Tag: quotation

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quotes real ale

Opaque Bitter, 1986

Brakspear beer mat from (probably) the 1990s.

“We like to think that Nicholas Breakspear, the only English pope, was a member of this race of inspired brewers, for Brakspear’s draught bitter is undoubtedly the best to be had in England. It is not, of course, clear and cold or thin and gaseous. It is flat, opaque, warmish and tastes of hop fields in the English summer. It also has the supreme advantage of making you slowly, but not too slowly, drunk.”

John Mortimer, ‘That Elusive Ideal: The Perfect Pub‘, New York Times, 5 October 1986

(N.B Original has American spelling of ‘draft’.)

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Beer history quotes

QUOTE: A Rat in the Mash-Tun

Guinness Brewery: View of Mash Tuns.
Guinness Brewery: View of Mash Tuns.

“One thing is certain: once a beer of a particular character has found its market, it is important that the uniform standard be maintained; and it was no doubt with this in mind that an old and wise craftsman is said to have given one last piece of advice to his pupils. He said to them, ‘If when you take up a new job you find a rat in the mash-tun, leave it there. The customers may like the flavour!’”

Sydney O. Nevile, Seventy Rolling Years, 1958.

(PS. Note that usage of ‘craftsman’…)

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pubs quotes

QUOTE: Pub Perfume

“Before opening time there is a Q, virgin aroma of freshness, an inimitable pub-perfume mixture of hops and malt, spirits and polish with perhaps a faint touch of violet-scented air-freshener. This is my boyhood nostalgia. Spilt ale, dried and sugar-sticky.”

Adrian Bailey in an essay for Len Deighton’s London Dossier, 1967.

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pubs quotes

QUOTE: Pubs & Class, 1964

Detail from the cover of 'The Other England', Penguin, 1964.

“There is something more than a nodding acquaintance between the old Painswick folk and the incomers now, but it is a wary relationship… It is to the Falcon on the main street, or to the even more worldly pub a few miles up the road, that the gentlemen repair for their whiskies and sodas; the villagers — or, as they like to call themselves, the working classes — are more likely to be found with a pint of beer or cider in the Royal Oak or the Golden Hart, which are not half so smart.”

Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Other England, Penguin, 1964.

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Beer history quotes

QUOTE: The English — Great Guzzlers of Beer

“I drank only water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great guzzlers of beer… We had an alehouse boy who attended always in the house to supply the workmen. My companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, and pint in the afternoon about six o’clock, and another when he had done his day’s work.”

Benjamin Franklin recalls working in a London printing house in 1725 in chapter IV of his autobiography.