Today’s History Lesson: Porter
Martyn Cornell’s latest post on his blog, The Zythophile, deals with the history of porter. He dismisses another bit of beer folklore–namely, that the style was invented in 1730 by a brewer by the name of Harwood–and turns instead to Volume III of Dr Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1830). Here’s an excerpt:
About the beginning of the eighteenth century a malt liquor called entire butt was much in use; and afterwards a variety called brown stout: these were heavy, strong drinks; and about the middle of the eighteenth century they began to give place to a liquor the brewing of which was then much improved, and which happened to be, as Malone informs us, in great request amongst the street porters of London; hence it obtained the name of porter….
The secret of inducing sudden old age on an infant brewing of porter was soon found out; and the method of making best old London porter in a fortnight, was to mix porter that had become sour, in a certain quantity, with fresh drink….
At present the public taste has undergone a new revolution, and nothing but a full, sound, fresh, dark-coloured porter will be relished.
Makes you want to jump in the car, drive the your local brewpub, and bring home a growler of it.
In London, A Walk Down Memory Lane
Maryanne and Paul were fortunate enough to visit Young’s Brewery in Wandsworth, south London, several years before brewing operations came to an end there. Somewhere on Maryanne’s hard drive there’s a photo of Paul, wearing a white smock (mandatory for brewery visitors), pretending to interview one of the Shire horses.
We mention our visit to Young’s because we’re shameless publicity hounds we ran across a blog post by Martyn Cornell, The Zythophile. He’s assembled a slide show from “the second-to-last ever trip” around the brewery in September 2006. Enjoy!
A New Book About British Beer Styles
His real name is Martyn Cornell, but most people know him by his nom de blog, The Zythophile. His blog is known for fact-filled, and often pungent, commentary on beer and brewing. Martyn’s writing is so entertaining that you knew it was only a matter of time before a publisher offered him a book deal. And sure enough, The History Press came calling.
The book’s title is Amber, Gold and Black, The History of Britain’s Great Beers, which the author describes as “the first book devoted solely to the development of beer styles in Britain, from bitter to porter, covering every aspect of their history, what they were when they started , how they developed and what they are today.”
Some of the material in Amber, Gold and Black will be familiar to Zythophile fans (are they known as “Zythophilephiles?”). It takes on questions like these: “How did India Pale Ale really come about?”, “Who really developed porter?”, and “What exactly is mild?” Martyn says the answers to all three aren’t what most people think.