Beer in England
Beer has been brewed in England for thousands of years. As a beer brewing country, it is known for top fermented cask beer which finishes maturing in the cellar of the pub rather than at the brewery and is served with only natural carbonation.
English beer styles include bitter, mild, brown ale and old ale. Stout, porter and India pale ale were also originally brewed in London. Lager increased in popularity from the mid-20th century. Other modern developments include the consolidation of large brewers into multinational corporations; the growth of beer consumerism; and the expansion of microbreweries and bottle-conditioned beers.
History
Romano-Celtic Britain
Brewing in what is now England was probably well established when the Romans arrived in 54 BC, and certainly continued under them.
In the 1980s, archaeologists found the evidence that Rome's soldiers in Britain sustained themselves on Celtic ale. A series of domestic and military accounts written on wooden tablets were dug up at the Roman fort of Vindolanda, at Chesterholm in modern Northumberland, dating to between AD90 and AD130. They reveal the garrison at Vindolanda buying ceruese, or beer, as the legions doubtless did throughout the rest of Roman Britain, almost certainly from brewers in the local area.
One list of accounts from Vindolanda mentions Atrectus the brewer, the first named brewer in British history, as well as the first known professional brewer in Britain. The accounts also show purchases of bracis or braces, that is, emmer wheat, doubtless for brewing. Quite possibly the garrison bought the malt, and hired a local brewer to make beer from it for the troops.
In Roman Britain, brewing, both domestic and retail, must have been widespread: remains indicating the existence of Roman-era malting or brewing operations have been found from Somerset to Northumberland, and South Wales to Colchester. In the third and fourth centuries AD Roman hypocaust technology, for supplying central heating to homes, was adapted in Britain to build permanent corn dryers/maltings, and the remains of these double-floored buildings, with underground flues, are found in Roman towns as well as on Roman farms.
British brewing is generally thought to have been part of a wider Celtic tradition. Since this was well before the introduction of hops, other flavourings such as honey, meadowsweet and mugwort may have been used.
Middle Ages: Ale-wands, ale-wives and ale-conners
Beer was one of the most common drinks during the Middle Ages. It was consumed daily by all social classes in the northern and eastern parts of Europe where grape cultivation was difficult or impossible. Beer provided a considerable amount of the daily calories in the northern regions. In England, the per capita consumption was 275–300 liters a year by the Late Middle Ages, and beer was drunk with every meal.In the Middle Ages, ale would have been brewed on the premises from which it was sold. Alewives would put out an ale-wand to show when their beer was ready. The medieval authorities were more interested in ensuring adequate quality and strength of the beer than discouraging drinking. Gradually, men became involved in brewing and organised themselves into guilds such as the Brewers Guild in London. As brewing became more organised and reliable, many inns and taverns ceased brewing for themselves and bought beer from these early commercial breweries.
An ale-conner, sometimes "aleconner", was an officer appointed yearly at the court-leet of ancient English communities to ensure the goodness and wholesomeness of bread, ale, and beer. There were many different names for this position, which varied from place to place: "ale-tasters", gustatores cervisiae, "ale-founders", and "ale-conners". Ale-conners were often trusted to ensure that the beer was sold at a fair price. Historically, four ale-conners were chosen annually by the Common Hall of the City.
It is sometimes said that:
The Ale Conner was a type of early tax-man whose job it was to test the quality and strength of beer, not by quaffing, but by sitting in a puddle of it! They travelled from pub to pub clad in sturdy leather britches. Beer was poured on a wooden bench and the Conner sat in it. Depending on how sticky they felt it to be when they stood up, they were able to assess its alcoholic strength and impose the appropriate duty.
However, the accuracy of the colourful legend is doubtful.
1400–1699: Rise of hopped beer
The use of hops in beer was written of as early as 822 by a Carolingian Abbot. Flavouring beer with hops was known at least as early as the 9th century, but was only gradually adopted because of difficulties in establishing the right proportions of ingredients. Before that, a mix of various herbs called gruit had been used, but did not have the same conserving properties as hops.In The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery dictates her story to a scribe, and reports that in the early 15th century she attempted to brew beer in Bishop's Lynn, Norfolk, and makes other references to bottles of beer.
In the 15th century, an unhopped beer would have been known as an ale, while the use of hops would make it a beer. Hopped beer was imported to England from the Netherlands as early as 1400 in Winchester, and hops were being planted in England by 1428. At the time, ale and beer brewing were carried out separately, no brewer being allowed to produce both. The Brewers Company of London stated "no hops, herbs, or other like thing be put into any ale or liquore wherof ale shall be made – but only liquor, malt, and yeast." This comment is sometimes misquoted as a prohibition on hopped beer. However, hopped beer was opposed by some, e.g.
Ale is made of malte and water; and they the which do put any other thynge to ale than is rehersed, except yest, barme, or goddesgood , doth sophysticat there ale. Ale for an Englysshe man is a naturall drinke. Ale muste haue these properties, it muste be fresshe and cleare, it muste not be ropy, nor smoky, nor it must haue no wefte nor tayle. Ale shulde not be dronke vnder.v. dayes olde.... Barly malte maketh better ale than Oten malte or any other corne doth... Beere is made of malte, of hoppes, and water; it is a naturall drynke for a doche man, and nowe of late dayes it is moche vsed in Englande to the detryment of many Englysshe men... for the drynke is a colde drynke. Yet it doth make a man fatte, and doth inflate the bely, as it doth appere by the doche mennes faces and belyes.
A survey in 1577 of drinking establishment in England and Wales for taxation purposes recorded 14,202 alehouses, 1,631 inns, and 329 taverns, representing one pub for every 187 people.
1700–1899: Industry and empire
The early 18th century saw the development of a popular new style of dark beer in London: porter. Before 1700, London brewers sent out their beer very young and any aging was either performed by the publican or a dealer. Porter was the first beer to be aged at the brewery and despatched in a condition fit to be drunk immediately. It was the first beer that could be made on any large scale, and the London porter brewers, such as Whitbread, Truman, Parsons and Thrale, achieved great success financially.The large London porter breweries pioneered many technological advances, such as the construction of large storage vats, the use of the thermometer, the hydrometer, and attemperators.
The 18th century also saw the development of India pale ale. Among the earliest known named brewers whose beers were exported to India was George Hodgson of the Bow Brewery,
The late 18th century saw a system of progressive taxation based on the strength of beer in terms of cost of ingredients, leading to three distinct gradations: "table", "small" and "strong" beer. Mixing these types was used as a way of achieving variation, and sometimes avoiding taxation, and remained popular for more than a century afterwards.
The beer engine, a device for manually pumping beer from a container in a pub's basement or cellar, was invented by Joseph Bramah in 1797. The bar-mounted pump handle, with its changeable pump clip indicating the beer on offer remains a familiar and characteristic sight in most English pubs. Before the beer engine, beer was generally poured into jugs in the cellar or tap room and carried into the serving area.
The Beerhouse Act 1830 enabled anyone to brew and sell beer, ale or cider, whether from a public house or their own homes, upon obtaining a moderately priced licence of just under £2 for beer and ale and £1 for cider, without recourse to obtaining them from justices of the peace, as was previously required. The result was the opening of hundreds of new pubs throughout England, and the reduction of the influence of the large breweries. One of the motivations of the
Act was to reduce the abusive over-consumption of gin.
Demand for the export style of pale ale, which had become known as "India pale ale", developed in England around 1840. IPA became a popular product in England. Some brewers dropped the term "India" in the late 19th century, but records indicated that these "pale ales" retained the features of earlier IPA.
A pale and well-hopped style of beer was developed in Burton-on-Trent in parallel with the development of India pale ale elsewhere. Previously, Englishmen had drunk mainly stout and porter, but bitter came to predominate. Beers from Burton were considered of a particularly high quality due to synergy between the malt and hops in use and local water chemistry, especially the presence of gypsum. This extensively hopped, lighter beer was easier to store and transport, and so favoured the growth of larger breweries. The switch from pewter tankards to glassware also led drinkers to prefer lighter beers. The development of rail links to Liverpool enabled brewers to export their beer throughout the British Empire. Burton retained absolute dominance in pale ale brewing: at its height one quarter of all beer sold in Britain was produced there until a chemist, C. W. Vincent discovered the process of Burtonisation to reproduce the chemical composition of the water from Burton-upon-Trent, thus giving any brewery the capability to brew pale ale.
Image:Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.jpg|thumb|right|Bottles of Bass on the bar in Manet's 1882 A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
In 1880, prime minister William Gladstone's government used the Inland Revenue Act 1880 to replace the long-standing malt tax with a duty on the finished product – beer. As a side effect, homebrewers that produced their own beer for "domestic use" were subject to registration, regulation and inspection, and were required to pay a licence fee. Home brewing was greatly reduced.
In the 19th century, a typical brewery produced three or four mild ales, usually designated by a number of Xs, the weakest being X, the strongest XXXX. They were considerably stronger than the milds of today, with the gravity ranging from around 1.055 to 1.072. Gravities dropped throughout the late 19th century and by 1914 the weakest milds were down to about 1.045, still considerably stronger than modern versions.
Continental lagers began to be offered in pubs in the late 19th century, but remained a small part of the market for many decades.