Beer shop

“ Not only has the practice of domestic brewing much declined, but from the same causes there has been of late years an extraordinary and lamentable decrease in the numbers of small country brewers.
Although the name of home-brew carries with it many old associations and sentiments which we abandon with regret—memories of bright March beer and mellow old October, of snug ingle-nooks and raftered ceilings, and of kind, if homely, welcome—we cannot but admit, as on a hot day we drain our tankard of Burton bitter, or of world-famed London stout, that life has still its compensations. ”

“ The burly butcher, seated outside the inn with no fear of the Sheriff in his heart, quaffs his pewter mug of foaming ale, and casts now and again an eye on the artist who is repainting the signboard. The sturdy smith, the drayman, the porter and the fishwife—all are well clad and prosperous. Houses are being built, others are being repaired, and health and wealth are visible on every side.
Beer! happy produce of our isle, Can sinewy strength impart, And wearied with fatigue and toil, Can cheer each manly heart. ”

“ Did you ever taste beer?' 'I had a sip of it once,' said the small servant.
'Here's a state of things!' cried Mr Swiveller, raising his eyes to the ceiling. 'She never tasted it--it can't be tasted in a sip! ”

“ Their object appears to have been to create a class of houses of refreshment, respectable in character, brewing their own beer, diminishing by the supply of a cheap and wholesome beverage the consumption of ardent spirits, and thus contributing to the happiness and comforts of the labouring classes. But it appears that of these houses only one-twelfth brew their own beer; that a very large proportion are, as in the case of public-houses, the actual property of brewers, or tied by advances to them; that they are notorious for [Pg 360] the sale of an inferior article ”

“ Three years later still the Queen declares that the disorders of the Brewers, through their “ungodly gredyness,” have grown to such lengths that something must be done; and an Act of Common Council brings back the beer to double and single, and applies other remedies.
In 1654 three sorts of beer are allowed—the best at 8s. the barrel, the second at 6s., and the small at 4s.; and shortly afterwards a fourth kind was added at 10s. The efforts of the authorities to fix the prices of ale and beer by arbitrary means were not long afterwards finally discontinued. ”

“ The decadence of the art of domestic brewing is, for some reasons, a matter for regret. The causes are not far to seek. The improved machinery of the modern brewer, which enables him to make an uniformly excellent beer, and to sell it at a low price; and the railways which now traverse every part of the country, carrying his single, double, or treble X, as the case may be, to places where half a century back no one dreamt of purchasing ale for home consumption—to these great changes is undoubtedly due the partial downfall of home-brew that has taken {47} place. ”

“ Accordingly, when Mr Groves had smoked his pipe out, knocked out the ashes, and placed it carefully in a corner of the fire-place, with the bowl downwards, he brought in the bread and cheese, and beer, with many high encomiums upon their excellence, and bade his guests fall to, and make themselves at home. ”

“ It is the poetry of beer; it is to all other brewings what Shakespeare is to the drama; what the Coliseum is to other antiquities. None of the beer is exported or sold; it is all drunk on the spot, and when it gives out no other brewery can supply a drop comparable with it. The Parisians, who have heaped every luxury, from the poles to the tropics, in their capital of the world, have not enough money in the Bank of France to purchase a cask of it. It is said that Maximilian II. resolved that the best beer in the world should be made at the royal brewery in Munich. ”

“ Tis not uncommon for the vent-peg, and even the bung, to be left out of those casks which are actually on draught.
Publicans, who retail common brewer's beer, and neglect their cellars, have this excuse, if their customers find fault with the beer, by saying "tis such beer as my brewer sends me," so it may be; but let a publican be served with beer of the first quality, it entirely depends on the management of the retailer thereof, whether the beer shall be of a good or bad quality. This is proved by persons in the same town, each being served with beer from one and the same brew-house ”

“ They began to hop their mild beer more and the Publican started three, four, sometimes six butts at once, but so little idea had the brewer or his customers incurring the charge of great stocks of beer, that some moneyed people made a trade of purchasing their hopped beers at the first hand, keeping them sometime and when stale to dispose of the same to Publicans for 5/- per barrel and 6/- per barrel. Our tastes but slowly alter or reform. ”

“ This pre-eminence is attributed to the quality of the water, which seems peculiarly fitted for brewing purposes, and the fact that the large brewers there located use none but the finest malt and hops procurable. There is an old saying, that wherever an Englishman has trodden, and where has he not? there may be found an empty beer bottle. And, truly, he does carry the taste for his natural beverage wherever he goes, and the export trade is enormous, every ship wanting freight, filling up with bottled beer, as a safe thing. ”

“ About this time the Gentry residing in London more than they had in former times, for them was introduced the pale ales and pale small beers they were habituated to in the country and many of the Brewers took (to) making drinks of this sort. Affluence and cleanliness promoted the delivery of them in the brewer's own casks and at his charge. Pale malt being dearer than brown malt, the brewer being loaded with more and greater taxes, the price of such small beer was fixed at 8/- and 10/- per barrel and that of the ale at 10/- per barrel ”

“ Not two or three, my dear, but six, yes, even ten, in one hand. It is an art in itself. If one is careless and holds the handful a quarter of an inch from perpendicular, the beer comes oozing out at the top and trickles on the sidewalk. This disturbs no one in the least. As we passed the droschky stand on Max-Joseph-Platz about eleven o'clock, there stood all the cabbies lounging against their carriages or ranged along the curbstones, leisurely drinking great steins of frothy beer which one of these blue-aproned girls had just brought. ”

“ The "bocks" have grown smaller and smaller, till in some places they are mere tea-cups. But then out come the restaurateurs with their old disused "bocks," now re-christened bocks sérieux, and charge double price. That promises to make France a real brewers' paradise. But, large glasses or small, there is something about the beer which you must first get used to. Accordingly, many of those gorgeous brasseries, of genuinely German type, which seem so out of place in the Paris boulevards, are supplied, not from Tantonville or Xertigny, but from Munich or Vienna, or else from Strassburg. ”

“ Among modern writers Christopher North has left perhaps the best description of what a modern private brewhouse should be. “We dare say,” he says, “that many personages who never in the whole course of their polished existences dreamed or thought of dreaming of brewing anything (except mischief) , will shrug their shoulders at the idea of being introduced like his Majesty George the Third, at Whitbread’s, into an odorous brewhouse, redolent of wash, wort, grains, hops, yeast, and carbonic acid gas; peeping into pumps—tumbling into vats. ”

“ For harvesters working in the almost tropical heat of an August sun, this is, no doubt, a wholesome drink, but it can hardly be called palatable. As a matter of fact, no non-alcoholic substitute has been put forward by the teetotal party which is in the least likely to take the place of porter; and until such beverage is invented—an event which we feel perfectly certain will never come to pass—the porter and stout brewers of the United Kingdom will have every opportunity of continuing to confer on the working classes the benefits of cheap and wholesome liquor. ”

“ It would be a blessed thing for all the outdoor and indoor laborers in this country, if the broad chasm between the strong beer of Old England and the small beer of New England could be bridged, and they be carried across to the shore of a better habit. The farm hands here need a good deal of gentle leading and suggestion in this matter. If some humane and ingenious man would get up a new, cheap, cold drink, which should be nutritious, palatable and exhilarating, without any inebriating property, it would be a boon of immeasurable value. ”

“ To begin with, there is the Brewery. You cannot escape from a big brewery if it belong to you. You cannot hide it away. Messenger, Marsden & Company's Stout, their XXX, their Old and Mild, their Bitter, their Family Ales (that particularly at eight-and-six the nine-gallon cask, if paid for on delivery) , their drays, their huge horses, their strong men, whose very appearance advertises the beer, and makes the weak-kneed and the narrow-chested rush to Whitechapel—my dear, these things stare one in the face wherever you go. ”

“ The alehouse, on the contrary, might conduct its business as its owner pleased, subject only to the natural laws of supply and demand. Every householder was free to brew either for his own consumption or for sale, the one condition being that his liquor was wholesome and good. Among the crimes that incurred the punishment of the ducking-stool in the city of Chester during Saxon times was that of brewing bad beer.
In every manor there was held annually the assize of bread and ale, the two staple articles of diet which it was essential should be pure and of good quality. ”

“ Some brewers, and notably Messrs. Guinness & Sons, keep their beer in vats for a considerable length of time before racking it into the casks, but the practice is gradually dying out, and huge vats such as that built some years ago by Messrs. Meux & Co. are now but little used.
The racking room of a large brewery is a wonderful sight. All round the sides are huge vats—twenty or thirty, perhaps—in each of which fifteen to twenty people could dine comfortably. These giant tubs tower above thousands of barrels which line the floor, and which look like pigmies by comparison. ”

“ In 1626 the Brewers’ Company was in evil case, as may be judged from a petition presented by them in that year to the City Fathers, in which they allege that they are in a decayed state and not able to govern their trade, that their Company consists of but six beer-brewers and a small number of ale-brewers, and that other brewers are free of other Companies. The petition goes on to pray that no other person than a freeman of the Company be allowed to set up a brewhouse in the City. ”

“ There is no production of the brewery more important to society than good table beer, whether it be considered as a diluent to animal food, or a diet drink in fever cases, even of the most malignant kind, where, to my knowledge, it has been preferred to all others, and that with the greatest success, sanctioned by the advice of some of the most eminent physicians. This justifies my recommending it, and giving several processes for making this useful liquor. ”

“ In the country districts there is little or none. The brewers have been long in the habit of purchasing all the public-houses in their neighbourhood, and these houses being limited in number, the labouring classes are prevented from selecting their own beverage, and have no choice but to drink that of the proprietors of the public-houses, who are also the brewers. Most of such beers are very imperfectly manufactured, and are usually foul and yeast-bitten, and have a very disagreeble, rank bitter, derived from the yeast left in the beer, instead of its being thrown out by a proper process. ”

“ Christopher Knollys, commissary, assembles the brewers together in the church of the Blessed Mary the Virgin, and commands them to provide sufficient malt for brewing; and that two or three shall twice or thrice in the week carry round their ale for public sale, under a penalty of 40s.; and John Weskew and Nicholas Core, two of their number, are appointed supervisors of the brewers. Each brewer is then made to swear on the Blessed Evangelists to brew good ale and wholesome, and according to the assize, “so far as his ability and human frailty permits.” ”

“ California and the Ohio Valley could and should furnish wine enough to supply the whole United States without importing a bottle. The manufacture of lager beer has already become a most important industry. To our mind, lager is destined to do more for the cause of true temperance than all the ranting and radical speeches that were ever delivered on the subject. Persuade a man to drink a glass of beer [Pg 224] instead of the manufactured stuff sold as whisky, and you put him out of the danger of delirium tremens. ”

“ The innkeeper, according to the fashion of the times, brewed his own beer, and at the rear of his hostel was a small brewhouse. His mash tub was no doubt of modest dimensions, and his “liquor” was possibly drawn from the Mercke-dyche, for in that day pure water could be got from most streams and rivers. Now, sad to say, an unpolluted stream is almost unknown, and nine wells supply the water which, with a due admixture of malt and hops, forms that admirable compound known as Romford Ale. ”