The Curiosities of Ale & Beer: An Entertaining History / (Illustrated with over Fifty Quaint Cuts)

VARIOUS KINDS OF ALES AND BEERS.—SOME FOREIGN BEERS. — RECEIPTS. — SONGS. — ANECDOTES.

N attempt to describe, or even to specify, all the ales and beers that have gained a local or more wide-spread fame, would be a lengthy task. Nearly every county in England, and nearly every town of any size, has been at one time or another noted for its malt liquors. The renown of some localities has been evanescent, having depended probably upon the special art of some “barmy” brewer or skilful ale-wife, whilst of others it may be said that years only increase their fame and spread their reputation.

From a perusal of those queer old collections of quackery, magic, herb-lore and star-lore, the Saxon Leechdoms, it may be gathered that our Saxon ancestors brewed a goodly assortment of malt liquors. They made beer, and strong beer; ale, and strong ale; clear ale, lithe (clear) beer; and twybrowen, or double-brewed ale, the mighty ancestor of the “doble-doble” beer of Elizabethan times. Besides all these, there was foreign ale for those whose tastes were too fastidious to be satisfied with their native productions. {152}

On the authority of the Alvismál, it may be said that no distinction was originally drawn between ale and beer, except, perhaps, that the latter was considered to be a somewhat more honourable designation; “öl heitir meth mönnum en meth Asum bjoor” (i.e., ale it is called among men, and among the gods beer).

The Exeter Book, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poems, contains the expressions, “a good beer-drinker,” “angry with ale,” “drunken with beer,” in close juxtaposition and apparently without any distinction of meaning. A distinction must, however, have arisen in very early times, for in the collection of Saxon Leechdoms, mentioned above, a direction is to be found that a patient is on no account to drink beer, although he may partake in moderation of ale and wine; and the same work contains the remarkable and apparently impossible statement that while a pint of ale weighs six pennies more than a pint of water, a pint of beer weighs twenty-two pennies less than a pint of water.

The word beer seems gradually to have given place to the word ale, and though the former may have lingered in some parts of the country, and the passage from King Horn already quoted shows that in the thirteenth century it was not quite forgotten—ale became the usual word to express malt liquor. It was English ale that strengthened the arm of English bowmen at Crecy and Poictiers, and on many another well-fought field; and English ale was the “barley-broth” which “decocted” the cold blood of the dwellers in this land of fogs and mist “to such valiant heat” and stubborn endurance in their constant struggles with the valour and chivalry of France.

The old English word “beor,” indeed, had become so weakened and specialised, even as early as the tenth century, that it is to be found in a Vocabulary of that date as an equivalent for idromellum, a word properly signifying an inferior sort of mead, but also denoting the sweet wort, before fermentation had changed it into ale. It is curious to observe that when next the word “beer” came into common use in our language, it was by introduction of our neighbours the Flemings, and was specially applied to malt liquor in which the bitter of the hop was an important ingredient. The word left us in sweetness, it returned in bitterness, and so the whirligig of time brings in its revenges. Beer became the name for hopped ale, but that distinction soon began to be less significant, for as early as 1616 we find Gervase Markham, in his Maison Rustique, recommends the use of a small quantity of hops in ale-brewing. {153}

Taylor, in Drink and Welcome, dwells upon this distinction between ale and beer in the seventeenth century as follows:—“Now to write of Beere I shall not need to wet my pen much with the naming of it, it being a drinke which Antiquitie was an Aleien or a meere stranger to, and as it hath scarcely any name, so hath it no habitation, for the places or houses where it is sold doth still retain the name of an Alehouse. This comparison needs a Sir Reverence to usher it, but being Beere is but an Upstart and a Foreigner or Alien, in respect of Ale, it may serve instead of a better; Nor would it differ from Ale in anything, but onely that an Aspiring Amaritudinous Hop comes crawling lamely in, and makes a Bitter difference betweene them, but if the Hop be so crippled, that he cannot be gotton to make the oddes, the place may poorely bee supply’d with chopp’d Broome (new gathered) whereby Beere hath never attained the sober Title of Ale, for it is proper to say A Stand of Ale, and a Hoggeshead of Beere, which in common sense is but a swinish phrase or appellation.”

That curious ballad entitled Skelton’s Ghost, which was probably the work of a rhymer of the seventeenth century, points to the same distinction. The ghost of Skelton the Laureate is supposed to be addressing some of the jovial characters of the period much in the tone of one who, having lived in the golden age (of liquor), looks down with pity and scorn at a later-day’s degenerate topers. These are the particular lines in point:—

At the present day, in the eastern counties, and indeed over the greater portion of the country, ale means strong, and beer means small malt liquor; in London beer usually means porter (i.e., the small beer of stout); while in the west country beer is the “mighty” liquor, and ale the small. In the trade, however, beer is the comprehensive word for all malt liquors. {154}

Ale was not the only word employed in late Saxon times to signify the “oyle of barly,” for wœt, from the Saxon swatan, was in common use as a synonym, and now, perhaps, finds its representative in the slang phrase, “heavy wet.” The same term lingers in Scotland, and lovers of Burns will remember his line, “It gars the swats gae glibber doun.” In former times wheat and oats were malted, as well as barley, and though, as has been previously stated (p. 105), the law from time to time prohibited this use of wheat, as tending to enhance the price of bread, the practice was stronger than the precept, and continued to prevail down to a comparatively recent date.

Cogan, in The Haven of Health (1586), thus describes the effect of the different malts on the resultant liquor:—“For beere or ale being made of wheat inclineth more to heat, for wheat is hot. If it be made of barley malt, it enclineth more to cold, for barley is cold. And if it be made of barley and otes together it is yet more temperate and of less nourishment.” In the reign of Edward VI. even beans were used in brewing, for the Brewers’ Company, in a petition to the Common Council asking for a revision of the prices of ale and beer, complain that the articles they use in brewing, viz., “wheate, malte, oates, beanes, hoppes . . . . . . at these days are comen unto greate and exceeding pryces.”

It has been shown that for several hundred years the prices and qualities of ale were fixed by law. As a rule, only two kinds were allowed to be brewed for sale, the better and the second, or, as they were called in some places, and notably in London, the double and the single. The prices in Henry III.’s reign for the better kind were fixed at 1d. for two gallons sold within cities, and 1d. for three or four gallons sold in country places. In Edward III.’s reign three sorts of ale might be brewed, the best at 1½d. a gallon, the middling at 1d., and the third at three farthings; and these prices seem to have been in force in the City of London with slight variations down to the time of Henry VIII., when the Brewers upon several occasions stirred themselves to get the prices raised, but met with varying success. In the early part of the reign the retail price of the best ale was still 1½d. the gallon, and of the second, called threehalfpenny ale, 1d. per gallon. Double beer was to be 1d. per gallon, and single ½d. and a half-farthing. The wholesale price for beer was also fixed, and three kinds were allowed, viz., “Dobyll” at 15d. the kilderkin, “Threehalfpenny” at 12d., and “Syngyll” at 10d.

In the twenty-fourth year of Henry VIII. the Brewers, after much agitation, got the prices of beer raised to 2s. the kilderkin for the “doble,” {155} and 1s. for the “syngyll”; but even with that they were not satisfied, and expressed their dissatisfaction in protests to the Common Council, who listened to their complaint, “but after long consideration it was agreed, that whereas the Serjeaunt Gybson hath exhibited and rote a boke of the gaynes of the said bere-brewers,” their case should be remitted to the care of a committee appointed to look into it. In the result no alteration was then sanctioned, but five years afterwards the price was raised to 3s. 4d. the kil. for the best, and 2s. 8d. for the threehalfpenny. The strength of ale usually brewed about this time may be judged from answers given by London brewers when interrogated on the subject. John Sheffield, on being asked (36 Henry VIII.) how many kilderkins of good ale he draws from a quarter of malt, answers, “Little above five.” Other brewers say much the same thing, though Richard Pyckering evades the question by saying that “he commytteth the whole to his wife, and what she draweth from a quarter he knoweth not.” This would point to an ale of very considerable strength. In the thirty-seventh year of Henry VIII., another committee was appointed to consider this all-important question, “on account of the grete derthe and scarcitye at this present of all kinds of grayne;” but nothing resulted from their deliberations. The Brewers, however, seem to have stuck to their text with great pertinacity, and in the fifth year of Edward VI. obtained a decision of a committee of the Common Council, that they could no longer supply the City at the then existing prices. Two kinds of beer only are to be allowed, our old friends, “doble” and “syngyll,” and the strength and quality are defined as follows: “Of every quarter of grayne that any beare-bruer shall brewe of doble beare, he shall drawe fowre barrells and one fyrkyn of goode holsome drynke for mannes bodye,” and double that quantity of single beer. The price of the double beer is to be 4s. 8d. the barrel, and of single beer 2s. 4d., until the price of malt is reduced to 15s. the quarter, and of wheat to 12s., when the old prices are to be revived. Little variations of price occurred until the reign of Elizabeth, who seems, from contemporary accounts, to have been frequently exercised by the behaviour of the London Brewers. In a Royal proclamation of the second year of her reign, she complains that the Brewers have left off brewing any single beer, but brew “a kynde of very strong bere calling the same doble-doble-bere which they do commenly utter and sell at a very greate and excessyve pryce,” and orders the old rules and rates to be observed; and in particular that every Brewer shall once a week brew “as much syngyl as doble beare and more.” Twenty years later the “doble-doble” seems to have been {156} sanctioned in practice if not in name, for the Brewers are ordered to sell two sorts of beer only, the double at 4s. the barrel and “the other sort of beare of the best kynde at 7s. 6d.”

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 limitation and classification of ale and beer according to their strength, was maintained down to quite recent times because of the duties laid upon them, but on the repeal of those duties ales of every strength, kind and description were, and have since been, extensively manufactured. Every want, whim, and fancy of the ale-drinker may now be gratified. There is old Scotch or old Burton for the lover of strong beer, porter for the labouring classes, stout for the weakly, and last, but far from least, that splendid liquid, pale ale, which, when bottled, vies with champagne in its excellence and delicacy of flavour, and beats it altogether out of the field when we take into consideration its sustaining and restorative powers.

A tale is told of a man who asserted that tea was stronger than beer. “A pot of beer,” said he, “will seldom attract more than a couple of men about it, but a pot of tea will draw half-a-dozen or more old women.”

A potent drink, much in vogue with the roystering blades of former times, was that known as “huff-cap.” The name was a cant expression for strong ale, which was so called because it induced people to set their caps in a bold huffing fashion. The term huff-cap was also used to denote a swaggering fellow, as may be gathered from Clifford’s Note on Dryden (1687):—“Prethee tell me true, was not this huff-cap once the Indian Emperour, and at another time did he not call himself Maximine?” Fulwel’s Art of Flattery thus mentions this variety of the juice of barley:—“To quench the scorching heat of our parched throtes, with the best nippitatum in this toun, which is commonly called huff-cap, it will make a man look as though he had seen the devil and quickly move him to call his own father a ———” (naughty name). Harrison, writing on the food and diet of the English in 1587, also {157} mentions huff-cap, and speaks of the mightiness of the ale in which our ancestors indulged; ale, in fact, as an old Proverb has it, “that would make a cat speak.” “Howbeit,” he writes, “though they are so nice in the proportion of their bread, yet in lieu of the same their is such headie ale and beere in moste of them, as for the mightinesse thereof among suche as seeke it oute, is commonly called huffe cap, the mad dog, angel’s food, dragon’s milke, etc. And this is more to be noted, that when one of late fell by God’s prouvidence into a troubled conscience, after he had considered well of his reachlesse life, and dangerous estate; another thinking belike to change his colour and not his mind, carried him straightwaie to the strongest ale, as to the next physician. It is incredible to saie how our malte bugs lug at this liquor, even as pigs should lie in a rowe, lugging at their dame’s teats, till they lie still againe and be not able to wag. Neither did Romulus and Remus sucke their shee woolfe or sheepherd’s wife Lupa with such eger and sharpe devotion as these men hale at hufcap, till they be red as cockes, and little wiser than their combs.” A strong ale, called “Huff,” is still brewed at Winchester, and is kept for the use of the fellows (not the boys) of that ancient institution.

Some idea of the strength of the ale usually drunk in the country districts in Elizabeth’s reign, may be gathered from a passage in a letter from Leicester to Burleigh, written while the Queen was on one of her famous progresses through the country: “There is not one drop of good drink here for her. We were fain to send to London, and Kenilworth, and divers other places where ale was; her own bere was so strong as there was no man able to drink it.”

To quote again from old Harrison on the fondness of his contemporaries for strong ale, speaking of workmen and others attending bride-ales (i.e., marriage feasts) and such like festivities, he says: “If they happen to stumble upon a peece of venison and a cup of wine or verie strong beere or ale (which latter they commonlie provide against their appointed daies) they thinke their cheere so great, and themselves to have fared so well, as the Lord Maior of London, with whom, when their bellies be full, they will not stick to make comparison.”

In the year 1680, during the debate on the Act to restrain the excess and abuse used in Victualling Houses, one member said that he wished “there might be a reformation of Ale, which is now made so strong, that he offered to affirm it upon oath, that it is commonly sold for a Groat a quart. It is as strong as wine, and will burn like Sack.” {158}

The Water Poet thus describes the different qualities of mild and stale beer as known to the topers of the seventeenth century: “The stronger Beere is divided into two parts (viz.), mild and stale; the first may ease a man of a drought, but the latter is like water cast into a Smith’s forge, and breeds more heart-burnings, and as rust eates into Iron, so overstale Beere gnawes aulet holes in the entrales, or else my skill failes, and what I have written of it is to be held as a Jest.”

Nipitatum or nipitato was another slang name for very strong ale. It is mentioned in The Knight of the Burning Pestle:—

Another epithet applied to ale, and denoting great strength, was “humming,” and a reason for the term is shown by the extract from a letter from John Howell to Lord Ciffe (seventeenth century), who, in speaking of metheglin, says “that it keeps a humming in the brain, which made one say that he loved not metheglin because he was used to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive.” The humming in the head would be equally applicable to the effects of ale as of metheglin, though the hive would only apply to the latter. The same idea is sometimes expressed by the term hum-cup, as in the lines from the old Sussex sheep-shearing song, beginning:—

Besides these strong ales and others too numerous to mention, there was, at the beginning of last century, a certain strong beer called Pharaoh, which gave its name to an ale-house at Barley, in Cambridgeshire. The reason of the name is not certainly known, although it was said in the county that it was so called because it would not let the people go. This drink is no longer made in England, but a strong beer of the same name is much appreciated in Belgium. The same liquor is mentioned in the Praise of Yorkshire Ale (1685):

As there have been many strong and mighty ales since the days when—

so there have been an abundance of small poor drinks, which have been from time to time known by various terms of contempt, the titles “whip-belly-vengeance” and “rotgut” being, perhaps, on the whole, the most expressive. Shakspere sums up the humdrum of retired matronly life in the well-known line, “To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.” Beer which had been kept so long that it had turned sour was at one time known as “broken beer,” much as we speak now of broken victuals. Ben Jonson, in his Masque of Gypsies, makes mention of an infant “very carefully carried at his mother’s back, rock’d in a cradle of Welsh cheese like a maggot, and there fed with broken beer, and blown wine of the best daily.”

In olden times small beer discharged that friendly office assigned by later and more fastidious days to soda-water, namely, the cooling of the parched throat after a too earnest devotion to the rites of Bacchus.

wrote one of the Brasenose College poets. Christopher Sly, awakening from his debauch, cries aloud for “a pot of small ale . . . and once again a pot of the smallest ale,” and Prince Hal “remembers the poor creature small beer.”

A nameless author, writing in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1746, describes this function of small beer, and in poetic vein tells how after a “wine,” awaking from a feverish sleep, he sees before him a venerable man,

Even in distant times particular localities became noted for the excellence of their brewers. London early attained, and has maintained until the present day, a great reputation for its ale. Chaucer alludes to the taste of the Cook for a “draught of London ale.” Tyrwhitt says that in 1504 London ale was of such excellence that it fetched 5s. a barrel more than Kentish ale. This can hardly be, as we have already seen that at that period the barrel of London double ale only fetched 4s. Probably Tyrwhitt intended to refer to a tun and not to a barrel. The occasion referred to was the enthronement of William Wareham as Archbishop of Canterbury, when the provision made for washing down the vast stores of eatables was something tremendous. Besides great quantities of wine of many sorts, there were four tuns of London ale, six of Kentish, and twenty of English beer.

The malt liquors of London, and especially London porter and stout, are known from pole to pole, and Burton ales have a no less world-wide reputation. Indeed, the word Burton has in itself come to be synonymous with ale, and the expression “a glass of Burton” has become a household word. {161}