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Taylor Walker, the brewery name that just won’t die
Huge guffaws from me at the news that Punch Taverns is to bring back to life for a third time the name Taylor Walker, a former London porter brewer that had strong links with the earliest days of...
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So what REALLY happened on October 17 1814?
Meux’s Horse Shoe brewery, Tottenham Court Road in 1830 I can stake a tenuous family link to the Great London Beer Flood disaster of 1814, which took place exactly 196 years ago today. My...
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Pub 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...
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Wells 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...
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London’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...
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The 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...
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How 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...
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Guinness 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...
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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...
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When Brick Lane was home to the biggest brewery in the world
Black Eagle sign, Brick Lane The huge sign on the outside of the building on the corner of Hanbury Street and Brick Lane is clear enough: Truman Black Eagle Brewery. Nobody passing by could have any...
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How I nearly found a brewery on my doorstep
I believe strongly in the old cliché about what to do if life hands you a ton of lemons: set to and make the very best lemonade you can. So when I wound up working in Hong Kong, I thought the worthiest...
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Remembering the victims of the Great London Beer Flood, 200 years ago today
Wherever you are at 5.30pm this evening, please stop a moment and raise a thought – a glass, too, if you have one, preferably of porter – to Hannah Banfield, aged four years and four months; Eleanor...
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Ciao 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...
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A 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...
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Goodbye 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...
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Caley’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...
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Pub 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 ArticleClik here to view.
Wells 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 ArticleClik here to view.
London’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 ArticleClik here to view.
The 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 Article