England – Page 26 – A Good Beer Blog

The 1811 Needham And Rawlins Patent Brewing Machine

That is a notice placed in the New York American of 22 April 1825. Letters Patent were issued for the device in 1811 and 1812 (nos. 3493 and 3575 respectively). James Needham is listed as the inventor, described as a brewer in Islington a district of London, England. In a book whose title starts but is not completely stated as The Literary Panorama, being a Compendium of National Papers and Parliamentary Reports, illustratives of the History, Statistics and Commerce of the Empire… from 1811 we learn a bit more from the summary of that year’s patents:

James Needham, Islington Green, Middlesex, Brewer and Corn Dealer, for a portable apparatus for brewing beer and ale.

Portable! How wonderful. In the same year’s publication of the Philosophical Magazine Series 1, Volume 38, Issue 163 it noted that the machine makes the beer from malt and hops and that the patent was issued on 23 September 1811. Curious as to the details? Well then get on your knees and thank God for the blessings imparted by The Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture: Consisting of Original Communications, Specifications of Patent Inventions, Practical and Interesting Papers, Selected from the Philosophical Transactions and Scientific Journals of All Nations, Volume 22 from 1813 which contains the entire four page declaration of the invention as submitted for the patent including diagrams:

[Never mind the wheely thing to the left of the illustration. That’s the previous patent for Robert Bill’s clothes washing machine.] Needham’s application indicates that its standard operation was to make eighteen gallons from two worts drawn from a bushel of malt and a pound of hops. There is also references on the internets to an 18 page document published in 1813 entitled Directions for Brewing with Needham, Rawlins and Co.’s Patent Family Brewing Machine but I am not having any luck placing my hand upon a copy. In the April 1813 edition of The Tradesman an article sets out addition and improvements to the patent were described including these comments under the heading “Observations of the Patentee”:

The superior advantages of this machine, both in form and method of using it, are these. It unites the fire-place, copper, mash-tun, under-back, hop-back, and working-tun, in one compact portable utensil; simple in its construction, and convenient both in shape and the ease with which it is managed. It is made of tin: most durable and wholesome materials, and kept in order with little trouble. The method of brewing with the machine is easy and certain in its operation, and requires but little labour; the consumption of fuel is small, and the steam is condensed. It produces an abundant extract from both malt and hops, without the necessity of mashing; and the extract is also of a superior flavour, being obtained by a progressive degree of heat (from cold to boiling) given to the water, which infuses the malt and hops at one time in separate compartments of the vessel, yet affording an opportunity for the extracts to mix freely; thereby assimilating their component parts, fixing and preserving their essential and volatile particles, and thus completing the brewing in a few hours. The wort obtained by this process is so congenial to fermentation, as to produce (after a short time keeping in the cask) a transparent and highly-flavoured malt liquor, superior in quality to any that can be produced by other methods.

So, the miracle that Needham blessed us with was the idea of no mash
home brewing. Sounds all a bit dodgy to me. And who is Rawlins? Bet he was the money man. He shows up in 1813 given that the 18 page directions booklet carries his name. The booklet is described in this list of cookery books acquired by Princeton University in 2012 including a passage from the preface:

NEEDHAM, RAWLINS and CO. Directions for Brewing with Needham, Rawlins, and Co.’s Patent Family Brewing Machine. Printed for the Patentees, and Sold by them at their Warehouses, Skinner Street, London; and Narrow Wine Street, Bristol. And by all their Agents. Sixth Edition. 8vo. 18pp., folding frontispiece with engravings of the machine and letterpress text, a single leaf on different paper with a list of agents for the machine around the country (printed by W. Newman, Widegate-st. Bishopsgate”. Stitched as issued in contemporary buff wrappers, uncut (wrappers slightly soiled). London: by T. H. Coe, 1813.

“Malt liquor has ever been considered in this country a Constitutional Beverage, and the advantages of private brewing were at all times sufficiently obvious, by the reducing it effected in the cost, and the pleasure of having Beer of any strength required; but the inconveneience and uncertainty attendant on it, have prevented its general adoption. To avoid these difficulties, by a Compact, Portable Brewing Apparatuus, which should embrace the more important object of producing superior Malt Liquor, has been the devoted study of the inventors of this Machine, which removes all uncertainty in Brewing (an object that has eluded the attentive search of the most scientific Brewers); requires but little labour, and obtains a greater extract from both Malt and Hops, without the necessity of mashing, a tedious and inconvenient operation.” (Preface).

Beer was a household staple in an age when the water was very likely to be poisonous – even schoolchildren were allowed a ration of “small” or weak beer – and it also had the advantage of keeping the servants out of the public houses. Intererstingly, home brewing was closely allied to the temperance movement in Victorian times. Charles Edward Rawlins left the partnership with James Needham and Joseph Rawlins on 31 December 1813 (London Gazette).

Too bad for Princeton that the booklet was published a quarter century before the Victorian era started. And, well, that last bit is interesting. Two Rawlins had been involved, one* leaving fairly early on even though they seemed to be on a roll with six editions of the booklet, warehouses as well as agents. Sadly – or maybe not so sadly depending on the beer – it didn’t pan out all that well for these gents in the longer term. Just fifteen years after publishing the improvements and directions – and three years after some guy in New York was flogging off his equipment second hand – it seems to have all come apart. In the 2 May 1828 edition ofThe London Gazette, the official journal of government notices and proclamations, we see the following notice at page 855:

Sic transit gloria the idea of no mash home brew. Notice that while Needham became a hop merchant in Southwark he had to assign his entire estate to Rawlins and another, a stock broker by way of Medley. Someone lost all they had over this matter. Maybe they all did.

Monday Update: An excellent and unexpected bonus. Four more images related to Needham.

To the far left is an ad for the machine from The Cambrian, a Welsh newspaper, from 21 November 1812. Next, is the notice stating that Charles Edward Rawlins had had enough and was out of the partnership. Middle right is the actual front page of the user guide and, far right, a 1821 book entitled Domestic Brewer and Family Wine-Maker which seems to have the user guide incorporated into it. Fabulous stuff.

*The departing partner, Charles Edward Rawlins, was a soda-water manufacturer on that same Narrow Wine Street in Bristol in 1814.

That 1700s Battledore Barley And The Other Four

battledore3 These are busy days. The endy bit of April and the first half of May require my time in the garden. Yesterday I took apart the compost bin, sieved all the good bits out, returned all the half-rotted stuff and layered it with last autumn’s leaves and the parsnip greens from the overwintered crop. And it had gone all anaerobic. Much of it was the consistency of warm chocolate, reeking of sweet bog. Hours it took me. Then there was the week’s laundry. I don’t trust it to just anyone. And another Red Sox game to watch. And tweed to covet.* And supper to make. Saturdays are exhausting. No time to swan and noodle about the the London Metropolitan Archives like some. Research gets little time in spring.Yet, at the back of my mind there is that question. You will recall Sir. Wm Strickland’s observations from 1796 set out in a letter to Thomas Jefferson dated 20 May 1796:

I have reason to believe that a grain of Barley has never yet been sown on the Continent; the grain which is there sown, under that name, is not that from which our malt-liquors are made; it is here known under the name of Bigg, or Bigg-barley, is cultivated only on the Northern Mountains of this Island, and used only for the inferior purposes of feeding pigs or poultry, and is held to be of much too inferior a quality to Make into Malt, and of the five different grains of the species of Barley known to us, it is held to be by far the worst; I have therefore taken the liberty of sending a small quantity of the best species of Barley, (the Flat or Battledore Barley) and the one most likely to succeed with you; this grain is sown in the spring, on any rich cultivated soil; I recommend it strongly to your attention; and shall rejoice if I prove the means of introducing into your country an wholesome and invigorating liquor.

The passage is handy. It fills in two of the five grades of barley known to Britain in the 1790s. Flat or Battledore is the best. Bigg or Bygg is the worst. In the last post about Strickland, we reviewed how that latter lesser sort was six-row, winter or bigg barley. So what were the others? Battledore was a thing of the past in 1866 when the fourth volume of The English Cyclopaedia stated that the Sprat, or Battledore – also called Putney Barley – is the hordeum zeocriton. In a 2010 post, Ron noted that it was also called Goldthorpe. It seems to have hit its peak before the popularization of hordeum distichum or Chevallier. In 1785 it was described in A New System of Husbandry: from many years experience, with tables shewing the expence and profit of each crop by Charles Varlo in this way:

The sprat or battle-dore barley, has only two rows of grain; for which reaƒon , the ear is flat, the corn is ƒhort, plump and thin ƒkinned, not inclined to have a long gross ƒtraw, (but indeed this varies according to the richneƒs of the ground it is ƒown on) it is ƒaid it will grow well on many other ƒorts of land. I have had great crops on tough, ƒtrong, cold clay, or gravel land; but ƒuch muƒt be well pulverised, ƒweetened, enriched, mollified and warmed by tillage.

See, now it’s “Battle-dore” as well. And the focus is not so much scientific in the sense of identifying the plant as it was agricultural in the way the author describes its uses. In 1745‘s Agriculture Improv’d Or the Practice of Husbandry Displayd by William Agric Ellis, it was stated that it will produce “a strong straw that will always grow and stand erect to the last” whereas “common Barley… will fall down, and sometimes rot on the Ground.” Being also an earlier crop, the sprat or Battledore was harvested in 1744 before damaging rains came.

It is this Sort of Barley that is most valued by Distillers, for producing the greatest Quantity of Spirits, and is no less profitable to Brewers, for making a Malt that yields the greatest Length of Worts : The Stalk and Chaff indeed are coarƒish, but the Quality and Quantity of this Grain largely compenƒate for it.

More information is provided in The Natural History of Northamptonshire published in 1715 by John Morton, naturalist and Rector of Oxendon.** He records that there were two sorts of barley in his immediate area: sprat or Battledoor barley and Long-eared barley. Rath-ripe barley, however, was being grown in the area of Lowick, twenty mile to the east, and in fact it was the only barley sown by his colleague the Rev. Mr. Poulton of that parish. Each of these are distinguished, again, from common barley. Reaching back another twenty-nine years, we see the sorts of barley described in 1686‘s The Natural History of Stafford-Shire by Robert Plot – perhaps my favourite new old book of the year given how it may contain a creation myth, the very genesis of Burton and its ales. In one exciting passage at page 347, Plot states:

… it remains only that we recount the varieties of each kind sown here; and by what rules they are guided in the choice of their seed: there being as many sorts used here, and perhaps more, than in some richer Counties. For beside the white-flaxen, and bright red-wheat (which are the ordinary grains of the Country) they now and then sow the Triticum Multiplex or double-eard wheat; Triticum Polonicum or Poland wheat; and Tragopyrum, Buck or French-wheat; all described above Chap. 6. And for barleys; beside the common long-eard, and sprat-barley, which are most used; they sow sometimes the Tritico-speltum or naked barley, of which also above Chap. 6. And amongst the Oats: beside the White, black, and red Cats; at Burton upon Trent I found they also sowed the Avena nuda or naked Oat ; described, Ibidem.

Is anything more fabulous than a text that is 330 years old that uses the proper scientific Latin names of things? It’s all so… science-y. But what does it tell us? What does all of it tell us? Here’s what I see:

1. Battledore or Sprat Barley
2. Long-Eared Barley
3. Naked Barley
4. Rath-ripe Barley
5. Bigg Barley

Are these the five sorts of barley Strickland mentioned in his letter of 1796? I don’t know. There must be a masters thesis or two out there on the topic that would give more clarity. And there is that pesky reference to “common barley” that is a bit of a theme throughout these texts. Suffice it to say for now, then, that there were varieties and perhaps ones which are still sown for non-brewing purposes. More research needed. But, clearly, we can be assured that to the gentleman agriculturalist of 1796 Battledore is the best and was spoken highly of for the previous century. Which makes me suggest that if one is recreating porters of that vintage one ought to be using Battledore malt and not the later improved varieties of 1800s Chevallier or mid-1900s Maris Otter. Shouldn’t one? Certainly one would if one is to brew the earliest Burton, like the lads sipped in 1712.

Update: above you will see a passage from John Ray’s 1677 book Catalogus Plantarum Angliae, Et Insularum Adjacentium: Tum Indigenas, tum in agris passim cultas complectens. In quo praeter Synonyma necessaria, facultates quoque summatim traduntur, una cum Observationibus et Experimentis Novis Medicis et Physicis which describes Battledoor barley as a form of hordeum distichum and not hordeum zeocriton. Hmm… in 1838 it was called hordeum disticho-zeocriton. Hmm…This 2003 bit of botany suggests Spratt was a UK landrace out of which other barley strains developed.

*I am having a wee problem over the last six months. It really started in January 2015 with a windowpane tweed bucket hat bought at Pringle in Glasgow. Then, told at work along with other mid-life males to smarten up the look a bit I’ve, well, gone a bit overboard. I can’t recommend Peter Christian highly enough in such tight spots. Clothes for folk with 37 inch arms like me. Delivery by international $25 courier in about five days. I had no idea that I needed a lavender crew neck cotton sweater. But now I have one. And four new sports coats. And new sorts of socks. God, the HJ socksalone have changed my life…
**Which is just nine mile south of the famous Kibworth examined in BBC’s The Story of England mentioned here and here.

Sir William Strickland On The 1790s US Barley Crop

battledore4 That image up there has little to do directly with this post. It’s from a book entitled A Short Economic and Social History of the Lake Counties, 1500-1830 by C.Murray, L.Bouch and G.Peredur. It popped into my Google search results as an answer to the query “William Strickland barley.” I was looking for William Strickland, 6th Baron Boynton, esq. (February 18, 1753 – January 8, 1834), the 18th-century gentleman farmer and writer from Yorkshire, England who was the eldest son of Sir George Strickland of York, England, from the ancient English Strickland family of Sizergh and who wrote A Journal of a Tour of the United States of America, 1794–95. You will note, however, that both are Stricklands of Sizergh. According to Burke’s the William of 1568 was an MP and may have even sailed with Cabot to the New World. The William I am looking for was the son of George, son of William, son of William, son of Thomas, son of the 1st Baron William, son of Walter, son of the William who may have sailed with Cabot. My William is the great great great great great grandson of the one who in 1568 grew a crop which included 43.5% bigg.

I find this interesting because on 15 July 1797 George Washington wrote a letter to William Strickland which opens with “Sir, I have been honored with Yours of the 30th of May and 5th of Septr of last Year” and containing the following:

Spring Barley (such as we grow in this Country) has thriven no better with me than Vetches. The result of an Experiment made with a little of the True sort might be interesting… You make a distinction and no doubt a just one between what in England is call’d Barley, and Big or Beer, if there be none of the true Barley in this Country—it is not for us without Experience to pronounce upon the Growth of it; and therefore, as noticed in a former part of this letter it might be interesting to ascertain whether our climate and soil would produce it to advantage. No doubt as your observations while you were in the United States appear to have been extensive and accurate it did not escape You, that both Winter and Spring Barley are cultivated among us; the latter is considered as an uncertain Crop—So. of New York and I have found it so on my farms—of the latter I have not made sufficient Trial to hazard an opinion of Success. About Philadelphia it succeeds well.

I haven’t yet laid a hand on a copy of his journal but in the 1800 publication from the British Board of Agriculture Communications to the Board of Agriculture, on subjects relative to the Husbandry, and Internal Improvement of the Country, there is an article starting at page 128 by Strickland “Observations on the State of America by William Strickland, Esq. of Yorkshire. Received 8th March, 1796.” In it you will see that it is actually a set of questions and answers. The questions were posed by the Board of Agriculture and were part of the purpose of his trip to the United States. Britain’s Board of Agriculture was set up in 1793, a private association which received a government grant to undertake research. The Board’s questions for Strickland were basic. What was the price of land in the young USA? What was the price of labour? Might not Great Britain be supplied with hemp from America? In response to the short questions, Strickland wrote pages. Not to ruin a good story with spoilers but his final paragraph on page 167 goes some way to remind us of the geographical limitations not only of his trip but of the young nation:

None emigrate to the frontiers beyond the mountains, except culprits, or savage back-wood’s men, chiefly of Irish descent. This line of frontier-men, a race possessing all the vices of civilized and savage life, without the virtues of either; affording the singular spectacle of a race, seeking, and voluntarily sinking into barbarism, out of a state of civilized life; the outcasts of the world, and the disgrace of it; are to be met with, on the western frontiers from Pennsylvania, inclusive to the farthest south.

Strickland’s America stretches form the Atlantic to the Appalachians. The other limitation we have to keep in mind is how little barley is mentioned in Strickland’s observations. As far as my search engine can tell, there is only the one reference in his observations to barley being sold in New York City in 1794 which sold at about 60% the price of wheat. Barley was not noted in the Albany market.

battledore5

Look up there. We are well aware of the preference for wheat in the fields of New York. Wheat was worth far more and grew like a grain on steroids. Wheat was the basis of good beer in Albany of the 1670s and, under a decade after Strickland’s trip, the frontier brewery at Geneva, NY in 1803 was still cutting straw into the mash to cope with the high percentage of wheat malt being used. But Strickland was observing a new nation still coping with economic crisis. That Geneva brewery seems to have been established in 1797 in response to the crisis – with the promise of destroying “in the neighbourhood, the baneful use of spirituous liquors.” In New York the post-war economic collapse included depopulation of frontier* for much of the west of Albany as well as the blight of the Hessian fly. Upon seeing this, Strickland appears to be as happy to assist in the agricultural future of the new American republic as he was in reporting to the British Board of Agriculture. In his letter to Thomas Jefferson dated 20 May 1796 Strickland wrote a long passage about barley:

Where the improvement of the agriculture of a country can go hand in hand, with the improvement of the morals of a people, and the increase of their happiness, there it must stand in its most exalted state, there it ought to be seen in the most favourable light by the Politician there it must meet with the countenance and support of every good man and every friend to his country; so is it at present circumstanced in your country: by the cultivation of Barley your lands would be greatly improved; and the morals and health of the people benefited by the beverage it produces exchanged for the noxious spirits to which they have at present unfortunately recourse; besides the labour of the year would be more equally and advantageously divided, the grain being sown in the spring; but it was a striking circumstance that while the government was wisely encouraging the Breweries, in opposition to the distilleries the country should be entirely ignorant of the grain by which alone they could prosper; I have reason to believe that a grain of Barley has never yet been sown on the Continent; the grain which is there sown, under that name, is not that from which our malt-liquors are made; it is here known under the name of Bigg, or Bigg-barley, is cultivated only on the Northern Mountains of this Island, and used only for the inferior purposes of feeding pigs or poultry, and is held to be of much too inferior a quality to Make into Malt, and of the five different grains of the species of Barley known to us, it is held to be by far the worst; I have therefore taken the liberty of sending a small quantity of the best species of Barley, (the Flat or Battledore Barley) and the one most likely to succeed with you; this grain is sown in the spring, on any rich cultivated soil; I recommend it strongly to your attention; and shall rejoice if I prove the means of introducing into your country an wholesome and invigorating liquor.

Fabulous. Brewing was needed to civilize the community, to beat back the effect of rot gut whisky and Strickland saw that a key to this was the introduction of better classes of barley. Last year, Craig wrote about the difference between winter and spring barley in the second half of the 1700s and the transition away from a wheaty monoculture. He noted that “winter barley was euphemism for 6-row barley, and it was 6-row barley that would grow in tremendous amounts across western New York during the 19th and early 20th-centuries.” This week, Jordan colaborated on a brew with six-row barley, a recreation of an 1897 bock by Toronto brewer Lothar Reinhardt. But this is not the barley that Strickland was recommending. Notice he is recommending spring planted barley that is of far higher quality than six-row or what he calls bigg, the same coarser old form of barley his forefather was planting in 1568. In the generous and detailed corrections to the Oxford Companion to Beer – the wiki which was lost then found – a swath of beer writers prepared the following is stated at the letter “B” in response to the entry for “Bere (barley)” at page 123 of the famously troubled text:

“Bere (barley)” at page 123 states that “‘Bere’ has its origins in the Old English word for barley, ‘Bœr’.” The Old English word for “barley” was béow. (See Oxford English Dictionary at “bigg”). It further states that “It is synonymous with ‘Bygg’ or ‘Bigg’ barley, terms likely derived from the Norse word for barley, ‘Bygg’, which itself originates in the Arabic for barley.” The Norse word “bygg” does not originate in the Arabic word for barley. It has been suggested by some philologists (eg Bomhard and Kerns, The Nostratic Macrofamily, p. 219) that a word in the ancestor language of Arabic (and other languages, including Hebrew), Proto-Semitic *barr-/*burr, meaning “grain, cereal”, was borrowed by Proto-Indo-European as *b[h]ars-. Most philologists, however, derive bygg and bere (and barley, which, it should be noted, means “bere-like” – see OED at “barley”) from an Indo-European root *bheu to grow, to be (from which also comes the English word “be”), which gave a suggested proto-Germanic word for barley, *beww-, which became *beggw- in Old Norse, béow in Old English, bygg in Old Icelandic, and big in Norn (the language spoken on Shetland). It further states that “All of the Scandinavian languages used bygg for barley.” This is true only in the sense that the words in all modern North Germanic languages for “barley” are derived from “bygg” in their ancestor language, Old Norse, which was breaking up into its modern descendants around 1400. The modern Norwegian word for barley is still bygg, but the modern Danish is byg, the Swedish word is bjugg, the modern Icelandic byggi.

So, bigg as bygg goes a long way back. Excellent stuff. My only shame is that I forgot to transcribe over who in particular wrote that bit of correction. Sorry. In my grief over such a goof, I also sought some more detail in the section on barley in my copy of Ian Hornsey‘s 2012 book published by the Royal Society of Chemists Alcohol and its Role in the Evolution of Human Society but it turned out to be all about science and stuff. The sort of thing that did no good for my high school grade point average and which I appear to have passed on both genetically and behaviourally to the next generation of arts grads.

One bit of a conclusion, then, for now. We may be able to confidently state that when the new brewery in Cooperstown is looking for barley in 1795 and Gansevoort is looking for barley in 1798 they are very likely expecting to receive six-row, winter or bigg barley. Which makes some sense as it is likely a Dutch strain of barley, not English. Heck, look at the ad from John Mead in 1790 – he’s looking for rye, barley or wheat to brew with – anything he can get his hands on. That being the case, as Jordan has put into practice, recreations of historic northeastern North American barley beer from the period and perhaps for quite some time after need to be based on winter six-row barley and not the two-row spring barley William Strickland advocated for in the 1790s even though it was a far superior product. It was not, however, American – except around Philadelphia as George tantalizingly notes. More on that later.

*…aka the initial Anglo-American populating of Ontario.

A Theory: From Brimstone Alehouse To Burton Ale

staffplot1

Early this January just past I posted that image above and told you all that it was my new favorite quote about sulfurous brewing waters from around Burton in Staffordshire, England. It’s from The Natural History of Staffordshire from 1686 by Robert Plot. The beer was brewed as a local health tonic but – now as then – I love that it was available especially at the Brimstone Alehouse. Why this particular penny did not drop connecting this post to one that I posted one month before is now beyond me. I posted in my own comments about the first mention of Staffordshire’s sulfurous Burton ale in a high society establishment, the Vauxhall Garden aka Spring Garden, in the nation’s capital of London as described in an issue of The Spectator from 1712. Just 26 years after the reference to the Brimstone Alehouse in the book by Robert Plot. Hmm.

This hit me like a slap on the back of my head as I watched an episode of a Michael Portillo train show Great Continental Railway Journeys on TV. He was at a central European spa, having a steam bath one moment and a mud bath the next. Then he drinks the water. He appears to almost gag. It was full of sulfur. Like the water in Staffordshire 330 years ago. Horrible stuff taken for only medicinal reasons. Made palatable by brewing with it. Double Hmm.

Now, Martyn checked my story about the arrival of Burton ale in the greater marketplace around 1712 and gave it a good hard shake and it appears to be pretty solid, a real myth buster. Which leads to a quandary and a theory. Here’s the quandary. How does this gak water beer from Staffordshire get just one rustic small mention in an agricultural and industrial guide to the county from 1686 and then show up on a very expensive table before the finest of society no earlier and also no later than 26 years later. As you can see above, in each case it is sought out for a quality. But not the same quality.

That leads to the theory. It appears to me to be a bit of a longer distance from the Brimstone Tavern of 1686 to the Spring Garden of 1712 than just the intervening years. What was in the beer itself? Did the brewer of the Brimstone Tavern in 1686 bang in an incredibly high volume of hops to overcome the stated vomit inducing taste of the water? There is no mention that the experience in 1712 was at all unpleasant. Could it be in those 24 years that the hopping technique became refined and the sulfurous waters diluted? Were the waters calmed? I don’t know how I might go figuring out, how to determine if that was the case. But it’s an interesting theory. Somehow, it went from horrible to haute in 26 year.

Georgian Era Long Distance US Beer Shipments

The main reason I got into hunting for parallels to IPA over six years ago was Pete Brown’s excellent book Hops and Glory. I liked it so much that I posted a review in four parts. It seemed to me that if beer was being shipped to India it should have been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean as well. And as it turned out my hunch was correct. It shouldn’t have needed to be a hunch, of course. This all should have been well researched but, as I have droned on about, there has been a tendency in beer writing to skip the whole research thing and rush to observation. So, we have wallowed in myth. In this post, like the one on how beer was commonly not pale and not smoke-laced before the use of coke for malting, let’s just summarize what is known so that we don’t ever have to slip back into the land of fibs where it takes the latter 1800s popularization of lager to invent the concept of the know-how and practice shipping of US beer over long distances to lucrative markets.

=> First, Taunton ale. As we have known for a few years, Taunton ale was imported in large quantities into New York City since at least the 1750s when newpaper notices for the stuff start appearing. It was brought to NY in the first two decades of the 1800s. It was certainly also in Jamaica in the later 1700s. We do not know how much of it was imported into other colonial communities solely because no one has researched the question as far as I know.

=> nygaz07may1805albanyalehibberts Next, Hibberts Brown Stout. This stuff is all over the place. Click on that thumbnail. That is a notice from just one store in 1805 stating that they have fifty-five casks on hand with another 498 casks on route. British beer brought in and in bulk. Broadly. Nova Scotia. Texas. Lots of folk were importing. They knew how to put a cask on a ship.

=> And then, porter. As I recently wrote, it “was enjoyed in New York City as an import and then a local product in the second half of the 1700s, before and after the Revolution. The best was “ripe and brisk.” A brewery built in the 1760s by a Hudson River dock was known as the porter brewery for half a century. It shipped to both the East and West Indies. Again, masses of the stuff being shipped in and shipped out.

=> There’s New Haven ale, too. Worthy of its own post, New Haven, Connecticut ale appears in Albany (of all places) in 1802 in an ad that also have NYC ale coming north, too. There was an agency in NYC and some sort of Federalist plot related to the 1803 burning of the brewery. The brewery had enough barley for 1500 barrels of ale when it was destroyed. Scale.

=> Plus, there’s southern beer. You see it in the logs. Click on the ad. Brewing was not practical below a certain latitude so brewers like William Faulkner of NYC and Albany shipped to South Carolina… and the West Indies. He died in 1792. Not to mention there was northern beer, too, three decades later. I haven’t even figured out what that was. Except it was shipped in bulk and was intended for trade.

=> And, of course, there’s the entire history of Albany ale in the first half of the 1800s. Enjoyed from Newfoundland to Hawaii. Brewed at a scale that rivaled anything in Europe by mid-century and for decades after that.

=> And it goes on and on – there was Burlington Ale and Philadelphia Cream. There was all that Philadelphia porter, too. And then there was just those notices for custom batched shipping beer, a purely wholesale product in the 1820s like under that thumbnail. Local and shipping were two distinct and equally valuable markets for the ambitious brewer in the early 1800s. That image way up there? A detail from Vassar’s log in August 1834. Like other every page, it shows how mixed his intended markets were. Why else do you think US ale breweries were built on rivers or near the
sea?

Why wouldn’t US brewed beer and ale be shipped in mass quantities well before the rise of lager? Ship’s beer is a core product. Ship + brewing = wealth. Just like they knew how to make pale ale without smoke fouling, the English knew how to load a ship full of beer for an expedition to the Arctic in 1577, for God’s sake. The Hanseatic League was shipping beer internationally before 1400. Why? Money! Just as with big craft today, every brewery owner has always known that getting past the local market is where the real money is. It’s the goal. The goose that lays the golden egg. When the great American lager breweries begin shipping by rail in the later 1800s they are just building upon centuries of bulk beer shipment under wind and sail. Albany may have been a leader but it was not unique. The more that actual brewing trade research is undertaken the more clearly this will be set out. Guaranteed.

Session 109: Porter And Our Shared Georgian Culture

For this month’s edition of The Session, Mark Lindner, the Bend Beer Librarian has asked us to write about porter:

There are English porters, Brown porters, Robust porters, American porters, Baltic porters, Imperial porters, Smoked porters, barrel-aged variants of most of the preceding, and so on. With as many variations as there are it is hard to believe that porter is perhaps a neglected style. Then again, it did disappear for a while [see Foster, Porter, and others]. Of 14 beer people asked about overrated and underrated styles three of them said porter was most underrated and no one suggested it as overrated in our current market climate. [Yes, I know that is from Thrillist; feel free to ignore it.] I would like you to sit down with one or more porters of your choosing. Pay a few minutes attention to your beer and then use that as a springboard to further thoughts on the style.

Click on that image. It’s from the commonplace book of William Maud, evidently of Wetherby, York, England, b. 1787 who served as a customs official in Great Britain; he was employed at the excise office in Leeds in 1830. In his note book he keeps track of things of personal interest like Egyptian history and the excise table. On page 135, he wrote down two recipes: strong porter and common porter. He was likely taking an interest as the district excise man in the business of those who paid him taxes. The 184 year old jottings of a curious unfamous man.

There is so much going on. Both the common and strong porters are built upon a bit more porter malt than pale malt. The strong porter calls for Clay hops, which I now know from this 1855 agricultural journal was a rather rank hop that had particular preserving qualities. Which is interesting as Maud notes that the amount of hops you use depends on “the length of time you intend to keep the porter in the vats.” I am not sure that I had understood the word “cleanse” to mean the primary fermentation dropping clear. Notice he records that cleansing the common porter is accomplished by raising the temperature of the primary from 71 to 77 degrees. His conclusion is wonderful: “this is all wrought in the Punchin”! As with porter so with life.

Porter is Georgian Britain’s gift to us all. It comes in many forms. It was enjoyed in New York City as an import and then a local product in the second half of the 1700s, before and after the Revolution. The best was ripe and brisk. It survived both sides of that civil war. As we wrote in Ontario Beer:

The day book of tavern owner Abner Miles from 1798 illustrates drinking preferences of the governing elite who spent this a English money. Merchants Hamilton and Cartwright along with Commodore Grant and Chief Justice Elmsley along with many others are noted drinking a wide range of strong drinks with their meals and afterwards. They drank an impressive number of bottles and bowls of white wine, syrup-punch, brandy, rum, port, madeira, gin sling and sour punch along with mugs of beer and bottles of porter. The variety of drink indicates that, at least for the elite, tastes were as varied as imports from throughout the British empire and beyond would allow. The imported porter also illustrates a commercial connection to imperial and global brewing that continues to the present.

It does continue. I am having a Fuller’s London Porter as I write this. The grainy dusty texture of the malt so chocolately good. The hops twiggy minty good.

Is This One Way Big Craft Might Be Dying?

There is nothing more certain about the brewing trade more than the history is defined an extraordinary limited set of patterns. Those who think that the owners of big craft breweries are special, well, know nothing about the rise of lager in the late 1800s as a premium even healthy drink – and know nothing about the rise of Albany Ale from central New York in early the middle third of the 1800s or the rise of Taunton Ale from southwest England as probably a premium even healthy drink in the last quarter of the 1700s. I suspect Northdown Ale was the premium even healthy drink in the lower Thames valley in the third quarter of the 1600s, too. There are, in fact, only a limited number of things you can say about beer to make people buy it other than that it’s tasty, cheap and gets you a tremendous buzz. They are: (i) it’s premium and (ii) it’s healthy. Check out social media today. The spin doctors are still at it. That quote up there? That is from the fabulously fabulous Dr. Richard W. Unger of UBC. More particularly, it is from his essay “Beer: A New Bulk Good of International Trade” in the book Cogs, Cargoes and Commerce: Maritime Bulk Trade in Northern Europe, 1150-1400. It’s actually the ending. Sorry. Spoilers. It reminds me of craft. Or rather big craft.

Just at the moment, big craft is going through a time of change that is not unlike what happened to the beers of Hamburg in the latter 1400s and early 1500s. Hanseatic Hamburg’s hopped beer as a technology went through an era when it was considered premium, rare and difficult to make. Roughly from 1250 to 1350. Neighbouring markets raised import duties to keep it out or just enough to equalize the cost with local producers. Because Hamburg during that time was the greatest brewing center in the history of beer. 42% of the workforce was involved in brewing. 15% of all Swedish exports were hops sent to the breweries of Hamburg and its allies. Read ye some Unger if you have any doubts. These trading communities had their own warships and a trust based commerce that overcame North Sea and Baltic piracy and storm. A commercial empire. And it all went away. At least the brewing did. They switched to trading in the ultimate beer concentrate – grain.

Here in Canada we are undergoing much more accelerated change at the moment. The collapse of the oil market and the sad performance of the Canadian dollar against the American version means no one in their right mind is even thinking of buying US craft beer either by a quick flip over the border or as an import. Yet there are around 550 craft brewing kettles in the land. As a result, while I can buy 2 litres of Pilsner Urquell for 10 bucks and decent Ontario craft for maybe 12 bucks the equivalent volume of beer in a six pack of fairly pedestrian Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is selling for a silly $15.50 and will likely soon cost more given our new 68 cent dollar. Who needs it? Few if the stock that sits on the shelves is any indication.

This is an accentuated version of what is happening in the US itself. Being well north of 4,000 breweries in the US means fans of good beer in the US are no longer dependent on those Hanseatic Hamburgers of big craft who ship coast to coast. People are making their own better local beer now just as the Netherlands did around 1450 and England did starting in 1520. Big craft is losing sales just as its handmaid bulk cider is. Who needs it? If you are looking for something rare and interesting – premium and maybe even healthy – who needs to go to a grocery store or gas station shelf to buy the beer trucked in from out of state? Fewer and fewer.

The economies of scale in good beer are having their way with the market. Not large scale. Small scale. The era of the great white male multi-millionaire brewery owner is over. The nameless nimble newbie hoards have learned the tricks of Hamburg, leaving the old fests cancelled and the old men the option to sell out, shut down or sit around wondering what happened. Same as it ever was.

Was Hanseatic League Beer The First in England?

Ah, the Hanseatic League. Remember the Championship game of 1922? That was great. Gordie won the Cup.

That chart above is from Britain and Poland-Lithuania: Contact and Comparison from the Middle Ages to 1795 published in 2008 and co-edited by every beer history nerd’s favorite professor, Dr. Richard W. Unger. Before I knew anything about Albany ale, I asked Professor Unger about Dutch brewing in the Hudson Valley. If I have a fanboy crush on anything about beer it’s his research on medieval to industrial Baltic trade. Because I have a brief if beefy Baltic past. While living in western Pomerania, I had beers with a guy who was on trans-Atlantic Polish factory fishing boats in the 1970s not to mention a man who was a colonel in the underground riding German train lines, slipping away from time to time to place a bomb or two. His drink nephew wagged a revolver in my face while we partied. The things you remember from time to time.

Anyway, enough about me. More about beer. Unger shows how the Hanseatic League of northern Germany and Poland was instrumental in moving hopped beer into western Europe in the 1300s. England is often said to receive hops from the Netherlands but the Netherlands receives them through trade with traders from the Hanseatic League. Early 1300s restrictions against hopped beer in the Netherlands were dropped by mid-century due to the popularity of the imported stuff. That table up there is from an article in Britain and Poland-Lithuania: Contact and Comparison from the Middle Ages to 1795 by Wendy M. Childs in an article called “England’s Contacts With Poland-Lithuania.” She is pointing out that the Polish city of Gdansk* had trading routes into England quite regularly from the 1370s including the good ship Elyn and her cargo above via Hull in 1401. Notice that the beer is not showing up from the Netherlands. It’s from Poland’s main Baltic port. Which potentially skips about maybe half a century of trade contracts. Is it possible that the first hopped beer in England was not via the nearby Netherlands** but from earlier, more easterly Hanseatic trade routes? Just speculation for sure but for me at this point the neatest idea might be that North Sea ports like Hull and Lynn might have been enjoying hopped beer a little further back than understood. And what does that mean for the brewers in those ports?

* Where, yes, I drank a lot of Gdanskie in late 1991.
**Where, oddly, I worked and drank in 1986.

What The Heck Was Going On in 1680s Staffordshire?

staffplot1

That’s my new favorite quote about sulfurous brewing waters from around Burton. It’s from The Natural History of Staffordshire from 1686 by Robert Plot. It’s slightly misleading as the beer was brewed as a local health tonic but I love that it was available at the Brimstone Alehouse. I want a black t-shirt from that place. What’s that, you say? What’s with another 1600s blog post? Where is this coming from? Well, Martyn mentioned it in a comment but nowhere near as well as in the email he sent that started…

Curse you, Alan, for sending me on a winding chase across many volumes … and proving to me again that you can never trust any other fecker’s references, you always have to confirm them yourself. Peter Mathias’s reference in The Brewing Industry in England (p150) to Burton ale allegedly first being sold at the Peacock in London in 1623 appears to be completely wrong:

Secondary sources. They always let you down.

Where were we? Burton ale. From Staffordshire. A joy and comfort to Britain from, let’s say, 1750 to 1950. Where the particular beers are brewed from particular waters have extremely sulfurous water – though, to be fair, maybe a bit less than the water found at the Brimstone Alehouse. Yet, is a beer being good for scab or itch enough to get it a commercial market in London in the 1600s? I don’t think so. Mathias shouldn’t have been trusted. It’s certainly not something perhaps to travel for. Don’t get me wrong. There was a road from nearish Derby to London in the era, as mapping from 1675 by John Ogilby shows. But in 1675 are you really going to seek out the ales of the area unless you are, you know, (i) scabby and itchy and (ii) in the know? Likely not. And if you are the brewer do you send it off by ox cart to a urban world you’ve never seen down roads you couldn’t possibly trust? Likely not. Why? We have to obey the chronology. Not only was the Trent only made navigable in 1712 or so but that other big transportation innovation, the turnpike, only shows up a few years later. Practically speaking, reasonably good roads are one or two generations away. The Staffordshire County government has an exceedingly interesting and exceedingly lengthy report on the turnpike markers of the area which states:

Throughout the early years of the 18th century parishes were complaining that the upkeep of the roads through them was impossible due to the increased traffic. This is especially true of Staffordshire: so many through routes were being used, the travellers along them having no business with the parishes concerned. Steps were taken to remedy the situation with the increasing turnpiking of major routes, effectively privatising the main roads. Turnpike Trustees were appointed to oversee the collection of tolls, which they used in order to maintain the highways, any theoretical profit returning to the trustees.

Being on the cusp of greatness does not make one great. Safe commercial connections for moving beer in the medium future does not make it safe in the present. So, it may well be those sitting around the bar at the Brimstone Alehouse in 1686 lived long enough to see the ales of Burton on Trent be recognized for being something bigger than a balm for the scab and itch. But in that year they may have been among the few enjoying the particular delights of the region’s sulfurous brew.

Does The Natural History of Staffordshire written at the time help with the question? To be fair or even just honest, Plot’s book is a survey of the natural and economic characteristics of the county, a scientific study based largely on the four humours. It’s not a gazetteer of commerce like you might find in the 1800s. Trades are referenced in connection to the considerations of the air, water and soils. Burton itself gets passing mention and mainly what is mentioned is the bridge. Brewing is not a focus. The word “malt” only shows up once. Yet beer and ale are mentioned. We are told that they have an Art in the county of making good ale.* Folk are described as paying respect to certain wells on the saint’s days “whose name the well bore, diverting themselves with cakes and ale, and a little music and dancing.” One noted human oddity of the county, however, was a person who “drinks neither wine, ale or beer.” Another, a baby who lived only three days even though it “took milk and beer freely enough.” And, perhaps crucially, the setting up of a cheese factory by Londoners is described in some detail as is another group making salt by evaporation – including using in one process “the strongest and stalest ale they can get” to make the crystals set as desired.

Robert Plot describes the Staffordshire he visited in pastoral tones. If there was a trade to London in beer like there was in cheese he might be expected to have mentioned it. But he didn’t. Coming 26 years before the navigation improvements made to the river Trent and many more before the improvement of the roads it’s most likely that the markets did not yet exist for brewing at scale for export beyond the local market. It didn’t not yet sit even in the shadow of other noted brewing centres like Hull and Margate. One record I do not have and which may not exist would be helpful. The excise duties on beer and ale introduced in the 1660s, which came into being with the Restoration of Charles II to his thrown might be quite helpful if they drilled down into county by county assessment, town by town. It would help sort out where the brewing was going on by providing a contemporary primary record. For now, a book like Plot’s is the best we have. Certainly, it seems, better than Peter Mathias’s… at least on this point. We only know what the records tell us so far.

Does Canal Based Burton Ale Defeat Coastal Ales?

A detail from a 17th century map of Hull by
Wenceslaus Hollar. “K” to lower left is Brewer Street. Full map here.

Dependencies. Things change in large part because other things have changed first. In the mid-1980s, change happens to beer because other things have changed that lay the groundwork first. Cable TV has brought Julia Child, The Galloping Gourmet, Jacques Pepin and then the Frugal Gourmet into the home. People drinking wine on TV in the middle of the afternoon. Imported beer brought different branding and tastes into the home which in turn lead to home brewing which is also dependent on 1970s home gardening and your mother baking bread. These changes are as important to the triggering of the start of micro brewing as social media was to the last ten years of craft. When I was researching and writing the period 1900-1984 for Ontario Beer I realized there was a fabulous marker right at the end of that span that helps understand where we were just before micro takes off.

There was one last display of pride in Canada’s industrial beer. For a few years Bob and Doug McKenzie were among the most well-known comedy duos in North America. As a regular feature of legendary sketch comedy programme SCTV, the McKenzie Brothers appeared on the CBC in Canada and then late Friday night on NBC across the United States. In each short episode, the brothers from a suburb near Toronto gave their drunken thoughts on a topic in the news while smoking, drinking and grilling back bacon for sandwiches. On the set, cases of stubbies from both Molson and Labatt were featured prominently next to an outsize map of the country. Played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, the skits spun out a top selling comedy album, a hit single featuring Geddy Lee from Rush, and a feature movie all largely centered on their love for and dependency on Canadian beer.

SCTV was big. It wins the 1982 Emmy for variety TV writing after gaining most of the nominations. The McKenzie Brothers skit was big – two knuckleheads and their love of macro. The movie, Strange Brew, comes out in 1983 to mixed review and the moment passes. No mention is made of microbrew despite the entire film and the entire schtick of the skit being about beer. Because it has not been caused yet even if the context has been prepared. We must obey chronology.

After writing my notes about Northdown Ale yesterday, that premium ale from 1640s to the 1690s, I started thinking more about that grump and his complaints published in 1681 about the high price of the stuff. Here it is again. It’s from the 1681 treatise entitled Ursa major & minor: or, A sober and impartial enquiry into those pretended fears and jealousies of popery and arbitrary power, in a letter. The author advocates for the return of the dunking stool for corrupt brewers and in his litany of falsified ales he includes “Hull Ale”. Hull ale has been mentioned in recent writings. In Peter Mathias’s The Brewing Industry in England 1700-1830 published in 1959 by the reputable Cambridge University Press it is stated that the Hull ale diarist Samuel Pepys noted drinking in the 1660s was probably really Burton ale. I am not sure this is correct because the context does not appear to me to exist in that particular decade and perhaps not for another half century. The notion is repeated in Pete Brown’s Hops and Glory while Mitch Steele takes a bit of a step back from that conclusion in his 2013 book IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale noting just the shipping port connection of Hull to the inland brewing at Burton. Here is what the chronology looks like to me. See what you think:

=> Records exist of brewing at Hull before the 1600s with plenty of activity from the 1630s to the 1690s.
=>The first consignment of Hull ale is sold in London at the Peacock, Grey’s Inn Lane in 1623 according to Mathias at page 150 with a specific footnote.
=> In the mid-1640s, Members of Parliament including the Speaker of the Commons are noted as being sent Hull ale by the municipal corporation as a bit of a thank you and a bit of a home town PR boost.
=> Pepys drank Hull ale in 1660. He also drank Northdown ale in the same year. And Margate ale. All strong coastal ales.
=> In his 1881 book Old Yorkshire, William Smith recites a line from a 1662 poem what is apparently proverbial “Hull cheese” and states “Hull in the days of yore was a noted place for good ale.”
=> Around the 1660s, the scientist Robert Boyle is studying freezing and uses Hull ale in an experiment.
=> In 1681, the grumpy guy makes his complaint about overpriced over strong Hull ale and does not list Burton among the fellow accused.
=> In 1708, Benjamin Printon became Burton’s first common brewer.
=> In 1711, George Hayne obtained the lease of rights to undertake the work of making the Trent river navigable between Burton and Wilden Ferry, to the southwest of Nottingham.
=> In issue 383 of The Spectator from 20 May 1712, Addison notes going out for the day in London with his pal Sir Roger. A couple of high society lads, they have a glass of Burton ale at an outdoor pleasure grounds, the Spring Garden at “Fox-Hall” or Vauxhall.
=> In Poor Robin’s Almanac of 1759, Hull ale is still included in a list of great British beers being compared to Canary wine. Burton is not.
=> Hull remains a significant and growing brewing center in the 1800s.

So, (i) if there was no canal access out of Burton until 1711 or 1712 and (ii) if there was no common brewer active in Burton until 1708 and (iii) if Addison notes it in 1712 as being in one of the trendier spots in London it is likely new at that point. If that is the case, Pepys’s Hull ale was not made in Burton at all but in Hull as one would expect. But that is not the end of it. Well, it is an end but another sort of ending. Remember in that passage from a travel guide called All About Margate and Herne Bay reviewed an 1865 magazine named The Athenaeumthat it states:

Quoting largely from the Rev. John Lewis’s account of Margate, written in 1723, he notices the once famous beverage, known to Charles the Second’s thirsty subjects by the names of “Northdown Ale” and “Margate Ale” of which drink Lewis says, “About forty years ago, one Prince of this place drove a great trade here in brewing a particular sort of ale, which, from its being brewed at a place called Northdown in this parish, went by the name of Northdown Ale, and afterwards was called Margate Ale. But whether it’s owing to the art of brewing this liquor dying with the inventor of it, or the humour of the people altering to the liking the pale north-country ale better, the present brewers send little or none of what they call by the name of Margate ale, which is a great disadvantage to their trade.”

See, that quip about “the humour of the people altering to the liking the pale north-country ale better”? That is Burton. In 1723, the Rev. Lewis linked the death of Northdown / Margate ale, the darling of 1600s Restoration London to the rise of Burton. In that time – that year of 1712 – did Burton have some sort of advantage over dominant the coastal Northdown / Margate ale and likely Hull ale to a lesser degree? €Price? Clarity? Rarity? I don’t know even if plenty has been written on its properties. But something caused change, that is for sure. There was change and the change was caused by making the Trent navigable to Burton in 1711-1712. Without that, there is no means for Burton to become so popular outside its local market. As cable TV cooking shows were to microbrewing, that canal work provided Burton its opportunity.