Unexpected free beer and other adventures
The occasional free beer is, of course, one of the benefits of writing a blog about hopped alcoholic refreshment: but it doesn’t usually come to me via random interactions in the road. Strictly, I...
View ArticleGuinness myths and scandals
‘Guinness Marmite’ from the 1930s Is there a brewery business with more books written about it – is there any business with more books written about it – than Guinness? Effectively a one-product...
View ArticleHow Brazil’s favourite beer arrived from Scotland
‘If the man who invented the censorship bar had drunk Skol, it wouldn’t look like this – it would look like this. Skol goes down round’ It is one of the stranger results of global beer marketing that...
View ArticleThe origins of pils: a reality Czech from Evan Rail
If there is one blessing the Oxford Companion to Beer has brought us, it’s the beginnings of a much better, and myth-free understanding of the origins of the world’s most popular beer style, pale pils...
View ArticleLondon’s brewing, London’s brewing …
The London Brewers Alliance beer festival at Vinopolis, by Borough Market, a couple of Saturdays ago was a terrific event, thoroughly enjoyable. In one room were gathered a dozen or more (I forgot to...
View ArticleWells gets Younger – which isn’t as old as claimed
Excellent news, I think, that Wells & Young’s has acquired the Scottish brands McEwan’s and Younger’s from their current owner, Heineken. The announcement last week that W&Y was bringing back...
View ArticlePub passion personified
Nick Sharpe of the St John's Tavern, pub enthusiast It’s an ill wind that doesn’t have a silver lining – or something like that. Anyway, I’m delighted to be able to give you a chance to see and hear...
View ArticleAlbert Le Coq is NOT a famous Belgian
It’s a small error, as they go, but it has been around for at least 40 years, and it appears everywhere from Michael Jackson’s World Guide to Beer to the labels on bottles of Harvey’s Imperial Extra...
View ArticleWhen one family ran the world’s two biggest breweries
In a shiny 12-storey building in Bishopsgate, on the edge of the Square Mile, is a company that represents the last faint echo of a time when one family ran the two biggest breweries in the world. The...
View ArticlePlain and powerful: 1930s German brewery advertising
In the 1920s and 1930s, cafés and bars in German-speaking Europe were decorated by enamel advertising signs promoting the local brewer that have rarely been bettered for their visual qualities: plain,...
View ArticleCaley’s self- crafted approach to being craft
Are you a mature but still lively Victorian brewery? Do you worry that younger breweries, with their weird American hop varieties, shiny stainless steel lauter tuns and one-off wacky recipes, are...
View ArticleGoodbye to the last of London’s million-barrel breweries
Flag on the top of the Mortlake brewery 1932 It is one of history’s ironies that just as London hits more breweries than at any time in the past 110 years, its brewing capacity is more than halved with...
View ArticleA short account of the surprisingly long history of putting beer in cellar...
Tank beer – “tankova” – may be a hot new trend in London, with Meantime in Greenwich and Pilsner Urquell delivering fresh unpasteurised beer to pubs in beautiful shiny big containers, but the idea of...
View ArticleCiao Biella: an Italian family brewery woos the bloggerati
You can hardly get fresher beer than from a bottle snatched off the production line by the managing director of the brewery, only seconds after it had been filled and capped – and, indeed, it’s...
View ArticleThe origins of pils: a reality Czech from Evan Rail
If there is one blessing the Oxford Companion to Beer has brought us, it’s the beginnings of a much better, and myth-free understanding of the origins of the world’s most popular beer style, pale pils...
View ArticleLondon’s brewing, London’s brewing …
The London Brewers Alliance beer festival at Vinopolis, by Borough Market, a couple of Saturdays ago was a terrific event, thoroughly enjoyable. In one room were gathered a dozen or more (I forgot to...
View ArticleWells gets Younger – which isn’t as old as claimed
Excellent news, I think, that Wells & Young’s has acquired the Scottish brands McEwan’s and Younger’s from their current owner, Heineken. The announcement last week that W&Y was bringing back...
View ArticlePub passion personified
Nick Sharpe of the St John's Tavern, pub enthusiast It’s an ill wind that doesn’t have a silver lining – or something like that. Anyway, I’m delighted to be able to give you a chance to see and hear...
View ArticleCaley’s self- crafted approach to being craft
Are you a mature but still lively Victorian brewery? Do you worry that younger breweries, with their weird American hop varieties, shiny stainless steel lauter tuns and one-off wacky recipes, are...
View ArticleGoodbye to the last of London’s million-barrel breweries
Flag on the top of the Mortlake brewery 1932 It is one of history’s ironies that just as London hits more breweries than at any time in the past 110 years, its brewing capacity is more than halved with...
View Article