Wednesday 1 October 2008

The beer before time

Greetings all and as we know it is the start of a new month and thus a new beer style of the month. This time I have taken the option of another age old British beer style, originating from London, that became the most popular beer style in the UK during the Industrial revolution. As with IPA porter helped fuel the British empire, except where IPA was sent abroad Porter was drank in-land. Originally the beer was created from an innovative beer called 'entire butt', a beer brewed to mimic the palate of blend of beers called three threads, a blend of old and young beers that had to be blended by the publican in the cellar (as they had no beer engine and thus no hand pumps) before serving. The popularity of entire butt amongst the porters of London eventually gave the beer its current name.

But after the 1830s the style went into decline as the public slowly turned their favour to lower gravity less aged beers such as mild or pale ale. Today the style is recreated by craft brewers across the globe, commonly crafted from grist combinations that include pale, crystal, chocolate and black malts often bittered with old style British hops such as Fuggles, Bramling X or Northdown. In fact from word of mouth I have heard recent praise for the porter made by the Daleside brewery which I work for, by CAMRA members, and currently my home brewed example of the style is slowly maturing under the stairs.

3 comments:

Ed said...

Nice one on getting the job in a brewery. Does this mean you need to collect your own autograph?

Rob said...

Why hello there Ed. Am only a brewery assistant afraid so cant get my own autograph. Have got the autograph of the Daleside brewery head brewer Craig Witty. Work with him every day and they even got me to do some taste notes for them. In fact last week I got to scrub out the mash tun.. The actual mash tun. Hope your job is going well?

Ed said...

I too know that unbridled joy that is cleaning a mash tun. Are you on the email list Brian set up?