Pub History: More on Mulled Porter - Rare Recipes & Mulled Beef?

In my last post on the subject, I established that mulled porter was certainly something that was available in public houses in Ireland - and elsewhere of course - the 19th century. I even discovered that specially designed or adapted mulling 'machines' sat on the bars of public houses for serving the mulled porter itself, but I did not discuss in any great detail what recipe was being used to create this hot drink.

Finding clear information on what mulled porter actually contained, apart from the heated beer itself, has proved to be a little tricky, as although there are many recipes for mulled porters and ales in old (and new) recipe books, pinning down what exactly was in the versions sold in bars in Ireland in the 1800s has been almost impossible.

One point to make is that sometimes 'mulled' just meant heated porter with nothing added to it, akin to the old much-mentioned method of just sticking a hot poker into the beer and hey presto there you had mulled porter. I have no doubt that this may have been the case in certain establishments - with or without the poker - but I did come across some other Irish non-recipe-book references that mention ingredients.

A Louth enquirer in The Farmer's Gazette from 18th of January 1868 regarding a recipe for mulled porter or ale gets the response that it contains sugar and nutmeg or ginger. Also, in Saunders's News-Letter from the 28th of July 1854 there is a brief mention in a published letter of a 'mulled porter you used to make when we were in Dublin, with plenty of nutmeg grated on top of it.' A few other online references mention both ginger, nutmeg, and sugar as well as - less often - cinnamon, which would lead to us to believe that if and when it was spiced it was mostly with these ingredients, either mixed or on their own perhaps? Hardly definitive proof but we can see that there is at least some record of these spices being used in general in Ireland if not specifically in pubs unfortunately. 

Mulled porter was not a uniquely Irish drink of course, and I am certainly focussing more so on Irish public houses here, but in Scotland and England there are quite a few mentions of sugar alone being used in mulled porter, and no spice at all is recorded. More interestingly, there were also specific mixes for adding to porter available in England, and possibly in Ireland too given the close trading ties. For example, an advertisement in The Bristol Daily Post on the 26th of October 1864 carries the following claim:

The only Genuine and Original
Lemon and Spice Extract
for making
Mulled Porter and Wine

An earlier advertisement from the same company but in the rival Bristol Daily Post in August of the same year names the mix as 'Caird's Lemon and Spice Extract' but unfortunately does not give us the recipe, just mentioning that it 'combines in soluble form the quintessence of the most esteemed Spices with the fragrance and agreeable acidity of the Lemon' and that it 'comes cheaper than using spice in the ordinary way'  - it could also be used in plum puddings and cakes, and all for just 1s a bottle!

And The Morning Advertiser from the 30th of January 1860 has this:

I'll Warm Yer. - Fettle for Mull'd Porter 8s per gallon, Ale Spice, 10s. 6d.

This was a spiced syrup that could be added to the porter for an 'instant' drink. (The word 'fettle' has a similar meaning to mulled, but seems to be more used in England as I could not find many references to the term in Irish publications.)

I did find a bar-related recipe for Porter Spice in the London printed New Guide for the Hotel, Bar, Restaurant Butler, and Chef by 'Bacchus' & 'Cordon Bleu' from 1885 that lists cloves, lemon rinds, cinnamon, allspice, coriander seed and caraway seed to which was added spirit, which was filtered after a fortnight and that spiced spirit added to syrup and bottled. It was suggested that a teaspoon be added to a pint of porter and then it could be sweetened to taste. I would imagine that this might be quite close to the proprietary syrup mentioned above, but no doubt there were a few variants of the actual spice mix.

This recipe certainly seems like one worth trying out and I am sure it would work in a hot whiskey too!

So to sum up, I could find no exact recipe for what was added to the hot porter in Irish public houses - it may have been just heated, possibly with sugar added - but I suspect it was also slightly spiced with ginger and/or nutmeg. Maybe it had a little lemon added too, and perhaps some used an instant syrup mix. In truth it was probably served a number of different ways depending on the pub and on their customers' tastes.

Incidentally, a mention in The Enniscorthy News & County of Wexford Advertiser on the 30th of May 1863 mentions that some cattle that had to swim for shore after a boat capsized were given a 'plentiful supply of mulled porter, sugar and ginger' to get them back to rights. The giving of mulled porter as a restorative to beast as well as man seems to have been quite common given the number of mentions I came across in veterinarian advice columns in newspapers around this time. So it looks like giving beer to cows is not just for certain Wagyu farmers, it was used here too and I suspect for similar reasons - as an appetite stimulant to get, in this case, sick cows to eat more, which would hopefully help with what ailed them!

Liam K.

(If you want further old recipes for spiced beers you could seek out Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks by William Terrington, as well as this post by me on the subject.)

All written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post. Newspaper image © The British Library Board - All rights reserved. With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) from whom I have received permission to display this image on this site.

Irish Pub History: Mulled Porter on Tap...?

Mulled porter, ale or especially wine are not exactly an unknown concept to most people, as these types of drinks have indeed been around for centuries - I even wrote about them here and listed some recipes - and I would think that very few of you are unaware that the 'mulling' refers to the spicing and heating of an alcoholic beverage. (Incidentally there seems to be no agreement in any online dictionary sources as to where the term ‘Mull’ comes from in this context but surely it comes from a contraction of muddle meaning to mix? Or at least comes from the same original source.) But while looking up references on how beer was served in Irish public houses, I came across repeated references to 'Porter Mulling Machines' right through the second half of the 19th century which got me thinking what form these could have taken, how they would have been heated, and how they worked. The word ‘machine’ can be a bit a little confusing, but my belief is that during this period it did not mean what we think of in our heads these days, of something filled with gears, axles and cogs, it – like engine – was just a general 'something' that replaced a manual form of doing a job or helped someone with that task. A ‘beer engine’ used for serving cask ale is a good and appropriate example of the use of these type of words.

Those mentions I found in newspapers – often for the sale of contents of a public house – often listed the name ‘Merry’ as the supplier or maker. More research uncovered a ‘Lawrence & Richard Merry’ as manufacturers of beer engines, bottling equipment and other barware in this period. They were proficient in a variety of metals such as copper, pewter and brass, and were also gasfitter and plumbers. They had won a gold medal at the Irish National Exhibition in 1883 for the quality of their wares, and I believe they enterprise may have started off as pewter manufacturers. (There is also a Martin Merry mentioned in the 1840s supplying similar equipment and based on Aungier Street, not very far away from where Lawrence and Richard were based at 25 Bride Street.)

Sadly, I can find no mention of their specific ‘Porter Mulling Machine’ but I have found a few English patents and designs for beverage mulling machines which used gas as their heat source, and given the Merry’s expertise with metals and gas, I think it is not unreasonable to assume that the ‘machines’ they supplied were quite like these?

Here is one such design in an Advertisement by Smith & Phillips - Gas Engineers in 'A Shilling Cookery for the People' by Alexis Soyer which was published in 1854. This one appears to have four sections for different drinks and four taps.

There were other patents during that decade too such as this one from Henry Remington from 1856 (English Patent No. 1783) which was gas heated too and contained two chambers for holding the heated beverages as well as a reservoir of hot water that heated the beer and maybe wine or ale, each with separate taps. (I have seen mention of similar in the sale of contents of a spirit grocer in Wicklow in 1873, which mentions that the mulling equipment also had three taps and in 1877 there is an advertisement in The Belfast Telegraph for 'a first class porter muller, all pure copper, well tinned inside, three apartments[sic], for porter, ale and water,' which certainly sounds like the boiler shown here.)

I have no proof that the Merry’s machine was anything like these (so I could be completely wrong) but I think it is reasonable enough to assume it was at least similar in design – like a heated copper barrel with the gas heat source below although if it was just for porter then it may have had just one - or two - compartments. As I stated above, the Merrys were gas fitters too and some of those mentions of the sale of the contents of public houses even list gas fittings with the bar items for sale. I also found a newspaper reference of a fire having been caused by a faulty porter mulling machine in Glasgow in 1881, which would point to gas being the likely heat source for this type of bar equipment. Also, slightly earlier in 1877 a spirit grocer in Newry is selling a 'copper keg, with brass hoops, in two divisions, heated by gas, for mulling porter, and boiling water' according to the town's Reporter newspaper. This seems to confirm that the heat source is indeed gas, and also that these boilers were quite ornate in appearance like the images above.

There other mentions of mullers elsewhere too, The Belfast News-Letter in November of 1867 has a timely advertisement from Bloomfield's in John Street which invites publicans to look at their prize-winning and improved mullers so that said publicans can give their customers 'a pot of mulled porter this winter.' A London maker - Byron - is also mentioned in an advertisement in 1880 in The Belfast Telegraph, and Dublin's Freeman's Journal lists two for sale in 1882, one made by Merrys complete with stand and another three compartment version from a maker called Curtis. James Campbell & Co. of Mary Street and Jervis Street in Dublin had a new design of porter muller back in 1859 according to The Advocate too, so we can see that there were a number of suppliers and makers of porter mullers.

As well as the fire in Scotland mentioned above there was a fire in Dublin in 1884 according to the city's Daily Express, as in April it was reported that

'About twelve o'clock noon yesterday a fire broke out at the publichouse Nos 1 and 2 Wood Quay, the property of Mr O'Kelly. The Fire Brigade were quickly on the scene and within half an hour the fire was extinguised. It is beleived to have originated through a leakage of the gas pipe used for heating the porter muller, the shop flooring thus becoming ignited. The damage done to the property was slight.'

(It is probably worth mentioning that this property is the long gone and much lamented The Irish House ...)

Mulled porter appears to have been relatively popular in public houses Ireland at this time – perhaps less so elsewhere - and there were even specific lemon and spice extracts and liquid spiced syrups available to the publican to quickly and easily spice their porters. It would be great if some of the dispensers still existed in public houses somewhere in the country – if you spot one please send me a photo, as it would be great to see that at least one has survived – ideally with an ‘L & R Merry’ stamp.

It would also be nice to be able to walk into a pub in Ireland now and get a glass of spiced porter in a nice pewter mug on a cold winter’s evening, served from a shiny brass and copper barrel on the bar – perhaps we need to campaign for the reinstatement of porter mulling machines?

Liam K.

All written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post. Images are via Google Books and newspaper research via The British Newspaper Archive.