Half and half to mother-in-law: a history of beer 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- restaurants, the potboy still performed a ple around the country sat down to big, valuable delivery service, ferrying drink celebratory open-air dinners which con- from the alehouse, inn or tavern. George sisted pretty much universally, it appears, Dodd, in The Food of London, published of three staples: roast beef, 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 porter 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 parties some of Outside many London pubs 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 ale, or stout, 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 Brewery History Society ing his pot, while another porter can be Wheeler's patent malt: Whitbread in seen in a picture of the White Hart pub 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 malts 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 sugar to add to the Whitbread, for example, in 1850, brewing 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 Ireland, 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 coffee abandoning brown malt entirely: roaster. The resultant black malt, or Guinness, 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 barrels in patent malt, more bitter. 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’ beers, unaged - which is what mild though ‘in the manufacture of this liquor 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 mild ale 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 sherry and pace against it was increasing.