While America’s ales had their roots in Britain, they slowly began to adapt and change in their new home. By the 1890s, there were significant differences in the way British and American ale breweries operated and the equipment they used.
Scottish Shilling Ales are beers designated by that peculiar Scottish system of naming based on price rather than type. But what is the history of these beers, and how do they fit into the constellation of British styles?
Guinness: It’s the classic Dry Irish Stout. Not that strong, and, well, dry. A beer characterized by the use of roasted barley for color and flavor. A beer that’s been unchanged since God wore short trousers. Or has it?
An incredible document has just come to light. It’s a typed manuscript, written in 1947 by A. Dörfel, the head brewer at Groterjan, a smallish brewery in Berlin specializing in top-fermenting beer. What makes the manuscript so fascinating is that Dörfel documents a lost world of German top-fermenting beers.
One of the oddities of 20th-century British brewing was that bottled beer was rarely called Mild; it was usually called Brown Ale or something vague, like Family Ale. Or Home Brewed.
Pale Stout sounds like a contradiction in terms. But if Black India Pale Ale can exist, why not Pale Stout? Going back to the original meaning of Stout, it’s not as daft as it first appears. Stout only acquired its definition as a specific type of dark, hoppy beer in the early 19th century.
What’s slightly surprising to see in old British newspapers is that the strongest Mild is called “Imperial.” Especially as I’ve been calling XXXX Ale “Imperial Mild” for a while now. I thought I was just making it up. Once again, history has proved that there’s almost nothing genuinely new.
The past isn’t a foreign country. It’s a whole foreign continent, where each country is weirder than the last. Recipe formulation is an area where this is particularly true.
Britain was a latecomer to the lager party. Everyone knows that. But the story is more complicated—and goes back further—than you might imagine. Lager made two arrivals in Britain, each some 30 years apart.
Fuller’s brewed two Burtons in the 1930s, Burton Old and Old Burton Extra. OBE didn’t quite have the gravity of Barclay’s KKKK, but it was still a very potent 7.4 percent alcohol by volume. Burton’s popularity quickly dropped off after World War II, but OBE struggled on until 1969.
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In 1852, Samuel Allsopp brewed a strong beer for Captain Belcher’s expedition to the Arctic. A beer that wouldn’t freeze easily was pretty handy. With all that alcohol, it must have warmed the sailors up, too. Who needs a fire when you’ve an 11-percent ABV beer?
There were many parallels between the circumstances in Britain and Holland in the early years of World War II. Raw materials were getting scarcer, and the strength of beer was falling. There were also limitations on the types of beer brewed. Drinkers couldn’t always get what they wanted.
We are witnessing a new age of experimentation, one in which brewers are taking inspiration from history instead of indulging the whims of the present. Engaging in a form of beer archaeology, brewers are teaming up with beer historians to re-create historic beers once brewed in mash tuns around the globe.
The willful misrepresentation of the past by the German brewing industry is irritating. Giving the impression that German beer has been all malt since Moses was at school? Nothing could be further from the truth.
In the 19th century, Pale Ales were matured for months before sale. The gap between mash tun and glass could be more than a year. And not just the beer shipped to India; Pale Ale in a pub in Britain could be just as old as the IPA in Bombay.
London, Burton, Edinburgh: Britain’s key brewing towns. But one name is missing. The forgotten great of British beer: Alloa, renowned for its ales and Pale Ales.
The first modern Brown Ale, brewed by Manns of London, appeared just before 1900. Only after World War I did the style really take off. In the 1920s, most other London brewers introduced their own.
You might be surprised at some of the multitude of forms Mild Ale has taken. Many were about as dissimilar from the modern version as you can imagine. But let’s get one thing straight first: The name Mild has nothing to do with low gravity or low hopping rates.
Geography and history explain why the Farmhouse Ale tradition has stayed alive in Nord-Pas-de-Calais or northern France. Also known as the Bière de Garde region, this area is nestled right against the Belgian border.
Similar to the origins of IPA, Saisons were and are highly hopped. Add the existence of wild yeast in the process and the result is a finished beer that is quite bitter and tart.
Mild needs an aggressive public relations campaign, an image consultant, maybe even a personal trainer. Otherwise, one of the world’s most misunderstood beer styles will never shed its reputation for mediocrity.
