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Home , Bar (establishment), Brewery, Burton ale, Half and half, History of beer, Malt

to mother-in-law: a history of 1837-1914

Martyn Cornell

On June 28 1838, the day of Queen For those who ate at home rather than in Victoria's coronation, thousands of peo- , the potboy still performed a ple around the country sat down to big, valuable delivery service, ferrying celebratory open-air dinners which con- from the alehouse, inn or . George sisted pretty much universally, it appears, Dodd, in The Food of , published of three staples: roast , plum pudding in 1856, described the pot-boy and his and beer. In Barnsley the 3,000 working ‘tray filled with quarts and pints of dinner- men who ate 4,200 pounds of beef at a beer, carried out to the houses of the dinner on Market Hill were served with customers’, though Dodd complained one quart of each to ease it down. that the pot-boy's tray ‘seems to have This was still the age of porter, some 120 undergone some change, for it is less years after the style was developed, and frequently seen than “in days of yore”’. the big London porter brewers, such as The potboy carried the pots in an open Barclay Perkins in Southwark, Meux in wooden container with a handle, rather Tottenham Court Road, Truman in the like a carpenter's tool box, he wore an East End and Whitbread on the edge of apron, and he seems to have advertised the City were still the biggest in the coun- his services by bawling out. A poem by try, which meant the biggest in the world. the 18th century writer Mary Darby Robinson called London's Summer Beer was by far the most popular drink. Morning says that amid ‘The din of hack- Sir Walter Besant, writing in 1887, said ney-coaches, waggons, carts’, ‘the pot- that when Victoria succeeded her uncle, boy yells discordant’. ‘Beer was universally taken with dinner’, and ‘even at great dinner some of Outside many London was a bench the guests would call for beer. In the and a table where ticket porters, who restaurants every man would call for bit- waited at stands in the street to be hired, ter , or , or half-and-half [ale and could put down their loads and order a porter mixed] with his dinner, as a matter pot of beer to keep them going: a porter of course’. is visible in Hogarth's Beer Street, drain-

44 The Journal of the History Society ing his pot, while another porter can be Wheeler's patent : Whitbread in seen in a picture of the White Hart in 1817, Barclay Perkins in 1820, Truman Knightsbridge from 1841, resting and by 1826. drinking. There were at least two public houses called the Ticket Porter in In 1822 John Tuck was lamenting that London, one in Moorfields and the other ‘the real taste of porter, as originally (which was only closed and demolished drank, is completely lost; and this by pale around 1970) in Arthur Street, near being introduced … Our ancestors London Bridge. Charles Dickens invent- brewed porter entirely with high dried ed a riverside pub called the ‘Six Jolly malt; while in the present day, in many Fellowship Porters’ in his novel Our houses, high dried or blown malts are Mutual Friend. entirely omitted’. However, Tuck admitted that although ‘to say the truth, there is Victorian porter was already different little of porter left but the name … the from the drink as it had been known for taste of the public is so changed, that much of the 18th century. Previously it very few would be found to fancy its orig- had been made solely with brown malt, inal flavour’. Originally porter had been until the development of the saccharome- kept for up to two years before being set ter in the latter half of the 18th century out, with the tart, aged beer being mixed showed what poor value for money in the pub with newer, ‘mild’ porter to the brown malt was in making a strong beer, customer's taste. But by the second with much of the fermentable content decade of the 19th century public tastes destroyed by the heating that gave the had changed so much than 90% of porter malt its colour, Brewers then started was being sent out ‘mild’, or unaged. using pale and amber malts in their porters, with enough brown malt to try to The London brewers continued to use give it some darkness, often adding brown malt in their porter mashes, with liquorice or burnt to add to the Whitbread, for example, in 1850, depth of blackness. A man called Daniel to a recipe that was 80% pale malt, 15% Wheeler came up in 1817 with a patent- brown malt and five per cent black malt. ed method of roasting malt at 400o But in , within a few years of the Fahrenheit or more for up to two hours in invention of patent malt, brewers were an apparatus very similar to a abandoning brown malt entirely: roaster. The resultant black malt, or , for example, which had been ‘patent malt’ gave ‘extractive matter of a using between 25% and 47% brown malt deep brown colour, ready soluble in hot in its porter up to 1815, was probably or cold water … A small quantity of malt using only pale malt and patent malt by thus prepared will suffice for the purpose 1824, and certainly by 1828. The result of colouring beer or porter’. The big was a divergence in flavour between Irish London porter brewers all took up porter (and stout) and London porter (and

Brewery History Number 123 Summer 2006 45 stout), with the former now drier and, Porter the drink meanwhile had seen because of the burnt flavours from the output in London hit 1.8 million in patent malt, more . 1823 the highest ever, after a continual rise that had lasted 50 years. But this was However, although when Victoria suc- a peak that would never be surpassed: ceeded William IV porter was still widely by 1830 porter production would be down admired and as widely copied - a writer in 20 per cent on its 1823 level. Instead the 1838 said that although porter was ‘imi- increasingly popular drink was proper tated by most of the countries of Europe’, ‘mild’ , unaged - which is what mild though ‘in the manufacture of this meant - made for quick consumption, still the English have not been excelled by quite dark, still with an OG or around any other nation’, its popularity was 1050, made with some higher-dried malt declining in parallel with the gradual dis- and thus also dark in colour, but because appearance of the men who had given it was unaged, sweeter and less acid the drink its name. than porter.

Through the 19th century the ticket The 10 or 11 big porter brewers in porters and fellowship porters lost their London, found themselves losing busi- economic power, and dwindled in num- ness to the 80 or so ale brewers in the bers and importance. When the West capital, some of whom, such as the India Docks opened to the east of the Godings of Knightsbridge and the Red City in 1802, the company that built them Lion brewery on the South Bank, barred the ticket porters and fellowship Courage, opposite St Katharine's Dock, porters from exercising any right to work and Mann's and Charrington's in the there, a policy followed by most of the East End, were growing to a size that other dock owners as more big docks rivalled the black beer brewers. The were built down-river. The railways porter brewers soon began brewing mild arrived in London in the late 1830s, and ale themselves. Whitbread, then the third the railway companies easily made sure or fourth biggest brewer in London, all portering duties at their termini were whose production was entirely porter up done by their own staff, not the uptown to 1834, started brewing in 1835. ticket porters, who had once expected a Ale quickly rose from nowhere to more monopoly on parcel and package carry- than 10% of production at Chiswell Street ing in the City. Rowland Hill's penny post by 1839, and more than 20% by 1859, removed much of their business carrying when Whitbread's porter sales had letters about. The fellowship porters had dropped by almost 30% compared to 25 fallen to fewer than a hundred men earn- years earlier. At Truman's, then fighting ing their living from the trade in the with Barclay Perkins to be London's 1860s, and by the late 1870s the ticket biggest brewer, the swing from porter porters had vanished. was stronger still, with ale making up

46 The Journal of the Brewery History Society 30% of production by 1859. All the same, ing the drink of the masses, because ‘the London still had the reputation of selling fickle public has got tired of the vinous- the best porter, and pubs elsewhere flavoured vatted porter and transferred its would advertise the sale of the local ale, affections to the new and luscious “mild but London porter. ale” … Our old friend porter, with its sombre hue and foaming head, is no Although porter made up three quarters longer the pet of fashion, but a bright and of London beer sales even in 1863, the sparkling bitter, the colour of and pace against it was increasing. The rising the condition of , carries off clerical classes - the ‘nobby’ clerks, often the palm’. ridiculed in contemporary newspapers for aping the ‘nobs’, their social superiors - By the 1860s, brewers were offering a were preferring the new Burton-style pale range of nine or 10 different beers. , which were seen as having more Samuel Allsopp and Sons of Burton upon cachet, while the manual classes were Trent, for example, sold nine different turning completely away from the aged, types of beer in 1861, of which four were stale beer their fathers drank. In 1872 the milds, XX at 48 shillings a , XXX at last porter-only brewery in London, Meux 54 shillings, F at 60 shillings and A at 66 & Co, off Tottenham Court Road, gave up shillings, their prices suggesting they and began brewing ales as well. Around ranged in strength from 1055 OG to 1090 the middle of the 1870s both Whitbread or so. The brewer William and Truman (and, undoubtedly, the other Younger in 1862/3 sold its London cus- historically big London porter brewers as tomers four types of ‘Scotch Mild Ale’ well) began selling more ale than porter. from X at 38 shillings a barrel to a thun- By 1887 porter was down to only 30% of dering XXXX at 68 shillings. the London trade. Drinkers in different parts of the country For smaller brewers the fall was even often favoured a particular shade of mild greater: at Young's of Wandsworth, porter - deep oak-brown in East Anglia and had been 70% of production in 1835 and London (where the comparatively chlo- was down to just 16% in 1880. The result ride-rich well water was said to be good was the disappearance from big brew- for dark mild ales: the Encyclopedia eries of the huge porter vats that had Britannica in 1911 declared that ‘for ales been the fascination of visitors. The of the Burton type a hard water is a journalist Alfred Barnard wrote in 1889 necessity. For the brewing of mild ales, that in the previous five years Mann's again, a water containing a certain pro- brewery in the East End of London had portion of chlorides is required’); pale in removed scores of vats of up to 500 - and Staffordshire; dark again rels capacity, made from 22-foot staves in the West Midlands and . An of best British oak and once used for age- analysis of English beers conducted for

Brewery History Number 123 Summer 2006 47 the Encyclopedia Britannica found that beer brewed in the town in 1863, by 1890 milds contained less for a given it was disappearing from Newcastle itself OG than pale ales, stock ales and porter: and the larger towns of the region, its one mild with an OG of 1055, for example, place taken by more bitter ales from the contained the same amount of alcohol, brewers of Edinburgh and Burton. The 4.2%, as a bitter ale with an OG of 1047. North East was ahead of the rest of The mild also contained two thirds more : Julian Baker, writing in 1905, solids in the final beer than the bitter - declared: ‘mild or four-ale [so called for its 6.7% against 4% - suggesting a beer with price of four old pence a quart in Victorian a much fuller mouthfeel, and a sweeter Britain] … is still the beverage of the one as well. working classes’. The popularity of mild with the labouring classes of late There seem to have been few specifical- Victorian and Edwardian England meant ly regional styles of mild. In the that ‘four-ale bar’ became a synonym for perceived position of mild as a low-gravi- public bar, a nickname that lasted long ty beer was filled by the style known as after mild ale stopped being four pence a ‘light’, in opposition to the stronger quart. ‘heavy’, ‘light’ being, paradoxically, usual- ly dark in colour. About the only real While mild was to continue as Britain's example of a regional mild came from the most popular beer until the start of the North East of England around Durham 1960s, the middle classes in Victorian and Northumberland. The local miners Britain preferred the pale beers of Burton went for a very sweet, dark mild ale, on Trent and their equivalents from known specifically as Newcastle Mild or Edinburgh. There were two main types of Newcastle sweet ale, with what Victorian pale beer from the east Midlands brewing observers called a ‘sub-acid’ flavour, that town, one the India class of is, hovering on the edge of tart. bitter beers, and the other, rather sweet- er, called simply , although it The beer was sweet and dark because was also made by other brewers right that was the sort the local ‘indifferent’ across the country. Burton Ale is almost water supply made best, and in 1890 the forgotten now - almost the only surviving journalist Alfred Barnard was told the version is Young's Winter Warmer - but it Durham and Northumberland pit-men was once very popular, particularly in held it in high repute and ‘prefer it to any winter and as a mixed drink. Its other other’. Brewers such as John Barras name was , and a mixture of (later a cornerstone of Newcastle Burton and mild was called an Old Six, ) and Reid & Co pronounced from its cost, six pence a quart, Burton on themselves brewers of the ‘celebrated’ its own being eight pence a quart. Burton Newcastle Mild Ales. However, although and bitter together was known as ‘moth- Newcastle Mild was said to be the only er-in-law’ - old and bitter.

48 The Journal of the Brewery History Society Burton Ale had its roots in the strong Staffordshire were producing a beer beers Burton had exported to and called Burton: Alfred Barnard, the the Baltic lands until high tariffs in the Victorian author, found Burton ales being 1820s destroyed the trade. They turned brewed at the Tyne Brewery in instead to selling the beer in Britain, Newcastle; by John Smith's in Tadcaster; where a less sweet and more bitter ver- and by Eldridge Pope in Dorchester. sion of the Russian original won a wide following. Burton Ale was generally The Burton brewers did not forget how to extremely strong, even by pre-First World brew the really strong beers they once War standards. An analysis from 1843 by made for Russia: Allsopp's, for one, still Jonathan Pereira gave ‘Burton ale, first occasionally made its special Arctic ale. sort’ an OG of 1111 to 1120, ‘Burton ale, Alfred Barnard, on his trip to Samuel second sort’ an OG of 1097 to 1111 and Allsopp & Sons in Burton in 1889, wrote ‘third sort’ an OG of 1077 to 1092. For that ‘the celebrated “arctic ale” of which comparison, Pereira found porter had an we have heard so much in days gone by’ OG of 1050 and ‘good table beer’ 1033 to was specially brewed at the request of 1039, while IPA was generally around the government for the five-ship arctic 1065. expedition in 1852-54 under Sir Edward Belcher [which was looking for Sir John Bass, which used a red diamond trade- Franklin's famously lost expedition of mark for its Burton ales, to distinguished 1845]. Belcher reported that the ale was them from the famous red triangle used ‘a valuable antiscorbutic’ [more enjoyable on Bass (the diamond than C tablets, I bet!] and ‘a great mark was used for Burton ale from 1857, blessing to us, particularly for our sick, as two years after the firm first put the red tri- long as it lasted’, and that it refused to angle on its pale ale labels), brewed four freeze until the temperature dropped to different strengths of Burton ale for the 12° Fahrenheit, or -11° Celsius. on-trade in the second half of the 19th century. They ranged from the powerful Barnard tried the 1875 version and ‘found No 1, at over 1110 OG down through Nos it of a nice brown colour, and of a vinous, 2 and 3 to No 4 at around 1070 OG. and at the same time, nutty flavour, and There were also two more grades for the as sound as on the day it was brewed’. private family trade, Nos 5 and 6, at He wrote that it ‘did not show a very high around 1060 and 1055 OG. Worthington alcoholic content’, though the OG was all had a completely illogical lettering system of 1130, and an analysis in 1881 found it which saw its best strong Burton ale had an ABV () of called G, its second-best F and its third- 11.25% and ‘owing to the large amount of best C or CK. unfermented extract still remaining in it, it must be considered as an extremely By the early 1890s brewers far outside valuable and nourishing food’.

Brewery History Number 123 Summer 2006 49 At more or less the same time as the An idea of what early IPAs tasted like Burton brewers were developing Burton comes from a book written in 1843 by ale they were also beginning to make the Jonathan Pereira, who said that ‘the Pale highly hopped pale beer that, because it Ale prepared for the India market, and, had famously been exported to Bombay, therefore, commonly known as the Indian Madras and Calcutta, became known as Pale Ale, is … carefully fermented, so as East India Pale Ale, India Pale Ale, or to be devoid of all sweetness, or, in other IPA. This had developed from the strong, words, to be dry; and it contains double pale October stock pale ales of the 18th the usual quantity of ; it forms, century, which were normally kept to therefore, a most valuable restorative mature for up to two years. Even in 1898 beverage for invalids and convalescents’. Waltham Brothers' brewery in Stockwell, South London could say of its own India There is some evidence that while pale Pale Ale: ‘This Ale is heavily hopped with ales for export were, massively hopped, the very best Kent hops, and nearly at six pounds per barrel or more, resembles the fine Farmhouse Stock- ‘domestic’ IPAs were hopped at getting Beer of olden times’. A century earlier, on for half that rate. The strengths, at meanwhile, when officers of the East least, of early Burton IPAs seem to be Indiamen ships began shipping October much the same as later 19th century ale out with them to sell to the civil and versions, at around 1065-1075 OG. Pale military employees of the East India ale production in Burton leapt dramatical- Company, they found the four-month sea ly from 1839, the year the railway first voyage round the Cape of Good Hope, arrived in Burton, when it rose nearly crossing the Equator twice, magically 50% in 12 months, to just under 17,000 matured the beer by the time it reached barrels. By 1849 Bass's pale ale produc- India. tion has risen more than three-fold, to 56,000 barrels a year, of which only The maker of the beer taken out to India around 10 or 12% was exported to India. was Hodgson's brewery in Bow, just up the river Lea from the East Indiamen's The railway allowed Burton's brewers to docks at Blackwall. However, early in the meet what was obviously a growing 1820s Hodgson's upset the East India demand for pale bitter beers from the shippers by trying to monopolise the sup- 1830s. India Pale Ale was the king of ply of beer to India, and they invited the bitter beers, but it was expensive; Burton Burton brewers to see if they could match pale ale sold in Britain for 8d a quart Hodgson's brew. They quickly proved they , twice as much as either porter or could surpass it, in large part because the lesser pale beers. By the middle of the gypsum-impregnated well waters of 1840s, at least, other brewers were start- Burton are much better for brewing bitter ing to brew a cheaper ‘East India Pale pale ales than London water is. Ale’ or ‘India Pale Ale’ to compete with

50 The Journal of the Brewery History Society the Burton brewers' product. Most brew- invented a system of banks of casks ers outside Burton sold their IPA or EIPA arranged in double rows, called unions. at 1s 6d a gallon wholesale, or 7d a pot Each had a swan-neck pipe in the top of retail, implying an OG of around 1065 to the cask through which the excess 1075. foamed, dropping into a trough above the twin rows of casks. The yeast and beer Attempts to imitate Burton pale ale were separated out in the toughs, and the beer hampered by the need to brew with simi- flowed back down into the casks. lar hard sulphate-impregnated water, which could be found in only a few Walker's patent system was taken up by places. From the 1850s several London brewers around the country, from brewers had set up branch breweries in Edinburgh to London. However, it was Burton to try to brew the pale ales they the brewers of who could not make properly with London took most eagerly to this method of brew- water. Eventually, a chemist called CW ing, which became known as a result Vincent discovered how to reproduce as the Burton union system. When the Burton water everywhere. His analysis of journalist Alfred Barnard visited Burton the town's water in 1878 identified the around 1890 he found all the brewers minerals particularly gypsum, or calcium he saw using the union system to finish sulphate, that gave pale ales brewed in off their pale ales. Each brewer had hun- the town a drier, more bitter flavour and a dreds, sometimes thousands of union brighter appearance than ales from areas casks, joined in sets of up to 30. without Burton's mineral advantages. From this, brewers in soft water areas IPA was, like Burton Ale, one of the more now knew what to do to emulate North expensive beers, and brewers developed Staffordshire's finest: no need to move to cheaper, weaker versions of pale ale, Burton, just add gypsum to your which became known as bitter ale, or water. bitter beer, bitter for short. It sold at six pence a quart, and was thus also known A perennial problem facing brewers was as ‘six-ale’. There does not appear to what to do with the excess yeast the have been a beer called ‘bitter’ much brewing process generated. If the yeast before the time that Victoria came to the was left in the beer it would make for a throne. What seems to have happened is cloudy pint, with the danger that the yeast that the name ‘bitter’ came about would ‘autolyse’, or dissolve through its because drinkers wanted to differentiate own , giving a yeast-bitten the well-hopped, matured pale ales, flavour to the beer. which were gaining a place in brewers' portfolios by the start of the 1840s, from In 1838 a Liverpool brewer called Peter the sweeter, less-aged and generally less Walker, originally from Ayr in Scotland hopped mild ales that, until then, had

Brewery History Number 123 Summer 2006 51 been almost the only alternative to porter There was a style of hopped pale ale that and stout. Brewers called, and continued existed independently of the IPA tradition, to call, the new drink ‘pale ale’. Young's, which went by the name KK or AK. for example, still sends its ‘ordinary’ bitter Although the K style of bitter pale ale was out in casks labelled PA for Pale Ale, probably an old one, evidence is lacking: exactly the same as when it was first one of the first mentions in print is in 1855 brewed in 1864, while casks of its Special in an advertisement for the Stafford bitter are marked ‘SPA’. Brewery, which was selling ‘Pale India Ale’ at 18 pence a gallon, and AK Ale, ‘a However, there were no pump-clips on delicate bitter ale’, at 14 pence a gallon. the handles of the beer engines in Victorian pubs (pump-clips did not come Brewers seem to have maintained a into wide use until the 1950s), and while deliberate difference between the two brewers could dictate the nomenclature types of bitter beer: lower-gravity, lighter- of the new drink on labels of the bottled coloured, less-hopped AK light ; versions (which is why we have bottled and slightly darker, hoppier, stronger pale ale, not bottled bitter), drinkers ‘Pale Ales’, often designated PA. The themselves could decide what they were brewing books of Garne & Sons of going to call the draught version when Burford, Oxfordshire in 1912 show AK they ordered it. They kept the name ‘ale’ being brewed at an OG of 1040 and with for the old, mild style of drink and called a colour of 14, a reddish-brown hue, the new one by a name that defined and while PA was brewed to an OG of 1056 contrasted it - bitter. By 1855 Punch mag- and with a colour of 18, a darker medium azine was making jokes about the ‘fast brown. The difference is confirmed by young gents’ who drank ‘Bitter Beer’ contemporary comments on the two living an ‘embittered existence’. beers. Alfred Barnard sampled an AK brewed by Rogers of in 1889, Although pale bitter ales were increasing- which he described as ‘a bright sparkling ly popular from the 1850s, particularly beverage of a rich golden colour and … a among the middle classes, they were still nice delicate hop flavour’. Of Whitbread's a minority taste, in part because they Pale Ale, on the other hand, a more stan- were more expensive. Bitter was six dard bitter, he wrote that it tasted ‘well of pence a ‘pot’, or quart, in the pub and the hop’, though it too looked ‘both bright thus sometimes known as ‘six-ale’, while and sparkling’. Crowley's brewery in mild, ‘four-ale’, was a third cheaper at Croydon High Street in 1900 described its four pence a pot. In the 1890s at Steward AK in one of its advertisements as ‘a and Patteson, the big brewer, Bitter Ale of sound quality with a delicate pale and light bitter ales made up only Hop flavour’, and the frequent description five per cent of production. of AK in Victorian advertisements as ‘for family use’ suggests a not-too-bitter beer.

52 The Journal of the Brewery History Society The description of AK as ‘for family use’ is for centuries, and Whitbread had started a a reminder that beer was still a highly considerable bottling operation in 1870. popular mealtime drink at home, despite But these were corked bottles, which Gladstone's attempts in his 1861 budget meant brewers needed an army of work- to popularise drinking by reducing ers to knock home the corks (Whitbread tariffs. Even in the second half of the 19th employed more than a hundred corkers, century the cask of ale at home, delivered each man working a 12-hour day, in by the brewery roundsman, was still com- 1886). They were also inconvenient for mon, and many small concerns adver- the drinker: a was always tised themselves specifically as ‘family required, and bottles could not be easily brewers’. Young's of Hertford, for exam- resealed. In 1879 Barrett invented the ple, ran ads in the local paper in the screwtop , a cheap, conven- 1870s promoting its ‘superior pale bitter ient, reusable container that meant little or ales, brewed expressly for the supply of no waste for the man desiring his Private Families and delivered in 9 or 18 lunchtime or suppertime pint. gallon casks … AK for family use, 10d per gallon’. The screw top caught on rapidly (Whitbread started using them in 1886) Ten (old) pence or one shilling a gallon and brought in 30 years when almost were the normal prices for beers sold as every brewery had to have a bottled din- ‘family ale’, ‘table ale’ or ‘dinner ale’, ner ale or its equivalent. Even a tiny con- implying OGs of around 1035 to 1045. cern such as the Richmond Brewery, in They were the weakest Victorian beers, Friars Lane, just off Richmond Green, apart from the harvest ales sold to ease Surrey, which brewed an AK Dinner Ale, the thirsts of farm workers in hot August offered its customers screw-topped impe- fields. rial pint bottles at 2s 6d a dozen in 1887.

But by the 1880s, while a pint of beer with Most dinner ales were light ales, though dinner or supper was still popular, there Ward's of Foxearth, Essex had ‘Special was less demand for a whole 4 1/2 gallon Dark Family Ale’; the Friary Brewery cask of dinner ale to be delivered to the Company in Guildford bottled something family home. Overall beer consumption called ‘Anglo Dinner Ale’ and was falling, and the chances of the beer Young's of Wandsworth brewed ‘Family turning sour before it was used were too Stout’. great. But all these early bottled beers were nat- Even a gallon was too much for many urally conditioned, which meant a yeast families, however: fortunately the hour deposit, and the chance of cloudy beer if had brought forward its hero: Henry the customer did not take care. In 1897 Barrett. Bottled beers had been available the brewing scientist Horace Brown was

Brewery History Number 123 Summer 2006 53 reporting to the Institute of Brewing that in ‘alimental tonic’, ‘particularly suited for the they had solved the invalids, ladies nursing or anyone requir- problems involved in chilling and filtering ing a good sound strengthening bever- beers so that they would remain ‘bright’ in age’, while warning that its Double Stout the bottle. It did not take long for the tech- was ‘Highly nutritious, but too strong for nology to cross the Atlantic. By 1899 the some invalids’. Notting Hill Brewery Company in West London was advertising its ‘Sparkling Oatmeal stout, a variant that appeared Dinner Ale’ as ‘a revolution in English bot- around the end of the 19th century, was tled beers, produced entirely on a new pushed as even better than ordinary stout system … no deposit, no sediment, bril- for the enfeebled: the Rochdale and liant to the last drop, no waste whatever’. Manor Brewery in in 1909, for example, advertised its Oatmeal The other newly popular beer at the end Nourishing Stout as ‘Refreshing and of the 19th century was stout, the dark strengthening’. beer originally known as ‘stout porter’, meaning ‘strong porter’, which was The idea of a ‘milk beer’, made with an increasingly drunk for its supposed addition of unfermentable sugar, restorative qualities. When the Russian derived from milk, to give a sweeter brew market was closed to strong English ales had first been suggested in 1875. In 1910 in the 1820s, porters and were the Kentish brewer Mackeson of Hythe exempt, and the London brewers soon had acquired the patents to a method of produced very strong versions of stout brewing with lactose, which was put into aimed at the Russian court and known for the at a rate of nine pounds to the that reason as ‘imperial’ stout. But weaker barrel, half an ounce per pint. The new versions of stout were gaining popularity beer was called ‘milk stout’: ‘stout’ was at home. Even in 1861, Mrs Beeton, in her now on its way to having the meaning Book of Household Management, was ‘black beer’ rather than strong beer. recommending it for nursing mothers: ‘As Mackeson soon licensed the production the best tonic, and the most efficacious of milk stout to other brewers: Massey's indirect that a mother can take Burnley Brewery was advertising its ‘new at such times, there is no potation equal to Milk Stout’ by January 1911, for example, porter and stout, or, what is better still, an and 13 other brewers were also making equal part of porter and stout’. milk stout by 1912.

The health-giving nature of stout was an Two years later came the First World War, image Victorian and Edwardian brewers which, apart from the appalling loss of life, played to. In 1887, for example, Waltham was to have a devastating impact on Brothers' brewery in Stockwell, South Britain's brewing traditions. But that is West London was calling its SN stout an another story.

54 The Journal of the Brewery History Society