Categories
News

Government strategy on binge-drinking

The UK Government have announced a new “alcohol strategy”, with the title “Safe. Sensible. Social.” [Link to 1mb PDF]

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said:

It is unacceptable for people to use alcohol and urinate in the street, vomit and carry on.

It’s almost regarded as acceptable to drink to get drunk and we want to change that attitude.

Apart from the fact that I don’t know exactly what “carrying on” means (laughing? swearing?) I broadly agree with these sentiments.

I also think, though, that cheap, nasty beer which it’s impossible to drink for any other reason than to get drunk, is partly to blame. There’s a good reason why you don’t hear much about “ale louts”, isn’t there?

More nice tasting beer; smaller measures; in nicer glasses; and a beer “tasting” culture, would all help to combat so-called binge-drinking.

Times article

BBC news online

Categories
Beer history london

The Devil Tavern

I saw this sign on an office building on Fleet Street in London, and was intrigued.
deviltavern.jpg
You don’t see pubs called “The Devil” much these days, even though Britain is actually much less religious now than it was in the 18th century.

How did this long-gone boozer get its distinctive name? Well, it was originally called “The Devil and St Dunstan”, but St Dunstan got dropped. Samuel Pepys mentions the Devil Tavern several times in his diaries.

Here’s a bit on the history of the pub:

The noisy “Devil Tavern” (No. 2, Fleet Street) had stood next the quiet goldsmith’s shop ever since the time of James I. Shakespeare himself must, day after day, have looked up at the old sign of St. Dunstan tweaking the Devil by the nose, that flaunted in the wind near the Bar. Perhaps the sign was originally a compliment to the goldsmith’s men who frequented it, for St. Dunstan was, like St. Eloy, a patron saint of goldsmiths, and himself worked at the forge as an amateur artificer of church plate. It may, however, have only been a mark of respect to the saint, whose church stood hard by, to the east of Chancery Lane.

Quotation from: ‘Fleet Street: General Introduction’, Old and New London: Volume 1 (1878), pp. 32-53. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=45023 . Date accessed: 04 June 2007.

Categories
The Session

The June Session – attempt #1

I was so looking forward to our first Session. This month’s challenge was to blog about a local brewery or brew, perhaps to act as a guide to tourists or visitors to your town. Living in London, we have a great choice of beer brewed within 150 miles, and we could (we excitedly thought) even extend our options further by opting for somewhere near Bailey’s original manor (Somerset).
session logo
Alas, it wasn’t to be. A tough day at work rounded off a stressful week, and before we knew it, we were in a middle-of-the-road pub (Greene King!!) drinking for the sake of drinking. OK, so I’m pretty sure it’s within 150 miles, but I wouldn’t particularly recommend it to tourists.

Still, this led naturally onto a friday night curry, which for us means a bottle of fantastic Lion Stout. I cannot get over how delicious this beer is. The most remarkable thing is the incredibly long and rich aftertaste, although I also find the dark beige head very appealing. It’s 8%, treacley without being sickly, roasted without being overly bitter – it’s dessert and coffee in one sweet decadent glass.

Of course, if you’re a Londoner you can’t get much less local than Sri Lanka…

lion stout
Find out about the origins of beer-blogging Friday on Appellation Beer

Link to Gastronomic Fight Club, host of this month’s session.

Categories
Germany News

German beer prices up because of growth of biofuels

Ochsenfurter KauzenAccording to the Arizona Star, the price of beer in Germany is going up because barley farmers are turning their fields over to crops which can be used to make biofuels.

Helmut Erdmann, the director of the Ayinger brewery in Bavaria says:

Beer prices are a very emotional issue in Germany — people expect it to be as inexpensive as other basic staples like eggs, bread and milk

In my experience, beer really is considered an everyday essential. There’s barely any tax on beer, as far as I can tell – certainly nothing like the levels we have in the UK – and it’s possible to pick up a bottle of, say, Salvator for 79c in most German supermarkets.

Categories
Beer history london

Old article on London Stout

450px-truman_black_eagle_brewery_2005.jpgIn the November 1854 edition of Fraser’s Magazine, there is a fascinating article called simply “London Stout”. It paints a vivid picture of how a mid-Victorian London pub would have looked:

One of the earliest things to strike our country cousins is the universal appearance of the names of certain firms, painted in the largest letters upon the most florid backgrounds of the numerous public house signs of the metropolis. “What does ‘Reid’s Entire’ mean?” asked a fair friend of ours the other day, looking up with her brown eyes as though she had asked something very foolish, and pointing to the puzzling inscription on a neighbouring signboard.

Later, the writer describes a street porter-seller “with his little rack of quart mugs brimmed with the frothy liquid, or rattling the shiny pots against the rails by their suspended strap”.

The best section, to my mind, is a detailed description of the interior of the brewery of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton and Co at Spitalfield, East London.

After the process of mashing the wort is pumped up into a large copper, of which ther are five, containig from 300 to 400 barrels each, where the wort is boiled with the hops, of which often two tons are used in a-day. The boiling beer is now pumped up to the coolers. To get a sight of these the visitor has to perform a climbing process similar to that required get at the upper gallery of St Paul’s, and, when he has reached the highest point ladders are capable of taking him, he finds his nose on a level with a black sea, whose area presents a surface of 32,000 square feet.

Photo adapted from an original by , and used at the Wikipedia article on the Black Eagle Brewery, on Brick Lane.