seen on his travels and brought back an enthusiasm for British ales. So much enthusiasm that he started brewing ales alongside the lagers you would expect.
Berliner Weisse entered the twentieth century in robust health. New-fangled lager beers had dented its popularity a little, but it remained one of the city’s favorite styles. That was to change as the century progressed, and its popularity slowly declined.
Like all styles that have been around for more than five minutes, Berliner Weisse has undergone several transformations, adapting to technological, political and social change. It’s currently in a very sad state in Germany, hanging on by a thread. Only one version, Kindl, is made in any quantity.
In the second half of the 19th century the types of beer brewed in Sweden changed radically. The original, purely indigenous styles were gradually swept away by imports from elsewhere, and Sweden was very early to jump on the lager train.
Robert Wahl had a distinguished career as a brewing science educator. But one of his greatest legacies is a book that shines a light on American brewing in the immediate aftermath of Prohibition.
Anyone who tells you East German beer was terrible either never drank any, is a liar, or only tried Gothauer beer. Best German Pilsener I’ve ever had? Mühlhausener Pilsator.
Every hue of IPA and dozens of Stout sub-types are recognized in style guidelines, but Czech beer is reduced to “Bohemian Pilsner,” a name that would leave a Czech drinker scratching his head. Meanwhile, the country is awash with an array of lager styles, more than anywhere else in the world.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of IPA, but what about KK, SS and AK? British brewers once loved to string together beer names from a few letters. But what on earth do they all mean?
I was a little surprised to see that the Brewers Association had added Dutch Kuit to their style guidelines. It’s a pretty obscure style, even in Holland.
We’ve all heard of Berliner Weisse, but who now remembers her brunette sibling, Berliner Braunbier? She’s disappeared without a trace, despite, unlike many German top-fermenting styles, being brewed within living memory.
Heineken is synonymous with the Pale Lager called Pilsener that still dominates the world. The vast majority of the beer they brew is in that style. But that wasn’t always the case.
When it closed in 1934, Hoare and Co. was one of the oldest businesses in London, dating back to Tudor times. Today, the site is home to a block of apartments, and not a trace of the brewery remains. Will the Hoare name ever return?
In the middle of the 20th century Light Ale, buoyed by the surge in sales of bottled beer, was a rising star of Britain’s pub trade. The dubious quality of much draft beer prompted drinkers to start mixing it with bottled beer. Light and Bitter—a half-pint of Ordinary Bitter topped up with a bottle of Light Ale—was one of London’s favorite tipples.
Whitbread created one of the most useful documents for anyone interested in the history of British beer: their Gravity Book. In it, they documented thousands of samples of competitors’ beers, from the early 1920s to the late 1960s.
