BEER

See Also: BEER; GRAIN; SEWAGE Toshers; WHISKY; WINE; MENU

Website: www.beerguild.co.uk (The British Guild of Beer Writers)

Ale-conners

Historically, ale-conners assessed whether beer is good enough to be sold. The City of London appoints four every year.

A High Keg Period Hold-Out

Sanderstead was a Surrey village that was absorbed into Croydon. Sanderstead Cricket Club was a vestige of real ale in the darkest days of keg.

Location: Old Saw Mill, All Saints Drive, South Croydon, CR2 9ES

Website: https://sanderstead.play-cricket.com

Hop-picking

Hops help preserve beer. Hops are broken down by exposure to ultraviolet light. Therefore, hopped beer tends to be placed in dark bottles.

Poor East Enders used to holiday by going hop-picking in Kent. In the 1940s Guinness had hop farms at Bodiam in Kent.

Mechanisation ended hand-picking.

London Amateur Brewers

London Amateur Brewers was founded by Ant Hayes in 2007.

Website: https://londonamateurbrewers.co.uk

Porter

Porter is purported to have been invented in the 18^thC by Ralph Harwood, the landlord of The Bell brewhouse in Shoreditch. It has been stated that his customers had acquired a taste for a cocktail beer made up of various ales that he sold. Harwood experimented to see if he could brew a single tipple that would be to his customers taste. By curing the malts for longer than had previously been the practice, he came up with a brew that fitted the bill - porter. The carbonated character of the metropolis's water is supposed to have contributed to the character of the new beer. It became Londoners favourite drink.

The additional curing required the use of more fuel, which cost money. The production of beer came to require more capital. It reinforced an existing trend that involved brewing's metamorphosis from being a craft that was practised by individual brewer-publicans into being an industry that was directed by brewer-capitalists, such as David Barclay.

The taste for porter dominated the Englishman's thirst for over a century. However, by the end of the 19^thC it had a rival in the pale ales that were being produced at Burton-on-Trent in Derbyshire.

Porter received its death-blow during the First World War when restrictions on fuel use stopped malts being cured for as long as was necessary. By the end of the war, the more energy efficient bitter was the public's preferred beer. That the latter should have lost so much of its ground to lager since the Second World War should not be surprising. In terms of centuries, Londoners taste in beer is fickle.

Stout

Stout is a dark beer may have derived its name from a family of Quaker brewers who lived in Hertford.

The drink has been included as a treatment in the British Pharmacopoeia along with brandy and sherry.

David Backhouse 2024