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Book Review: The Economics Of Beer – Swinnen, ed.

I bought this because Simon told me to. Simon said.

This book is a series of essays related to the 2009 conference of The Beeronomics Society. It says on its back cover that it “is the first economic analysis of the beer market and brewing industry” but that is just silly puffery. There have been loads of economic analysis of the beer market and brewing industry. Frankly we have been weighed down by them. Don’t make me review Tremblay and Trembaly again. Do you remember those graphs and tables?

This book is a lot like one of my favorite sets of essays, the papers from the “Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture.” It is also a lot like Beer and Philosophy, a set of essays which included one from me on the underlying philosophy of beer regulation in Canada. What they all have in common is that they are a collection of papers tackling aspects of a general topic from various points of view. In the TEOB you will find 18 papers from the 2009 conference organized under the four topics of history, consumption, industrial organization and the new beer markets. With any luck, as with the annual baseball conference but unlike Beer and Philosophy, the followup second conference of The Beeronomics Society will issue another volume of essays reflective of the topics covered in September 2011.

So is it worth getting? For a book nerd like me, sure. I was a little uneasy with the superficiality of the first essay “A Brief Economic History of Beer” given it covered so much of time and culture so quickly. However, when I saw that there was an essay by Richard Unger, everyone’s favorite beery medievalist and Renaissance man, I was won over. And the essay “Recent Economic Developments in the Import and Craft Segments of the US Brewing Industry” by the manical graph-huggers¹ T+T may serve as something of an update of their 2005 book. Best of all, each submission comes with its own bibliography alerting folk like me to other papers and texts that might be out there just waiting to be added to the book shelf.

Published, too, by Oxford University Press, this book is another sign that we fans of beer and brewing live in lucky times. If I have more intelligent comment after reading a bit more, I will add it in the comments. But at this point this, too, looks like a good buy for the serious beer nerd.

¹ There are seven graphs and four table in just 18 pages!!!

That Odd Tension: Wishing To Find Any Answer But Beer

That’s footnote 27 at page 134 of New Sweden in America which is exhibiting something between a quibble and a theme. It’s actually in a chapter in that book, “Lenape Maize Sales to the Swedish Colonists: Cultural Stability during the Early Colonial Period” by Marshall Joseph Becker in which there is a lot of very interesting stuff. For example, in 1654, there was an effort to expand trade products with the Lenape, the local nation, from mainly corn to hops as well. Like the colony, it was a flop but who knew the colonial Swedes were gathering hops in the mid-17th century Delaware. There’s more. In another document, the same Becker shows that New Sweden’s outpost at Tinicum Island had a brewhouse: warning pgf and elsewhere we read that

Swedish women in Delaware made beer not only from pompions (pumpkins) and corn but persimmons and watermelons.

So, with all that evidence that there was plenty of beer and brewing in colonial New Sweden during its existence from 1638 to 1660 why is there a suspicion that the brew kettle was being used for something other than producing beer? I haven’t cataloged it but, just like a Shakespeare play presented in Victorian accent, there seems to be a tension over time, in this case a presumption that beer was not as pervasive in northern western culture prior to a certain point in industrialization as we also seem to know it was. It may be that we don’t want to know or that we can’t take on just how much was drunk by how many. The more I read about these earlier points, however, the more I think I should be surprised to find a sober official, a dry town.

Toronto’s York Brewery And Playter’s Tavern 1801-05

I have been playing around with some passages on Toronto in the first years of the 19th century. Here is what I started with:

⇒ “A recent Fact will corroborate what I have said; A Brewer from Kingston removed to York lately and, on application to the Governor, obtained one of the King’s vessels to transport wheat and other Grain from Kingston and the Bay of Quintie, before beer coud be made – and almost all the Pork, Beer, Butter, Flour, Hams, Mutton, which are used at York are brought by water, from Kingston, Niagara, the Genesee Counttry, &c &c. – In short the Town is supported by the money which the Gentlemen who have Salaries from Government expend in Buildings & other Improvements; and that source begins to fail.“: Letter, Rev John Stuart to the Bishop of Nova Scotia, Kingston, September 14, 1801.

⇒ “Even in 1815, after the establishment of two neighbourhood breweries, Commissariat General Robinson was obliged to buy 8,347 gallons of beer and liquors from Kingston for the men at the cost of L8,800“: Bowering, page 9.

⇒ “York Brewery, southeast corner of Duchess and Sherbourne (Caroline) Streets, 1800-1805. Just when the first commercial brewery in York, and who the brewmaster was may never be known… This brewery may have been operated by Robert Henderson in a notice of sale dated 1809, Henderson advertised a milling plant, brewhouse, working tubs, coolers, two kilns for drying malt, two good wells or water, a stable,” two stills, a townhouse, slaughterhouse and three acres of land“: Bowering, page 91.

⇒ “1805 – Upper Canada – Robert Henderson establishes York’s (Toronto’s) first brewery. It closed 12 years later and the facility was leased by different brewers until 1853“: Sneath, page 329.

So you see there is some question as to when a brewery was first built in Toronto – or what was then York… but then I also remembered In Mixed Company by Roberts and how there was a chapter about an early tavern keeper who kept a diary. Turns out it was written in 1802-02 and turns out she gives the address for the tavern – the corner of King and Caroline Streets. Which made me look up above again and see that Bowering gave an address as well.

Over time Duchess is now Richmond and Caroline did become Sherbourne but that is enough to dip into the City of Toronto’s historical maps and atlases online collection and – voila. We have the information above. Which also means we can figure out where these spots are today which you will see if you click on that little thumbnail.

Roberts explains that the Toronto of Playter’s diary and the founding of its first brewery had 75 to 100 homes and about 320 inhabitants in town, about 420 in the surrounding country as well as about 240 in the military garrison to the west. Both establishments sit in what is even then called Old Town. It’s the administrative capital of the new colony of Upper Canada. Roberts also indicates that drinking in Playter’s included rum, “sling” and punch as well as whiskey, brandy and wine. No beer is mentioned that I see.

I would love to have a read of the diary but, if we think of that letter from Rev. Stuart above, we might quess that early York is something of a Brasilia, a constructed government town. The kind of place that you had wine over beer. Not Stuart’s sort of place. No, he was a beer man. One of the founders of my town, his beer tankard is now owned by the people of Canada. He may well have had many an ale from Albany in it. He was a personal pal of Sir William Johnson, both backwoods leaders in central New York before the Revolution, home of our loyalists, beer drinkers there and in what becomes Ontario a decade before the colonial softie government officials show up in York.

Was This The Earliest Brewing In English Canada?

Sneath, Pashley and Rubin all mention the 1600s brewers of New France – Hebert (1617), Ambroise (1646) and Talon (1670). But I just came across this reference in a footnote in the Minutes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1671-1674, published by Toronto’s Champlain Society in 1942, describing payments being made on 16 February 1674 for goods supplied to the ships of the Hudson Bay company:

John Raymond, “By Severall quantities of Ship Beere at 40s p. Tonn Strong beere at 12s, 9d a barrell & Harbor Beere at 6s 6d p. barrell with Malt & Hopps dd. Capt. Gillam, Morris and Cole”, £ 79.

A few months later, a committee of the Hudson Bay Company on 6 July 1674 directed payment to the same John Raymond £ 30 on account of “”Beer and Malt. dd. on board the Prince Rupert.” These items appear among a long list of payments for other necessary goods for taking aboard the ships Prince Rupert, Messenger and Employ. You will see in footnote 2 to this post on a blog by Norma Hall subtitled “Northern Arc: the Significance of Seafaring to Western Canadian History” that these three ships were sailing between England and Hudson Bay in the first half of the 1670s. The Prince Rupert and Messenger, at least, over wintered.

There are loads of interesting questions and observations from these passages from the Minutes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1671-1674 including why are they shipping malt and hops separate from barrels of beer. If these ships overwintered and carried malt and hops it is pretty obvious that they must have been brewing. We know the British brewed on ships in the Arctic in 1852 so why not in 1674? But also – what is “harbor beer”? It costs about half of “strong beer” and we know from Gate’s work on Kingston that in 1825 “small or ship beer” was being sold in Kingston. But most of all the question is this – was this the first brewing of beer in English Canada? Or did other earlier over wintering ships brew, too?

Book Review: The Art And Mystery Of Brewing in Ontario

While I stand by my statement:

“…brewing history can be a tool or route to understanding for some but is ultimately unimportant if you do not need to tap into it…”

… I have to admit that I do like dabbling in it – as long as I stay within the reach of my own capabilities. I especially like dabbling in it care of a stack of bedside books when I am, like today, on the third day of the treatment for a blip of pneumonia. And good thing, too, as it’s not like the weeks of cough medications leading to this stage have left me longing for a tart gueuze. But, while we are at it, would it kill big pharmacy to make a expectorant that tastes like an imperial stout?

Anyway, one of the books recently added to the pile is 1988’s The Art And Mystery Of Brewing in Ontario by Ian Bowering. We suffer in Canada from a lack of understanding of ourselves and no where more than here in Ontario. Atlantic Canadians, Quebeckers and Western Canadians all are rightly proud of themselves even if it is largely based on how they have each been screwed in their own special way by that place to stand, place to grow, Ontar-i-ar-i-ar-i-o.

Bowering’s book helps with Ontario’s blandness. It sits in an important place with others on brewing in Canada and does one thing particularly well. It lists the breweries by town. Simple thing but it shows that brewing advanced across the province as the population advanced westerly from the early 1790s or before in eastern Kingston to the late 1890s in Rat Portage, over 2,000 km to the NW. It also shows that brewing was going on at a far larger scale, unexpected industrialization with far greater distribution earlier on than some might suggest. Brains Brewery in rural 1834 was producing 100 barrels a week. Lager was being made in Kitchener well before 1850 and even wee Huether Crystal Springs in little Neustadt delivered in a 70 km radius a few year later.

Information will advance and it is evident more information has come to light when we compare the listings for Kingston and compare them to the brand new book The Breweries of Kingston and The St. Lawrence Valley by Steve Gates which follows a similar structure. But as one wag recently stated:

…that there are others out there who will identify errata and offer corrections is something which will ultimately contribute to the further development and maturation of this particular field of study.

I might add that it is the only way it will further develop and mature. And not only through peer review and correction but building on the shoulders of others who have gone before. So Gates cites Bowering, Sneath cites Bowering, Mr. B cites Bowering, Pashley cites Mr. B and Sneath. It’s the way things work, the way we build the collective body of knowledge – if, that is, we are actually interested in presenting what actually was.

Why Did A Brewer In Kingston In 1815 Want Rye?

kgazkbrh1 The ad is from page 4 of the Kingston Gazette, 6 January 1816. You can see at the bottom that it was placed on 15 December 1815. So many questions. What were Messrs Robinson and Gillespie up to? Why is rye placed between barley and hops in the large font while oats sit down there with the peas? Also, is “strong beer” something separate, something identifiable to the Kingstonian a year after the war with America? You will recall that a few months later in April, Albany strong beer is for sale. It also comes just a month after Richard Smith’s notice for plain “beer” – so was “strong beer” something they had the taste for still, almost 40 years after having to flee from their central NY homes at the beginning of the American Revolution? And why is it not “ale” when described in the Kingston papers?

I just finished The Lion, the Eagle and Upper Canada by Jane Errington, a historian over at Royal Military College – they of the old school base ball. The book is well reviewed here but, short form, it’s an interesting view of early Upper Canada (1790s to 1820s) based in large part by review of early newspapers. In it, Errington suggests something of a window between the end of the War of 1812 in 1815 and, a few years later, a clampdown in trade and other contacts with the US towards the end of the decade. But even with her level of detail about the community, trade and industry, there is not much about beer itself. Meaning I am left unsure if beer was being traded within months of the end of a war, perhaps as a stop gap until local product restarted… if it was interrupted by the war… which is another question.

So, I was very happy to read in the comments that Steve Gates has published his history of brewing in the city and in the region. I couldn’t get out of the door to go get a copy but will tomorrow. Hopefully it will shed some light on what Robinson and Gillespie were up to.

In Kingston In November 1815 There Was Beer!

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Beer for sale! Hallallujah!! BEER FOR SALE!!!

Remember what I suggested before? That where there is peace there is
beer? Well, on 27 November 1815, my town of Kingston was just nine months past the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent and five past the Battle of Waterloo. The proposed terms of Napoleon’s incarceration at St. Helena are announced in the same edition of the Kingston Gazette as was the reprimand of Major-General Proctor – the news oddly received care of an American paper… care of one from Montreal. Funny information and trade routes in those early post war days.

Where did the malt come from? Sure, Kingston was a key outpost bastion in the Empire, the guardian of the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence and Rideau but, still, who grew the grain that made the malt that made the beer? Was it a local 1815 crop or was it shipped from Britain or America? Where was it brewed? Notice that Richard Smith only calls it “beer” where a few months later he calls what he is selling Albany strong beer. Also, I don’t see another ad in the paper for beer. There are many fine things – fancy goods even. The front page of the 2 December 1815 issue includes notices offering Turkish opium, spices and sugars, China teas and and Port wine. The town had its need and apparently some issues for which it had supplies. But there was no other beer for sale.

It makes one consider that this may have been the first or at least an early shipment to make it to the town after the war. There very likely were beers in taverns but not necessarily. More drinks can be made from spirits and if you are transporting them up a river filled with rapids between here and Montreal, there is more bucks in batteaux that way. We learn from Roberts that punches and cocktails was the fashion, too. Taverns were posh. Not sure. But what ever it was about, beer was for sale. And it was worth letting people know.

Your 1816 Albany Ale Update From My Home Town

We have not found more Albany ale information for a while but this is your moment of zen. Just consider what it means. There is no Erie Canal. There are rapids on the St. Lawrence all the way to Montreal. There are about 4,000 people in this town. The War of 1812 ended one shipping season before… unless it was brought by sleigh. Oh, and “Do.” does not mean dozen. It means “ditto” so those are barrels. Amazing. From the Kingston Gazette on April 27th 1816.

Oh, For A Mug O’ Fern Ale To Keep Strangers Away

Ron got me thinking. He was making fun of something written by Horst Dornbusch today, the “man of a million unfounded claims,” when I noticed something about pale ale coming into being around 1800 when coke was first used. I knew that was wrong so I started digging around for references to straw dried pale malts. There is something about the lack of industrialization that makes for a lack of a record of things and I thought the Coke Makers Association of The English Midlands may well have diddled the books, created history around their own inventions. And there it was… sorta… in The London and Country Brewer from 1737:

Next to the Coak-dryed Malt, the Straw-dryed is the sweetest and best tasted: This I must own is sometimes well malted, where the Barley, Wheat, Straw, Conveniences, and the Maker’s Skill are good; but as the the fire of the Straw is not so regular as the Coak, the Malt is attended with more uncertainty in its making, because it is difficult to keep it to a moderate and equal Heat, and also exposes the Malt in some degree to the Taste of the smoak.

OK, the pro-coke lobby is firmly entrenched but the quotation is from 63 years before Horst so that is worth noting. But then I notice this comment further down page 14:

The Fern-dryed Malt is also attended with a rank disagreeable Taste from the smoak of this Vegetable, with which many Quarters of Malt are dryed, as appears by the great Quantities annually cut by Malsters on our Commons, for the two prevalent Reasons of cheapness and plenty.

Interesting. Commonly used and rank. The author likes his descriptors of bad tasting: “rank disagreeable Taste” is joined by “most unnatural” and, my favorite, “ill relish.” Yet there is it – fern beer. What was fern ale like? We spend so much time hybridizing a new hop or injecting a new chili pepper extract into our beers we have forgotten the humble fern, maker of widely consumed if rank ales. In 1758’s Volume 3 of A Compleat Body of Husbandry by Thomas Hale, a bit more hope is given to the prospects for the taste of a fern ale:

The amber may be straw dried, but ’tis not nearly so well. As to wood and fern they are used in some parts of the kingdom, and custom makes the people relish the beer brewed from such malt; but to a stranger there is a most nauseous taste of smoak in it.

At least the locals liked it.

Lord Goog in the end gave up what I was looking for. In an edition of A Way to Get Wealth by Gervase Markham from 1668, a book first published in 1615 or about 200 years before the start date picked by Horst, we have an opinion on the preference for straw… and not just any straw:

…our Maltster by all means must have an especial care with what fewel she dryeth the malt; for commonly, according to that it ever receiveth and keepeth the taste, if by some especial art in the Kiln that annoyance be not taken away. To speak then of fewels in general, there are of divers kinds according to the natures of soyls,and the accommodation of places-in which men live; yet the best and most principal fewel for the Kilns, (both tor sweetness, gentle heat and perfect drying) is either good Wheat-straw, Rye-straw, Barley-straw or Oaten-straw; and of these the Wheat-straw is the best, because it is most substantial, longest lasting, makes the sharpest fire, and yields the least flame…

Look at that. We are in a different world compared to both today as well as the mid-1700s. Back to an agricultural age. “She” is the maltster. And the specific qualities amongst four classes of straw are known and ranked. After these light grain straws come fen-rushes, then straws of peas, fetches, lupins and tares. Then beans, furs, gorse, whins and small brush-wood. Then bracken, ling and broom. Then wood of all sorts. Then and only then coal, turf and peat but only of the kiln is structured to keep the smoke out of the malt.

Why? The whiz kids at Wikipedia tell us that:

In 1603, Sir Henry Platt suggested that coal might be charred in a manner analogous to the way charcoal is produced from wood. This process was not put into practice until 1642, when coke was used for roasting malt in Derbyshire.

So, coking turns out an early industrial practice that only first considered halfway through the life of Gervase Markham who lived from 1568 to 1637 and only applied to malt after his death. Coke is used to perfect – but not create – pale malts.

Pale malts and pale ales would have been around for some time well before 1600 even if in the effort to make them some became, as Markham writes at page 166, “fire-fanged.” I am sure that a fern fire-fanged ale may well have been an ill relish. But what of those whose custom made them love them all the same? Right? It’s a style just waiting to be reborn. Right? Markham would have none of it. At page 181 he states:

To speak then of Beer, although there be divers kinds of tasts and strength thereof, according to the allowance of Malt, hops, and age given unto-the fame; yet indeed there can be truly said to be but two kinds thereof, namely, Ordinary beer and March beer, all other beers being derived from them.

Got it? Fern ale is not a kind of beer, just a taste. There are two kinds of beer, ordinary and March. Everything else is showing off.

Category: History

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