This post replaces an older version, with updated information. Notice “Herkimer” on the wheel of cheese being rolled by the plump bunny?

The artwork is the cover of Charles N. Miller’s (1899) Welsh Rabbit at Hildreth’s, an amusing panegyric on his cheesy subject. I referred to the book numerous times in my series on Welsh Rabbit, which starts here.

What is, or was, Herkimer? A famous cheese centre in America in the second half of the 19th century. It forms a little-known chapter in American culinary and commercial annals.

Herkimer is a county in central New York State, one of a group of counties that comprises the Mohawk Valley.

Every summer since 2015, a woman called Nan Ressue with others holds a New York cheese festival in Little Falls, Herkimer County. Ressue authored excellent notes, with sources listed, on the history of Herkimer cheese, which you may read here (Cheese Capital tab in “About Little Falls, NY”).

The history below relies largely on her account.*

A factory-based system established in the 1860s caused great increase in Herkimer cheese production. It largely ended with WW I, as much milk was diverted from creameries to make condensed milk for Allied forces. But cheese shipments had been declining since the 1880s.

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Iowa started to compete with Herkimer’s output, as did Canadian exports of cheddar. Much was from Ontario, still a cheddar stronghold.**

New York’s cheese exports, formerly strong in Britain, dropped in part due to frozen meat from Argentina and the Antipodes. It was introduced there at the same price as imported Herkimer, and displaced part of the market.

This point is made in a 1904 issue of The American Product Review. It shows that markets can be complex in the sense that competitive alternatives may range across food groups.

A trade that once attained an impressive 30M lbs of cheese per year, that created a busy cheese mart at Little Falls, was virtually at an end by 1920.

But in its heyday Little Falls bustled with cheese commerce, as an 1879 history of Herkimer County further attested.

Is this all in the past? Not quite. There has been a modest revival in the last two generations. The Herkimer Cheese Company, founded in 1949 in Little Falls, was the start.

Since its founding numerous small dairy farms and artisan dairies emerged to again produce fine New York cheese.

A cheddar-type was the main product of the original industry, white or orange-coloured (from anatto). Herkimer cheese was evidently prized for Welsh Rabbit, the melted cheese specialty that British colonists must have brought to America.

Charles Miller’s book appeared just as tolling time for Herkimer cheese was nigh. But culinary and beverage associations long endure.

In 1930 Arnold Shircliffe in The Edgewater Sandwich Book called for Hermiker cheese in numerous recipes, hot and cold. A sandwich on rye features Herkimer mixed with chopped pickles, lettuce, and bacon.

In the same period food writer Virginia Elliott recalled Herkimer’s heyday in her recipe for Welsh Rabbit, which specified “well-cured New York or Old English cheese”.

(Evidently a little was still made to supply these needs, or something similar was fetched).

The Little Falls cheese festival this year is scheduled for October. Little Falls is a rambling, atmospheric old riverside town, sheltered by verdant hills. This YouTube video produced by the City of Little Falls offers a fine visual tour.

I attended a few years ago, and it was excellent. At the time, it was held in July. October will be an even better time as the weather won’t be too hot.

For full details see the Festival website linked above.

Note re image: Sourced from Hathitrust, where Charles Miller’s book is catalogued as linked above. All intellectual property therein belongs solely to the lawful owner, as applicable. Used for educational and research purposes. All feedback welcomed.

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*See also a later history of Herkimer County than I mention in the text, from 1893, for a detailed history of cheese-dairying in the County.

**An 1890s Britannica account of American dairying suggests factory cheese-making in Ontario was implanted by Herkimer County dairymen, and prior to that cheese was imported from Herkimer County. This is telling.

Mega Merger Births Champlain Brewery

Earlier, I discussed the 1909 merger of breweries in Quebec Province. All then operating joined to form the resultant, Montreal-based National Breweries Ltd. (NBL) except for famed Molson Brewery of Montreal, and the small Silver Springs Brewery in Sherbrooke, Eastern Townships, Quebec.

Proteau & Carignan, a small Quebec City brewery, was part of the merger. In 1911 a former employee of the firm, Alfred-Pierre Robitaille, decided to establish his own brewery. Further details are set out in a webpage of the Quebec Historical Society. It appears he was an accountant, not a brewer, who saw an opportunity in commercial brewing.

His Champlain Brewery was named for the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain. It remained independent until 1948, when NBL acquired its shares.

A larger Social Context

37 years of business independence seems pretty good, comparable to a modern craft brewery bought out after a generation. But in Quebec such events can be significant beyond a purely commercial context.

It relates to language and culture. Brewing in the Province had been anglophone-dominated since the British Conquest of Quebec in the late 1700s. Spirited French-Canadian firms did make attempts to crack the market, of which Proteau & Carignan was an example, founded in 1891 in Quebec City.

The Frontenac Brewery, established in 1912 in Montreal, was a second example. Champlain Brewery, a third. Yet a fourth, Imperial Breweries Ltd, was set up as a francophone-managed cooperative in 1907, in Montreal again.

All ended being absorbed by NBL. NBL’s senior executives were mainly Quebec anglophones, men who formerly had managed the separate Dawes, Dow, Ekers, and Boswell breweries, which formed the main components of the 1909 merger.

NBL’s in-house magazine of the 1940s was, however, bilingual. And two languages were used on the shop floor and by the all-crucial sales force. But NBL was not owned, or for the most part managed, by French-speakers.

Yet, francophones formed, and still do, about 80% of Quebec’s population. Through to the mid-1900s French-speaking business in many sectors could not get a foothold, a historical legacy connected to the British takeover, although not completely. Other factors, germane to the nature of French-Canadian society, also played a role, especially the all-important Catholicity of French Quebec, then.

Frontenac Brewery was taken over by NBL in 1925, 13 years after starting business. Imperial Breweries was bought out by NBL after only two years of operation.

A full explanation of why francophone beer firms could not keep pace is beyond my scope here. It would make an interesting study in a branch of the social sciences or economics, certainly. Francophone firms had the advantage of appealing to national and patriotic sentiment, in a mostly French-speaking province. Imperial Breweries tried this tack, as I discussed earlier, to little manifest effect.

By my study, Frontenac Brewery was more nuanced in this regard, possibly not wanting to offend Montreal’s large English-speaking beer market.

Still, the sub-text could not be ignored: its francophones in charge made a product popular among the general population, and francophone beer drinkers should have embraced its beers by that fact alone.

Yet, not enough did, not at any rate to keep the business independent past a dozen years.

La Madelon Beer and a Famous Song

Champlain Brewery also tried an appeal to nationalist feeling. In 1935 it launched a new brand, La Madelon, a French name clearly themed, as will appear, to la francophonie.

Madelon beer was an ale, hence British-oriented in palate, not a “continental” lager such as Frontenac Brewery made. The charming Madelon label stated “ale” next to “bière”, per this source: Thomas Fisher Rare Book Collection on Flickr:

At the time ale had the great bulk of beer sales in Quebec irrespective of the consumer’s mother tongue, so making Madelon an ale was a prudent move. The brand thus formed a hybrid, a British-descended taste with a French name and cultural associations.

In 1936 Champlain, listing Madelon among its range, made a frank appeal for French-Canadian support, via an ad in newspaper Le Soleil (June 30, 1936, via Quebec Government Archives):

In English:

“French-Canadians: If we helped each other in all aspects of life, so much stronger would we be!”.

Madelon was named for a patriotic French song of World War I also known as “Quand Madelon”. The stirring tune remained in popular memory, overseas as well, and even proved a rallying point in the next (Second) World War.

The song was popular in Britain too, with many recordings made in English. A recent performance of the song is affecting, linked in an informative blogpost at The University of Melbourne.

Whether heard in French or English, Madelon of the tune was a young waitress Allied soldiers encountered at her father’s tavern in French Flanders. She reminded them of home, of the values they were fighting for.

An Emotive Brand

Champlain’s choice of the Madelon name and image was strategic. The allusion was French-cultural but appealed to English-speakers since Britain, Canada and the U.S. all participated with France in winning the last war. (Hence, too, the Union Jack in some labels should not have put off nationalist-oriented Quebeckers, as it otherwise might have).

Further, the Madelon figure probably elicited among some nostalgia for a  pastoral, traditional Quebec now quickly yielding to the forces of urbanisation and consumerism.

In sum, the right notes were struck, yet the brand by available evidence had a short life.

The Mid-1930s Beer Range 

The beers listed in the 1936 ad are, first, the Special. It was an India Pale Ale. This is made clear in later NBL company reports, as I discussed here.

A label at Thomas Fischer is further confirmation that Special was an India Pale Ale. The third beer, Champlain XXX, likely was a medium-gravity porter. The “Real Stout”, described as a “Porter anglais“, was probably a stronger porter, or stout if you will.

The Madelon was perhaps a lower gravity filtered Special. In the early 1920s Champlain marketed two I.P.A.s, one subtitled Export as a press ad shows:

The Export Ale was probably filtered and “sparkling”, like the better-known Molson Export Ale introduced about 1903. Likely the Special was stronger, more hopped, and perhaps bottle-conditioned – old school, as viewed then.

La Madelon of the next decade may have been the 1920s Champlain Export Ale, renamed and relaunched.

Endgame for Champlain and Similar Breweries

NBL scooped up the francophone-owned Champlain Brewery in 1948, but in 1952 NBL itself was gobbled up, by Toronto-based Canadian Breweries Ltd., controlled by the industrialist and financier E. P. Taylor.

Business, in the end, is impersonal in its objects – it has an internal logic irrespective of nationalist and other considerations, at least when a free market is in place.

True, Quebec francophone breweries had an advantage of cultural identification with the majority population. But whatever business flowed from that wasn’t enough, and/or other factors were at play, which made the breweries susceptible to takeover by – at the time – a big “English” brewery, viz. NBL. This type of situation caused distress in parts of Quebec society, giving rise to the Quiet Revolution, as it was termed, of the late 1950s and 1960s and later enactment of French language laws among much else.

Canadian Breweries Ltd. and Anti-Trust

The buy-out of Champlain Brewery probably contributed to an anti-trust investigation of Canadian Breweries Ltd., which had subsequently bought out NBL.

A March 1951 story in Le Soleil stated a union delegate requested the support of his Trades Federation to ask the Federal government to investigate a potential monopoly in brewing.

I do not rule out that cultural factors were at play here, beyond the usual commercial and economic issues raised by such acquisitions. The Champlain case, then the buy-out of NBL, were similar in economic impact to countless other mergers in the Canadian and international brewing business: rationalization of plants, trimming of personnel, and reduction of brands.* But in the Quebec context this weakened the French-Canadian economic base, by removing a player owned and managed by francophones.

Conspiracy charges were eventually laid against Canadian Breweries Ltd., for violating the Canadian Combines Investigation Act. The company was acquitted however, mainly because it was found a normal competitive market did not exist in the Canadian brewing industry, due to its significant regulation by the provinces in which they did business.**

Note re images: the source of each above is linked in the text. All intellectual property therein belongs solely to the lawful owner, as applicable. Used for educational and research purposes. All feedback welcomed.

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*Canadian Breweries closed the Champlain plant in 1956, according to the Quebec Historical Society account linked above in the past.

*Text of this post was lightly edited for concision and clarity, February 25, 26, 2024.

Beer Cuisine; Mixed ale

The Cliff, or Cliff Hotel, was an upscale hotel in North Scituate, Mass., built in 1896. Surviving postcards and other ephemera depict a handsome, rambling white clapboard. This image showing surrounding aspect is via Mass. Digital Commonwealth:

The Cliff was a lodestone of the area for much of its existence, but all ended in a fierce 1974 conflagration, and the hotel was not re-built.

In 1900 the trade journal Hotel Monthly printed a menu prepared  at The Cliff for a “company of actors”. Beer figured not a little – it is mentioned three times – yet beer dinners as such were unusual in American gastronomy then.

Beer dinners – where beer is paired with courses or used in recipes – have a modest place in today’s culinary scene, helped by the craft beer revival. But meals oriented to beer still existed in earlier times. I described a number of them in these pages. They included a German-American dinner held in 1898 at the Pabst Estate near Milwaukee.

The Cliff’s menu was a set affair, probably a luncheon or post-performance supper. No detail is given on the play, the actors likely performed in a local theatre, or maybe the hotel.

Scituate, of which North Scituate is an extension, is old seaside New England. Settlers from Kent, England arrived in the early 1600s. Scituate today is a suburban idyll which ramps up in the summer for the season.

The town’s website offers good historical background on the area.

The menu of 1900 started with a pre-prandial, the Manhattan, well established in the Northeast by then. Some Europeans worried – still do – that strong liquor before the meal ruins the palate.

Americans were insouciant on such matters, and some still are.

The next drink was “mixed ale”, which had special significance from the 1880s until about 1910. This was a mixture of beer leavings or stale beer, hence none too refined.

Saloons that dealt in mixed ale might add camphor, grain alcohol, or further suspect ingredients. At its worst reports suggest the drink could induce a clattering in the drinker. Criminality was also connected to its bibbing.

Mixed ale in figurative terms denoted therefore low living or something disreputable. A fighter past his prime might be termed a mixed ale pugilist.

The theatre can have its raffish side, so mixed ale in the context of the stage is not surprising. At least one burlesque bore the title Mixed Ale. Billy Golden, a vaudevillian of the day, sang a song called Mixed Ale, a strange, yodelling tune.

The Sun in New York, in 1894, did a social investigation into mixed ale, which you may read here, noting:

No drink ever invented by man for the delight or destruction of his fellow man so characterizes its imbiber as mixed ale. A man may drink whiskey sours and be either a Southern Colonel or a backwoods sport; he may drink gin fizzes and be a gay and giddy clubman or simply a sufferer from weak kidneys; he may stick to plain seltzer and not be a temperance advocate necessarily, but perhaps a penitent of last night’s revels … and simply because a man opens champagne, that does not stamp him as a millionaire; he may be a wine agent. As for beer, everybody drinks beer who drinks anything; but when you see an individual swagger up to the bar, fix the barkeeper with a menacing eye and growl, “Gimme a cooler o’ mixed ale”, you can set him down as a good person to keep away from.

The writer went on to explain, in a way the beer historian understands well, that mixed ale as originally  made was a worthy drink, simply new ale and old ale combined. But in time it became something different, a cheap simulacrum.

Mixed ale at a high-end hotel likely was not in degraded form. Possibly it was lager and ale mixed, or one form of the American musty ale. Alternatively, it was probably a respected commercial brand, so a proprietary mix; at least one was apparently marketed in the period.*

Mixed ale on the players’ menu was likely an in-joke, pleasing to the actors served. Just as 1960s hippies neutralized the charge of “freak” by taking it as honorific (“Gonna wave my freak flag high” sang Jimi Hendrix), these diners would not have minded being typed a mixed ale crowd.

The respectable nature of the meal is emphasized certainly by the second beer served, King’s Bohemian lager, from a Massachusetts brewery. Nothing was more chic in the beer world then than pale, light Bohemian lager.

At the auction site Worthpoint, a pre-Prohibition bottle of King’s may be seen. In that period the brewery was called Continental Brewing Co. The same plant marketed King’s malt tonic during Prohibition. King’s Bohemian Beer returned to the market after Repeal in 1933, but did not last.

If two servings of beer weren’t enough for the players, a third was available, signalled by the laconic “More Beer”. Nothing sums up the beer ethos better.

As to food, there was broiled lobster, much associated with beer in the Gilded Era. And tomato salad – tomato was just starting its culinary career as a fresh vegetable. Earlier it was always cooked to neutralize any suspect properties.

Three sandwiches were offered, of plain ingredients but surely toothsome in the all-organic, local market days. To end, “cheesed crackers”, perhaps like cheese sticks, and fruit.

Suitable provender for a beer-fuelled affair – not too heavy, which made room for the semi-food, beer. The Cliff’s steward, L.F. Brundage was a seasoned “hotel man”, in the cant of the day, see p. 14 in the same volume of Hotel Monthly. He knew his trade, which meant knowing your customers.

Mixed ale, by his plan clearly, served as set dressing in the dining room that night, a gesture the actors had to appreciate. After all, a good dining room ends as playhouse itself.

Actors are demonstrative, either by nature or profession. I’m sure they toasted old Brundage with verve, for a grateful respite from a long tour on the provincial boards.

Note re images: source of images above is identified and linked in the text. All intellectual property therein belongs solely to the lawful owner, as applicable. Used for educational and research purposes. All feedback welcomed.

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*See e.g. Alfred Rickerby’s registration for this and other beer mixtures. He was a bottler in Brooklyn, NY.

Dear Readers:

Did you know Guinness Brewery had a brilliant, literary-flavoured ad series in the 1950s? It was a bit of an odd affair, a joint undertaking with Callard & Bowser, a Guinness-owned subsidiary that made butterscotch.

The headline read neatly, “Confectionately Yours”.

Alamy lists an example for sale, here.

Sweets-maker Callard and Bowser was an old established London firm. The historical website Let’s Look Again offers a good capsule history of the firm. Guinness acquired the business in 1951, finally divesting its ownership in 1982.

One can be pardoned for thinking Guinness was ahead of its time with the series, given the current beery trend for “pastry stout”. For those not familiar with this rich-tasting riff on beer, drinks writer Kate Bernot gives the lowdown, in this article.

In a dazzling Lewis Carrol pastiche Guinness did take pains to distinguish sweets and beer, but likened them in a manner, too.

Guinness did not think evidently of actually combining them, in a bottle or keg I mean. Had it done so and named the brew Confectionately Yours, it would be the grandparent of all pastry stout today.

Well, they weren’t thinking pastry stout in decorous Dublin in the 1950s. Today, Guinness does make a milk stout, a style that employs lactose sugar, so the ship has turned, to a degree.

One thing is clear: some ads of the 1950s were highly literate and creative, something less in evidence today.

Literarily yours,

Beer et Seq, Toronto

Note re image: image source is identified and linked in text. All intellectual property therein belongs soley to the lawful owner. Used for educational and research purposes. All efedback welcomed.

Beamish & Crawford were famous porter brewers in Cork, Ireland. The brewery closed in 2009. Beamish stout is now brewed at Heineken’s ex-Murphy plant in the same city.

In 1950 Beamish made a determined push in the American market. Read the background in an advertorial-style piece that year in the Irish-American Advocate, a long-running New York weekly that closed decades ago.

In the article, Beamish reviewed the current brewing range:

At present four types of Stout are brewed:

A Porter for consumption “on draught” in Ireland.

“XXX” Stout for consumption “on draught” and in bottle for Ireland and in bottle for the United King­dom.

“Knuckleduster”—a stronger stout for consumption in bottle for the United Kingdom.

“Foreign Extra”—a still stronger and well matured stout, in bottle, for export to all countries abroad, in­cluding, of course, the U.S.A.

And so, with progress and expan­sion, the aim of those who guide the destinies of the Company to-day, Cork men and Irishmen, will have reason to continue to feel justly proud of this Brewery they have known for genera­tions …

Of these beers, it appears only the Foreign Extra was sent to New York. A fine image of the modern-sounding Knuckleduster label appears at the BestBeerStuff t-shirt and apparel site.

This four-cornered brewing strategy, with gravities rising from four to eight per cent ABV (approximately), was followed by Guinness too, Beamish’s “bigger brother”. See e.g. Ron Pattinson’s tabular data here, and Jess Kidden’s survey of Guinness’ c.1950 marketing. Kidden included the following:

As beer historians have long known, in the 1940s* Guinness bought a brewery in Long Island, New York, the E. & J. Burke Brewery. Purpose: to brew Guinness domestically. Burke had been the venerable distributor for Guinness in America, starting in the 1800s.

The Stateside Burkes finally went into brewing for themselves, shortly after Prohibition. A Burke Ale in 1934, and Burke Stout in 1938 (see Kidden timeline) were marketed in New York. A 1934 ad for Burke ale touts its “winter ale” qualities, suggesting a robust beer of the stock type.

A 1938 ad in the Advocate depicts a tall bottle of Burke stout with an “old sod”-theme label. It promises a traditional, “dry” flavour.

By 1949 Guinness had purchased the Burke brewery, and was brewing Guinness extra stout there, ceasing finally to brew Burke’s stout. Why would Beamish choose this time to expand in the U.S. market, when Guinness was making a determined effort to brew stout locally?

Inferentially, because Beamish could market itself as truly Irish, given its beer was still made in Ireland. This seems confirmed by its advertising. On the same page as the advertorial, a Beamish box ad states “Imported” in prominent type. Other wording in the ad places emphasis on the Irish origins.

The message to the intended market: Guinness in America was no longer quite so Irish as in the past. For a time after Guinness started brewing in Long Island it still imported Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, but this was stopped to avoid confusion in the market. See David Hughes’ discussion in his “A Bottle of Guinness Please”.

In 1952 Guinness was sued for anti-trust violation by Dublin Distributors, Inc. (DDI), a local business. DDI for years had been sub-distributor for Burke, obtaining its supply from Burke, later Guinness-Burke, warehouses, and wholesaling beer through the New York area.

But DDI had also agreed to represent Beamish, for its push in New York. DDI argued some customers wanted an all-Irish stout. Guinness, trying to protect its domestic business, understandably didn’t want that competition, and terminated DDI’s distribution of Long Island stout.

It appears the litigation was resolved on the basis DDI could distribute Irish-brewed Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, the type historically imported by Burke, but not locally-brewed Guinness Extra Stout. Some years ago, when an earlier version of this post appeared, I believe I saw a news item confirming this but cannot locate it now.

If this deal did result, with a dual Guinness product again in the market, Guinness’ market profile became muddied once more. For his part, David Hughes attribute the failure of Guinness in Long Island to the beer made there: too strong and sweet.

He notes Guinness did make adjustments to the brewing in the early 1950s, but this seems not to have helped.

By the mid-1950s Beamish and Guinness are duking it out for a small, mostly ethnic market in the U.S. In that period an interesting news item in the Advocate listed a series of Irish products being promoted by the Irish Export Board in New York.

Beamish and Guinness stouts were featured, plus food and other items. A marmalade maker, Lamb’s, featured two sorts, one of coarse-cut peel aged seven months, to lend a “winey” flavour. (Sounds good).

By the early 1960s Guinness has bought out DDI. But this was years after closing the Long Island brewery. Would Guinness have succeeded with U.S.-made stout if Beamish had not made a determined pitch for the American market, or if DDI had not launched its lawsuit? Or was the product just wrong, as David Hughes argued?

Guinness in recent years has re-established a brewery in America, near Baltimore.** It produces lager but not the classic Guinness stouts.*** The Long Island experience was probably telling in this regard, although I am not so sure it would be a mistake to brew Guinness in America again.

Note re images: source of images above is identified and linked in the text. All intellectual property therein belongs solely to the lawful owner, as applicable. Used for educational and research purposes. All feedback welcomed.

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*Hughes says 1943.

**Note added in April 2023: earlier this month Guinness announced the production brewery near Baltimore will close. It appears the bar and small experimental brewery there, called Open Gate, will continue, and a new Open Gate will still open later this year, in Chicago.

***It had brewed a draft milk stout at Baltimore Open Gate, and other experimental types.

The Spirit of ’91

Virginia-based Alistair Reece writes on beer, home brewing, and pubs, including at the Fuggled site and on Twitter. He invited comments the other day on the origin of the term “robust porter”.

The term has been used since the 1990s on beer labels. An early commercial example is the excellent, flavourful Smuttynose Robust Porter.

The term once appeared in the style guidelines of the BJCP, or Beer Judging Certification Program. (The history of the BJCP is of great interest, which I may revisit).

The BJCP does not currently use the term, other than as a phrase to describe some beer qualities.

Despite this some beer labels or websites still tout a robust porter. In Ontario offhand I can think of Beau, Halo, Henderson, and Amsterdam, but there are numerous others.

In the 2008 BJCP the following was noted of the “style”:

Stronger, hoppier and/or roastier version of porter designed as either a historical throwback or an American interpretation of the style. Traditional versions will have a more subtle hop character (often English), while modern versions may be considerably more aggressive. Both types are equally valid.

This is fairly vague, and from a historical standpoint cannot be justified, hence the abandonment of the term by BJCP. Still, “robust porter” has an acquired resonance, and is not likely to disappear soon.

The answer I gave to Alistair was one I found in Terry Foster’s 1992 book Porter. London-born and American-based, Foster has written a few books on beer.

He has advanced academic qualifications and is well-known in the American brewing establishment. See his bio at the site Brewers’ Publications.

An excerpt of the book reads:

The American Homebrewers Association, in its specifications for entries in the 1991 National Homebrew Competition, deems it necessary to define two types of porter. The first is “Robust Porter”, with the accent on black malt flavor and no roast barley character; the second is “Brown Porter”, with no roast barley or strong burnt malt character. Personally, I would prefer to think of porter as one beer with a whole continuum of roasted malt flavours.

One can see that Foster understood the deficiencies of this two-fold definition, but he was simply explaining its origins.

In the U.K. where they originated, porter and stout were originally brewed with all-barley malt.* The dark colour came from brown, blackish, and/or amber malts. Later, roasted (unmalted) barley might be used to impart the colour, and malt adjuncts or sugars added to the mash.

In my view, the people who drew the robust porter definition were getting at the fact that porter originally was all-malt and relied on dark malts for the distinctive palate.

Whereas, modern Guinness uses a high proportion of unmalted grains, including roasted barley, and has a correspondingly different palate. Guinness had considerable influence on craft thinking in the last 30-40 years, via in part Michael Jackson.

It is reasonable that this 1991 competition inspired the now-abandoned BJCP usage and still-current commercial usages.

I’ve pointed to Foster’s book for the explanation, and so far no one has offered a better one, to my knowledge.

There is always a tension between historical, and contemporary commercial, realties. They meet somewhere in the middle.

“Brown porter”, in contrast to the cool sound of robust porter, is rather anodyne and has enjoyed less popularity, although one does see it occasionally on a beer label or bar listing. It was getting at the (undoubted) fact that the earliest porters were brewed from all-brown malt, and hence lacked a strong burnt taste from highly roasted or black malt.

Some modern robust porters use both roasted barley and black or other dark malts, some are higher-alcohol, some are flavoured, and so on. Commercial life takes a course of its own, as it should.

Attendees of the 1991 competition – it was held in Manchester, New Hampshire – may have a document in their basement in which that first definition appeared. It might offer more insight on how the term emerged.

And god bless the domestic mixers of magic malt who present their brews for the delectation of all concerned. Sans them there would be no craft beer industry today, or none to speak of.

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*Unless made at home where standards laws did not apply, but porter was pre-eminently an industrial phenomenon.

The history of beer and the history of brewing technology are separate subjects, while clearly interrelated. In Part I we discussed that until at least the 1930s some newly-built breweries, both top- and bottom-fermenting, employed a double system of cooling the boiled wort.

(Wort is the sugar-rich extract of a barley-based mash. It is boiled with the aromatic and resinous hop, and then fermented with yeast to produce beer. The starch of the malted barleycorn must first be converted to fermentable sugar to permit production of alcohol, unlike the case, say, for wine fermentation. The sugar is ready-made in the grape envelope).

See the Comments where a brewing specialist usefully pointed out that a shallow surface cooler, apart from partially cooling wort, separates well the trub (or sludge) in wort. This is various lipids, proteins, hop debris, and other coagulants whose removal produces a clear wort, generally favoured for fermentation.

The question of sludge separation, the related cold and hot break removals, the reasons therefore and how it was and is done, is far from simple. This is why we have brewing schools and brewing technologies.

Here, I simply want to explain what the 1930s-era Malayan Breweries Ltd. in Singapore and Marine Brewery in Brussels had in mind, as well as older breweries using similar methods, when using the open cooler + heat exchanger.

A representative of the Singapore brewery told a reporter that open cooling, which used purified air in that case, had a beneficial impact on the beer.

Exactly the same thing was stated in 1930 by the great brewing engineer Dr. Leopold Nathan. Nathan was the Swiss-based designer of the cylindro-conical fermenter. Today this equipment is used all over the world in breweries of all scales.

He wrote that year in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing that surface coolers, used in the right conditions, produced an especially fine palate for lager. He explained this meant “volatile” substances in the wort detrimental to flavour, that resulted in an “onion” taste, were removed by the atmosphere.

See especially p. 539, bottom-left corner.

The beneficial effect was greatly assisted by cold, dry, snowy weather as the always-present risk of infection was minimized. He felt lager would not succeed in the U.K. using the traditional open cooler, as its climate was often foggy and humid. The volatiles would condense back into the wort due to these conditions.

His fermentation system had an enclosed tank that received and cooled hot wort over aluminium plates prior to fermentation in what is now called the “conical”. At the time, even for lager brewing his system, some 40 years in the making and now viewed as revolutionary, was just coming into use internationally.

Further, his system had a way to vent fermenting beer of these volatiles, by a scrubbing action of carbon dioxide – I discussed this in earlier writing.

While similar surface coolers were used in the U.K. and in 1870s Australia as noted, the problem of these volatiles was not quite the same. The infection risk remained, but the other was much less important.

The reason is the “onion” taste, a perceived defect in pale Continental beer discussed since the late 1800s, resulted mainly from dimethyl sulphide. DMS as it is known arises from use of very pale malts suitable for lager. His article noted that different materials were used in U.K. brewing, which implied that the problem was not acute there.

The malts used for ale and porter were kilned darker than for lager malt, with the result the volatiles of concern were produced in much lower concentrations. The onion taste did not appear.

Still, the infection risk remained for any form of beer produced, hence Dr. Nathan’s proprietary system that avoided the risks in question.

Traditionally, as Dr. Nathan alluded, long aging in large casks or tanks was employed to allow the objectionable volatiles to escape. Sometimes success was partial though. The use of krausen or newly-fermented beer to carbonate the old also potentially countered the beneficial effect of long aging.

Nathan’s system produced “clean” lager in much less time, with less risk of infection, than the old pan cooler-based and lengthy aging systems.

Even though Nathan fermentation was still quite new, period literature shows lager breweries had other alternatives to the double cooling system noted. These included deep hot wort receivers and various forms of filtration both before and after chilling in the heat exchanger, which itself was undergoing improvement notably by being enclosed.

While 1930s breweries had different options to chill and clear the wort, quality considerations for many still mandated use of the open cooler + heat exchanger (or refrigerator) system.

From Sydney to Singapore

I have maybe two dozen posts on Australian brewing and beer culture in different periods. A subset dealt with beer and the Forces including the Brisbane Beer Riot.

In regard to Toohey’s of Sydney, now owned by Lion Group (a Kirin affiliate), I discussed its ale brewing just ahead of WW I and the looming lager revolution.

I uncovered a series of early (1880) taste notes on Australian ales, three Toohey’s beers figuring among the group. Read the assessments, which are mostly complimentary, here.

Let’s go back to an earlier period, 1874. This is when the Toohey brothers were working from their first, Darling Harbour brewery, before it relocated to larger premises.

Their process was described in a Sydney Morning Herald piece on March 4, 1874, part of a series on Sydney breweries.

The account is very detailed in some respects, particularly for steam powering, other technology, and capacities. The malt was, in this early period, all English, imported in bulk in large metal containers.

I suspect metal was used, as against jute sacks or other storage that allowed ingress of air, to minimize the impact of humidity on the malt.

There is no reference to hops in the article, which seems odd; perhaps the writer felt the subject was covered in his treatment of Tooth’s or other breweries in the city. I will try to find these.

Note the Burton Unions fermentation system, receiving the beer from 80-barrel fermentation vats (two for ale, one porter). Beer was then racked into different size barrels for trade or bottled, with cases resting in cellar until conditioned to result in a “creamy” state.

(Darling Harbour. c. 1900. Source: Wikipedia).

Something that caught my eye was a constant feature of many breweries, in Europe as well, until the mid-1900s. And that is, cooling the wort by using the traditional, open-pan cooler as well as the newer heat exchange apparatus.

Ultimately most breweries around the world dispensed with the open cooling stage, due to the risk of infection. Nonetheless use of open coolers, or coolships to many in craft brewing, has returned. This is partly due to their survival in a corner of Belgian artisanal brewing.

Whether or not the worts are left to culture spontaneously, it is thought exposure to air in cooling gives some indefinable quality to the beer, which may well be right.

Is this the reason Toohey’s used a combination of old and newer systems? Or would it have used all heat exchanging had it been able to technically?

The article suggests the latter in my view, when it mentions the refrigerators could not be made larger due to lagging pressure in the tubes.

It was probably a mid-1800s Baudelot system, see a filmed illustration in this Instagram clip. Later, heat exchangers were made more efficient, with shell and tube and other variations that minimized, as well, undue exposure to air.

Still, as late as the 1930s, we find open cooling combined with heat exchanging being installed in new breweries.

I mentioned one example on Twitter in the late 1930s after reading a period description of Brussels brewing posted by the Brussels-based beer writer Eoghan Walsh. It concerned the Marine (or Navy) Brewery.

Another example, also 1930s, was Malayan Breweries Ltd.’s new brewery in Singapore, built in 1932. I discuss the brewery at length in my new article, “An Outline on Beer and Brewing in British Malaya: 1827-1957. Part I“, in Brewery History just published.

Although every modern convenience was available to the planners – Heineken played a large role – they elected this combination of cooling the wort. We can doubt the retention of an open cooling stage was due to technical limitations.

I quote a news report that it was felt “air cooling had a subtle effect on the quality of the beer”. The Brussels brewery, also designed in the latest fashion, must have come to the same conclusion.

Whether it was that extra bit of aeration, or some other factor, must be left to brewing technologists to ponder. But from 1874 Sydney to late colonial Singapore, a straight line can be drawn.

There is good reason to think the beer benefited as a result. In the case of Toohey’s, it was perhaps a chance effect more than anything else. In the case of Malayan Breweries, it looks to have been a conscious choice.

Part II follows.

Note re images: source of image above is identified and linked in the text. All intellectual property therein belongs solely to the lawful owner, as applicable. Used for educational and research purposes. All feedback welcomed.

A bit late to the game but we’ve been baking bread the last couple of months, a half-dozen times anyway.

One recipe was from the LCBO magazine, the other from the New York Times, both no-knead. These and similar ones are easy to find. We are not opposed to kneading in any way, but lack any real skill in the process.

Our loaves came out pretty well. The results reminded me of a solid country loaf, or some sourdough. We used a mixture of white and brown flour, just the usual types in the supermarket. Robin Hood was one brand.

I found the bread got better with a few days in the hamper. It dried out a bit which made it lighter. Toasting it worked well, too.

I liked making our own partly because I could reduce the salt content. I find it too high in most commercial breads, even – maybe especially – artisan types.

We did do one kneaded bread, a challah loaf, which came out pretty well despite rudimentary skill at kneading. The braiding came out, well, serviceable, but practise is needed there, too.

While the proving overnight took time and preparation, once you got the hang of it the routine was quite pleasant, or not unpleasant.

With a few more tries I think we could get better at it, in sum.

Reaching a few years before the Internet age, well, 1885, a vibrant explanation of preparing dough was offered by Emma Ewing in The Chautauquan, see second column, p. 85.

She placed fermentative power first in importance for dough to reach its proper condition. She didn’t state not to knead, but seemed to imply it’s not necessary, while advising to stretch and pull dough if possible.

I wonder if bakers’ yeasts had greater vitality at the time compared to our dried commercial yeasts of today. In any case, albeit after the fact, I took comfort that a Gilded Age authority felt kneading was not essential.

There is, anyway, almost a literary merit to her explanation. Clearly she viewed dough as a kind of living thing to be held in high respect. Punch it with your fist and it comes right back at you, she said (more elegantly than my paraphrase).

Detaila are available on Genesee’s pre-Prohibition Liebotschaner beer – the brewery performed a service to historians by tweeting them in 2018. See here.

As stated in the label the data derived from a Professor Lattimore’s study. He had been engaged in 1884 by a number of Rochester breweries to analyze their beers to parry the suggestion that improper additives were used.

A newspaper report that year in Geneva, New York set out the same information as set forth on the label, as well as data on three other breweries’ beers, as I discussed earlier.

What Genesee’s label adds is that its data applied to Liebotschaner, not another lager brewed by Genesee. The news accounts of the assays mention only lager, no brand names.

This is an extract from the Geneva story:

Genesee, and the others, used all-malt, no surprise given the early date and claimed inspiration of a reputed beer of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Genesee’s alcohol was over 5% ABV (volume, not weight as shown in the study). I suspect this was higher than Liebotschaner Brewery’s Lager-Bier sold domestically, but possibly similar to the Export version likely shipped overseas.

A Libotschan brewing, sent to the 1889 Paris Exposition, rated at what in volume terms is just over 4% abv. The table appears in other words to state alcohol by weight, although some resultant values seem anomalous.

The Pilsen beer in the table would translate to 4.2% abv, which seems about right if it was Urquell’s or anyone’s in fact. However, if the table shows values by volume, the Libotschan sample seems unusually weak, not necessarily for local sale but for export to America.

Sending Liebotschaner to exhibit among reputed brands attests to contemporary, international favour for the beer, albeit it never enjoyed the renown of Pilsen’s or Budweis’ beers.

In the 1884 Genesee analysis, look at the final gravity. 1015 FG, making for a beer with good body. 1015 or that neighborhood was typical then for many central European lagers, as I discussed earlier for assays performed on imports in America.

Many pils-type beers of craft brewing one encounters day-in, day-out could use more extract post-fermentation. The old school knew its knitting.

There is not too much about hops in the Genesee label, but other indices can help here. Genesee’s Liebotschaner was probably well-hopped, with a possible question mark for Anheuser-Busch’s version in 1889, described as “delicate”.

In 1892, an advertisement in New Haven, Connecticut touted Genesee Liebotschaner as made from “German hops” and “Canada malt”. The hops could have been Czech Saaz, given German culture permeated Libotschan at the time. Canadian malt, likely from the Bay of Quinte in Ontario, was considered a choice product of the time.

A similar 1894 ad shows a line drawing of Genesee Liebotschaner.

By the time Louis Wehle is an employed brewer at Genesee in the second decade of the 20th century, did the brewery use rice adjunct, or corn for its Liebotschaner? We know it used rice in 1935, under Louis’ stewardship as owner.

Louis in 1938 then reverts to all-malt – possibly what he brewed himself at Genesee before Prohibition. The all-malt initiative did not succeed though. By late 1939 Genesee goes back to adjunct, which it has retained ever since, apart special brewings at its Rochester Brew House.

Genesee, in the 2018 Twitter thread, stated it brewed an all-malt pilsener in the Brew House that probably resembled the 1884 beer, for its 140th anniversary. I would like to have have tasted that.

Was there anything else the 1884 Rochester beer featured that was distinctive of the Libotschan original? Maybe yeast type, maybe something else, short of reviewing a brewing record we cannot know.

Mashing regime, boiling, hop schedule, fermentation, water: any one or more might have been distinctive of Libotschan brewing, at the time, and adopted in America, at least by some brewers.

Conclusions

Even factoring what we don’t know, we have seen the arc in this series of a peculiarly American style of beer, yet one inspired by a European original, with both unjustly neglected (until now) by brewing studies.

Liebotschaner in America seems to have been a pale quencher, setting aside one dark version, a bock, and a cream ale, albeit all bottom-fermenting.

Further historical investigation, especially in Europe, may uncover the Libotschan “secret” that Genesee and other American breweries sought to emulate.

ln our world today, when many brewers are avid to recreate the styles of the past, Liebotschaner beer, both European parent and American progeny, deserve a respectful attention.