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“Ballantine IPA” entry at page 80 states “…brewed from 1890 into the 1990’s by the Ballantine Brewing Co.”. While most 19th Century ads for the brews from the Ballantine ale brewery usually just mentioned “Ales and Porter” without specifying the various types of ales they brewed, there are newspaper articles and local ads from their agents (wholesalers and/or bottlers) that mention India Pale Ale well before 1890. An article in The Daily Graphic (New York City), May 9, 1878, on Newark industries said “…the Messrs. Ballantine manufacture strong Burton and India pale ales, which rival those of Bass and Alsop to such a degree that experts can seldom tell them apart…” That same year, a city directory ad for the Fall River, MA firm of J. Murphy & Co. noted they sold “P. Ballantine & Sons’ Celebrated Newark, India Pale Ale and Stock Porter on Draught”. Possibly the “1890” date was picked because the first Falstaff-era labels noted “Bottled at the Brewery Established in 1890” – a reference to the date of the Falstaff-owned Narragansett brewery which was the new home of the IPA after Newark closed. After the purchase, the Ballantine India Pale Ale labels credited “Falstaff Brewing Corporation” as the brewery of record. Also, the proper name of the company was simply “P. Ballantine & Sons” (not the “Ballantine Brewing Co.”) from the late 1850’s to its demise in 1972. Their lager beer subsidiary was operated under the name “Ballantine & Co.” from the purchase of the Schalk Bros. Lager Beer Brewing Co. in 1879 into the early 20th Century period. The entry also states that the beer’s brewing locations after Newark were “…Cranston, RI (1971) and then to Fort Wayne, Indiana (1979)…” Falstaff bought the Ballantine brands in 1972, the same year Newark closed and Cranston’s brewing of the Ballantine brands started in April of that year. Cranston closed in 1981, so Ballantine IPA production would have moved to Ft. Wayne at that time. After Falstaff closed Ft. Wayne in 1990, the brand was brewed at Falstaff’s sister brewery’s Pabst Milwaukee plant up to around 1995. Pabst Milwaukee’s closing in 1996 ended Ballantine India Pale Ale.
“Ballantine, Peter” entry at pages 80 to 81 states “…by 1830 had opened his own brewery”. According to testimony given by Ballantine to the New York State Senate in 1835, he opened his brewery in 1833. OCB also states “In 1845, Ballantine … built a new brewery along the Passaic River…”. The entry for P. Ballantine & Sons in A History of American Manufacturers from 1608 to 1860 states the land was purchased and a malt house was built in 1848, with the new brewery built in 1849. OCB also states “(In 1877) P. Ballantine & Sons was the…only ale brewery among the top 20″. Other ale breweries in the Top 20 in 1877 (among possibly others) included #7 Flanagan & Wallace (NYC), #11 Wm. Massey & Co. (Philadelphia), #12 Albany Brewing Co. (NY), and #14 Frank Jones (NH) [source – 100 Years of Brewing, (1903)]. Like Ballantine itself (which would purchase Newark’s first lager brewery, Schalk Bros. a couple of years later [see above entry – Ballantine IPA] ) many of the large surviving US ale brewers would eventually brew lager beer. In the case of the Boston Beer Co. (#17 in 1877), it’s unclear when they added lagers to their portfolio. OCB, in reference to the Ballantine 3-ring logo, claims”… each ring symbolizing purity, body and flavor.” In the pre-Prohibition era, under Peter Ballantine and then his sons’ and other heirs’ ownership, the slogan was “Purity, Strength, Flavor”. During Prohibition – when Ballantine had a large national malt syrup business with 6 different brands of canned syrup- the slogan varied, with “Quality” sometimes replacing “Purity”. “Strength” would be replaced by “Body” only after Repeal, probably to be in line with FAA (Federal Alcohol Administration) Act regulations against emphasizing alcohol content of beers in advertising.
“barley wine” in the entry at page 93 it states “[In] 1854 the brewers Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton of Burton upon Trent began production of a single-brew barley wine then called simply No 1″. In The Times of London on 1 September 1843, there is an ad for “Bass’s No. 1, commonly known as Burton Ale” of “either the present season’s brewing or from two to four years old.” That implies No 1 has been brewed since at least 1839. The name “No.1”. See Zythophile here. It also states that “Bass No 1 was distinctive not only for its single brew method of production but also for its paleness … other brewers followed suit with pale versions such as Tennent’s Gold Label and Fuller’s Golden Pride.” Bass No 1, in its late 19th-20th century incarnation, was, like all Burton ales, a dark beer, not a pale one. Tennant’s Gold Label, which WAS a pale barley wine, and the first, was not introduced until 1952, and cannot therefore be said to be “following suit”, especially as it was said in 1953, by Tennant’s chairman, to be “a new type of sparkling barley wine” and a “unique product” (See The Times, Wednesday, Jul 29, 1953 pg 11 col D). Neither did Golden Pride “follow suit” from Bass No 1, since it was only first brewed in November 1966 (see here ) and would have been following Gold Label.
“barrel” entry at page 94 treats the expression solely as a synonym for wooden casks, and ignores the vital fact that in the Anglophone brewing industry a barrel was originally and is still primarily a specific size of cask: 32 (Imperial) gallons (145.5 litres) for the old English ale barrel and the Irish barrel, 36 (Imperial) gallons (163.7 litres) for the English beer barrel and 31 (US) gallons (117 litres) for the US beer barrel. The entry also states “barrels often come by different names depending on their size and function. There are firkins and hogsheads for beer …” when it means “casks often come by different names depending on their size and function”, and because of the confusion in the entry between “cask” and the very specific meaning of barrel as a size of cask, the entry fails to point out that a firkin is a cask with one quarter of the capacity of a barrel (as a kilderkin is a cask with the capacity of half a barrel), a hogshead is a cask with the capacity of one and a half barrels, and a butt is a cask with the capacity of two hogsheads. Barrels can also be made of metal as well as wooden staves. The aims of the Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood are not as stated in the entry “exactly as described” being in fact concerned with traditional beer but not exclusively served from wood see: http://www.spbw.com/aims.html . The opening for emptying barrels is not called “a keystone”, this is in fact the name of the stopper used for keeping that hole shut. The opening for filling is not called a “belly bung” as “bung” is actually another word for “stopper”. There are two types of spile, hard and soft. Hard spiles are made of hard wood or plastic and soft spiles are made of porous wood.
“Bass & Company” entry at page 100 states that “For much of the history of the flagship brand it was known as an India pale ale because of its shipment to British forces overseas.” The flagship brand was always known as Bass or Bass ale, and never called by the brewery an IPA. See eg here. In addition, IPAs were not shipped to “British forces”, but specifically for sale to the civil servants of the East India Company and the officers of the EIC’s private armies. See eg Brown, Pete, Hops and Glory. In the same entry, at page 101, it says: “Bass was the first brewery to use the term “barley wine” … in 1903″. No. Bass was described as brewing a “barley wine” in the British Medical Journal of January 15 1870. It is not clear if this was the brewery’s own description, however; but in March 1871, an advertisement appeared in a newspaper called Bell’s Life in London for the “matchless home-brewed barley wine” available only at the White Lion, Digbeth, Birmingham, inserted by “E. Roberts, proprietors and brewer”, which does appear to be the first time a brewer used the term “barley wine” for one of his beers. Also at page 101 it says: “Because of its popularity and impressive exporting in the 1800s, its red triangle logo became the first registered trademark in the UK in 1876.” There is no evidence at all for the first part of that sentence, which in any case is fundamentally highly unlikely, since Bass’s rivals would hardly let it be given the title of Trade Mark Number One as an official privilege. The generally accepted story is that when applications to apply for trademark registration opened on January 1, 1876, a Bass employee was sent to wait overnight outside the registrar’s office the day before in order to be the first in line to file to register a trademark the next morning, and that is why the company has trade mark number 1. There is no evidence for THIS story, either, but it needs to be included in the Bass entry as a widely published apocryphal tale, and at least it is likely.
“beer gardens” this entry is mainly concerned with Germany, and to a lesser extent the USA. Beer garden is also the term used for the gardens of English pubs and thus also play an important part in English beer culture.
“Beer Orders” at page 113 states: “several large pub-owning but non-brewing companies, known as pubcos, such as Punch Group, Normura and Enterprise Inns, were created …” “Normura” should be “Nomura”, and Nomura was not a pubco but a Japanese bank that acquired one of the larger pubcos, Inntrepreneur, in 1997, and 1,240 pubs belonging to the former brewer Greenalls in 1999, later selling them all.
“beer style” accompanying the entry at page 114, the Christian Feigenspan Breweries trade card illustration is noted as being “circa 1870” when the company’s own history claimed a founding date of 1875. Other aspects of the card such as the plural “Breweries”, the beer portfolio and the P.O.N. brand suggest it’s probably more likely from the 1890’s to 1910’s.
“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.
“Berliner weisse” entry at pages 124-125 states “[a]t the height of its popularity in the 19th century, Berliner weisse was the most popular alcoholic drink in Berlin, with almost 700 breweries producing it.” No source is cited. However, research by Ron Pattinson and the history of brands presented in Die Berliner Weisse: Ein Stück Berliner Geschichte (VLBFachbücher, 2008) would indicate that number is vastly overstated. The entry also states the Berliner weisse is now “produced by only two full-scale commercial breweries, Berliner Kindl and Schultheiss.” Those breweries merged in 2006 and the lone weisse brand made – at a brewery now called Berliner-Kindl-Schultheis – is Berliner Kindl. It accounts for less than 4% of 1.6 million hectoliters brewed there.
“Bitterness” entry at pages 131 to 134 states “bitterness is one of four individual tastes that are sensed by different areas of the human tongue”. The idea that the human tongue tastes saltiness, sourness, bitterness and sweetness in different areas was disproven by research published in Nature in 2006. This statement also ignores the now accepted idea that there are at least five tastes, with umami (or ‘savouriness’) being identified as the fifth major taste. There is an entry for umami in the OCB. The entries for aftertaste and flavor also mention umami. None of those entries mention the idea of different tastes being detected by specific areas of the tongue.
“Bitterness units” entry at page 134 by Matthew Brynildson states “known widely as the international bitterness unit (IBU)” yet there is a separate entry for International Bitterness Units (IBUs) from page 489 to 491 by Matthew Brynildson and Val Peacock which states early on “[s]ometimes referred to by the shortened acronym BU for Bitterness Units” and repeats some of the information in the “Bitterness units” entry word for word.
“black beer” this entry simply says “see SCHWARZBIER” but Black Beer is also the name used for a distinctive, and unrelated, British beer style still made today. See for example: http://refreshingbeer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/duty-may-put-future-of-mathers-black.html
“bog myrtle” entry at page 139, line 2, has a typo: “Myrica Gale” should be Myrica gale, lower-case g and italics. It also states “Bog myrtle has played a substantial part in the history of brewing in Britain …” There is no evidence to support this claim, which is therefore very likely to be untrue.
“Bohemia” entry at pages 139 to 140 states: “Bohemian brewing became famous in the 13th and 14th centuries when some of the aforementioned towns were granted brewing privileges and banlieu [sic] rights (which meant that within a certain distance of the town only beer brewed by the town’s burghers could be legally sold).” It is not clear why the text uses a French word here, nor why that word is misspelled — it should be banlieue — though in any case this is not exactly what was meant by the Mile Right. Under the Mile Right, it was not merely forbidden to sell beer from somewhere else: it was against the law, sometimes as a capital offense, for anyone but those holding the Mile Right “to brew beer, produce malt, or open a tavern.” Moreover, it should be noted that this right was not enjoyed equally by all burghers in each town: “The older, established burghers later claimed this right for themselves and did not grant it to the new [burghers].” (Source: Jak se u nás vařilo pivo.) See here.
“Bohemian Pilsner” entry at page 140 states that for Czech versions, “the brewing grists are invariably 100% pilsner malt.” Actually, many breweries in the Czech lands use a small portion — about 1% — of caramel malt in their premium pale lagers, or “Bohemian Pilsners.” (Source: interviews with Czech brewers and brewery consultants.) While 100% pilsner malt might be a traditional grist for a Czech pale lager, it is not “invariably” the case today. See here.
“boiling” in this entry there is a typo which gives 100°C as 12°F.
“Boston Beer Company” entry (pages 144-145) says as”…of 2011 … produced nearly 2 million barrels annually.” The 2010 Boston Beer Company Annual Report (Report, page 9) states that it’s over 2 million – approximately 2.3 million bbl of their “core products” as well as another approximate 13,000 bbl. “brewed or package… under contract… for third parties” for the year 2010. Thus, the Boston Beer Co. now pays the full $18/bbl Federal Excise Tax on all its production (Report, page 16), no longer qualifying for the TTB’s Small Brewers’ Reduced Rate of $7/bbl for the first 60,000 bbl. The entry also states that the “second Samuel Adams beer the company released was their Double Bock, which went on sale in 1988.” The BBC 2010 Annual Report (page 10) lists their Boston Ale as the second beer, released in 1987.
“bottle conditioning” this entry states that “Priming sugar is usually glucose, dextrose, or sucrose” but glucose and dextrose are the same thing.
“bottles” in the entry at page 151 it states “[i]n the United Kingston, the imperial pint (568 ml) remains a popular size” but there is no basis for this statement. As confirmed in the next entry “bottle sizes” the 500 ml size bottle and can would be considered pervasive in the UK now and the 568 ml somewhat rare. See discussion here.
“bottle sizes” entry on page 151, discussing US bottles mentions only “355ml”, “6 oz. splits”, “22oz/650ml”, “750ml” and “40 oz” sizes. In the post-Repeal era alone, while 12 ounce bottles have been the standard bottle size, many more sizes than the above have been commonly used by multiple breweries. While US “splits”, aka “nips” and “pony” bottles, have been 6 ounce sizes (notably Ballantine’s India Pale Ale, Brown Stout and Burton Ale in the 1930’s and 1940’s, Feigenspan’s Brilliant Brown Ale and Anchor’s early bottlings of Old Foghorn which were 6.3 oz.) the 7 oz. bottle was the much more common “small” US bottle size, which were often offered as returnable/refillable deposit bottles, by most every major national and regional brand. (See the listings of available packages in New Jersey in 1964 ). Less common but also marketed were 8 ounce bottles. 16 ounce and 1 quart bottles were also extensively used, both as deposit bottles and “throw-aways”, with the quart bottle aggressively marketed during WWII as a patriotic package, since it saved metal by using only 1 crown cap in place of 2 and half. Half gallon bottles, both “jug” style and so-called “picnic” bottles (similar in shape to a wine magnum) were also common in the 1930’s into the 1960’s, and often contained unpasteurized “draught” beer. Besides the “40 ounce” bottle, Narragansett in New England used a long neck “Imperial Quart” for it’s lager beer and it’s Croft Ale in the 60’s and 70’s. On the West Coast, 11 ounce and 22 ounce bottles were standard sizes- the former lasting into the 1970’s and existing side-by-side with 12 ounce bottles, in some cases from the same brewer.
“bottom fermentation” in this entry the temperature for bottom fermentation seems excessively low (5°C-10°C) and the temperature for ale fermentation excessively high (17°C-25°C). See for example Graham Stewart and Inge Russell who give the respective temperature ranges as 7°C-15°C and 18°C-22°C in the IBD Blue Book on Yeast.
“Brewers’ Company” entry at page 161 states (paragraph three lines 3/4) “why Becket was chosen [to be patron saint of the early Brewers’ Guild] is unclear …” Becket was associated with a number of legends and tales to do with brewing, including the legend that he brewed ale using a local pond when he was vicar of Bramfield in Hertfordshire. This is very likely, along with the fact that he was a Londoner, why he was chosen to be the London guild’s patron saint. See here.
“Brewer’s flakes” in this entry it should be made clear that “corn” is also known as “maize”, as it is in the entry corn.
“Brewer’s Gold (hop)” in this entry there is a typing error: “itas” should be “it as”.
“brewhouse” in this entry it says that “after the mash tun the mash is transferred to the lauter tun, which is actually a large filtration vessel. Lauter tuns have an interior floor that is much like a filter screen and is referred to as a false bottom”. In traditional British brewhouses the mash tun itself has a false bottom and acts as the filtration vessel so no lauter tun is used. This entry also makes no mention of other vessels that might be found in a modern brewhouse such as mash filters and whirlpools.
“brewing in Colonial America” entry at pages 163 to 166 does not reflect colonial America as fully as it might. It fails to reference the experience in New France as referred to in entry “Canada”. Also, brewing in Newfoundland may well be older than in New France. There was a brew-house at Cupids, Newfoundland in 1612 according to the town’s website. Greater consideration should also be given to the likelihood of brewing by over-wintering Vikings at L’Anse aux Meadow, Newfoundland around 1000 AD as well as by English cod fishermen in the late 1500s. Consideration should also be given to the potential for brewing in 1500s Spanish Florida as well as in the first half of the 1600s in Delaware, during the period it was New Sweden. There was a brewhouse in 1643 at the Printzhof, a center of New Sweden, on what is now Tinicum Island, Pennsylvania: see Backer, page 36 at footnote 173. The words “English” and “British” are used interchangeably in this entry but the two words are not synonyms. There is no evidence that Benjamin Franklin said “Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy” as stated in this entry.
“bride ale” at page 175 states “Bride ale was one of a series of beers brewed to celebrate special occasions …” This is completely wrong. The original and primary meaning of “bride ale” was, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, “A wedding-feast of the Old English type, an ale-drinking at a wedding,” using “ale” in its sense of “feast”. The sense of “special ale at a wedding” is not found before 1863, and the idea of it meaning “ale specially brewed for a wedding” appears to be a 20th century invention.
“Britain” in the entry at page 180 it states”[P]orter’s supremacy in Britain lasted until the unlikely and much mythologized rise of India pale ale.” In a comment at A Good Beer Blog, Pete Brown, author of this entry explains in detail his use of the word “unlikely”: I used a word that was different, provocative, to make people think, to try to help make my piece interesting. I guess my hope was that people would go ‘unlikely’? I’ve never thought of it as that before. Hmm… maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But I would have thought that anyone with a working knowledge of the history of IPA would at least be able to see why I would think it unlikely, even if they disagreed with my reading of the facts. This entry fails to mention the major effect that restrictions imposed during the First World War had on reducing the strength of British beer.
“Brooklyn, New York” in the entry at page 184 it states that low-calorie light beer was first “concocted in 1967…” but the beer named Gablinger’s “was a flop.” Gablinger’s, which according to the brewery was developed in 1965-66, was first released in the test market of upstate NY and CT in Dec. 1966, and within 6 weeks had surpassed Rheingold’s goal of 2-3% of the local beer market. Rheingold then announced it would expand the brand into it’s 12 states distribution region [New York Times, 9/14/1967]. The brand would eventually get as far west as Arizona. Gablinger’s continued to be brewed and marketed by Rheingold, with several label and bottle design changes and new ad campaigns, until they closed in 1977 when most of their brands were purchased by C. Schmidt’s & Sons of Philadelphia. Schmidt’s continued to brew Gablinger’s until they, too, closed (1986). The TTB COLA site lists a label approval for that year TTB #84106174. Gablinger’s was heavily marketed in the expensive NYC metro area and throughout the northeast and the expense to Rheingold was not, in retrospect, justified by the brand’s eventual sales. Gablinger’s history is also overshadowed when compared to the related brand Miller Lite’s incredible success a few years later. “Flop” is a rather imprecise term, but given some modern “macro” brands that don’t make it out of test market or only last a year or two, a beer that was sold by 2 different firms for two decades seems like it might not qualify as a “flop”. Also, on page 184, it is stated that: “Both companies (Liebmann/Rheingold and F. & M. Schaefer) sold as much as two million barrels of beer annually in their heyday.” Rheingold’s sales appear to have peaked in the late 1960’s, with a barrelage of close to 3.5 million. In 1969, they were the 11th largest US brewer, with 3% market share. Schaefer peaked a few years later in the mid-’70’s, with 5.3 million barrels sold in 1976. Through most of the 1960’s, Schaefer accounted for over 4% of the US beer market.
“brown ale” in the entry at page 186 it states:”In parts of the south, the Midlands, and the west a variant called mild was once prevalent” Mild is not a type of brown ale and was the dominant style everywhere in England and Wales. As mild is not always dark, how could it be a type of brown ale?
“Budweiser” in this entry it states that the original gravity is 11.0 degrees but it does not say in which unit.
“Budweiser Budvar” entry at 190 states at page 191:“Budvar… has 5% alcohol by volume and 20 units of bitterness…” According to the company’s press spokesman in the Czech Republic, Budweiser Budvar’s 5% alcohol lager has 22.5 units of bitterness, not 20. The entry also states: At Budvar, “Soft brewing water comes from a deep natural lake beneath the brewery, using a well that dates back several thousand years…” The town of České Budějovice was founded in the year 1265 AD, though the Budvar brewery was only built in 1895, in a much younger northern suburb there. A well is a man-made structure, “a shaft sunk into the ground in order to obtain water, oil or gas,” while “several” means “more than two but not many.” Thus, this passage reads as if part of a brewery from 1895 somehow dates from around 1000 BC, making it many centuries older than the arrival of the Celts in Bohemia, and thus one of the oldest man-made structures in the country. This is preposterous. Budvar’s own claims for the age of its wells on its company website sound far more reasonable: “In 1922 the first artesian well was bored and after some further time an additional two artesian wells were also bored.” See also here .
“Burton ale” entry at page 192 states: “Burton ale was a rich, dark, strong amber ale …”. Burton ale was available in a wide range of strengths, from over 1100 OG to 1055OG, and was therefore not automatically strong. (see Cornell, Amber Gold & Black, chapter 3). It also states that “The popularity of Burton ale began to fade by the 1830s”, but Burton ale was still one of the four main styles of draught beer available in British pubs in 1949 (see The Brewer’s Art, published by Whitbread, 1948). In addition the entry says Burton ale was brewed by Ballantines in the US, but fails to add that it was also brewed by a large number of brewers all over England, especially in London, until the 1950s and was also brewed by brewers in New York in the 1860s (see contemporary New York trade directories). Giving a single colour – the vague amber – is misleading. At different times Burton was a variety of colours: amber for most of the 19th century, dark brown in the 20th. (Source: Barclay Perkins and Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives.) This entry is also incorrect in saying collecting separate worts from one mash had largely ceased, it is still standard practice in traditional brewhouses in the UK, as is explained in the entry parti-gyle.
“Burton on Trent” entry at page 193: the official name of the town is Burton upon Trent. It states: “The earliest historical reference to such eminence for Burton ale comes from a ditty of 1295: ‘The Abbot of Burton brewed good ale,/On Fridays when they fasted/But the Abbot of Burton never tasted his own/As long as his neighbor’s lasted.’” That is a misunderstanding of p41 of Frederick Hackwood’s Inns, Ales and Drinking Customs of Old England, 1910, which mentions the rhyme as a “local legend”, and then goes on in the next paragraph to speak about the earliest reference to the Abbey ale being in 1295. It does NOT say the rhyme comes from 1295. It does NOT say the rhyme is the first historical reference to the eminence of Burton Ale. It does not date the rhyme at all. The rhyme cannot be dated to 1295, for two reasons: it’s in modern English and medieval literary efforts have no reliable dates. It also states: “According to Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, the Abbey at Burton, in the time of Richard Coeur-de-Lion (1189-1199), has acquired a local reputation for its conventual ale.” A 19th century historical novel cannot be regarded as a reliable source for the reputation of the abbey ale of Burton 625 years earlier.
“Burton Union” entry at page 195 states: “A Union set … consisting of large wood barrel casks, each 150 Imperial gallons in size …” Each Burton brewery used different sized casks in its Union sets, ranging from 144 to 160 gallons capacity. (See Alfred Barnard, Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland, 1889-90). And “barrel casks” should read simply “casks”.