Wednesday, 2 December 2020

More Historic Irish Mild Ales! Up North in Coleraine Brewery ...

Just a quick post to flag more Irish Mild Ales - Coleraine Brewery were brewing three different types in Derry in 1859. I haven't delved hugely into the history of the brewery but there was a brewery of the same name operating in 1837 that was being touted as 'long established' when up for sale at this time. This namesake brewery erected or renovated in Brook Street by James Moore, the owner of the town's distillery, and was in the ownership of a Mr. John Topp from Cork from around 1868 but was for sale again by 1871 when said Mr. Topp went bankrupt. It was owned by Robert Taylor, the then owner of the distillery by 1873, when I lost sight of it - but in truth didn't look very hard...


But back to to beers - we have:
Mild Bottling Ale
XXX Mild Ale
XX Mild Ale
Pale India Ale ('highly hopped is stated here in other advertisements.) 
Pale Table Ale
Table Beer
Which is a nice range by anyone's standard and not a porter to be seen at this point! (Although an article around this time does mention that the hope to commence brewing it shortly thereafter, and they were advertising XXX, XX and X porter by 1863.)

From another advertisement, where they were selling hops and malt to bakers, we can gather that the were using Kent hops and Chevalier pale malt - as both are mentioned - but apart from the usual occasional local plaudits for the quality I don't know much more about these beers.

Anyway, nice to see more old Irish Milds out and about!

Liam

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Newspaper images © The British Library Board. All rights reserved. With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive  -www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk  - where most of the information I've complied here was sourced.)
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2 comments:

  1. The Beer Nut2 December 2020 at 22:38

    The language seems a little archaic for the period to me: still making the distinction between ale and beer as two different types of malt liquor. In that vein, "mild" just means it's ready for drinking, rather than signifying a style of beer.

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  2. Liam2 December 2020 at 23:32

    Thanks John, perhaps you're right but it does feel that they are more so trying to differentiate between the hoppier offerings versus their 'standard' offerings. I looked at slightly earlier advertisements and the don't mention 'Mild' just 'XXX Bottling Ale' and 'XX Ale'.
    I suppose all of these words like pale, stout, etc. are descriptors surely anyway? Or at least start off as such, even if some morph and evolve into actual styles, I guess the question is when does an attribute cease being lower case and become upper case and therefor becomes a style?
    I agree that the Table 'Beer' wording does seem odd but I've come across the word 'beer' being used by a local brewery around this time afaicr and by others even slightly later such as Kiely's in Waterford for example. I need to dig into its meaning in these cases as it doesn't mean beer=hopped versus ale=unhopped in the advert in the post. Another rabbit hole no doubt!

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