'Immortal Lager Beer'

 

LAGER BEER

Tune - 'My Long-tailed Blue'

---

I've drank of all the various taps,

With which men soak their clay,

From Red-eye Whisky up to Schnapps,

From Claret to Tokay;

But of all the draughts I ever drank

I countries far or near,

The one which takes the foremost rank

Is honest lager Beer.

Chorus -

Then give me a glass of beer,

My sinking heart to cheer,

And while we sing, com landlord bring

Another Glass of beer

Frenchmen may back their Cognac,

The Hollander his Gin,

John Bull may quaff his "'Arf-and-'Arf,'

And Paddy his 'Poteen;'

Each one may think his fav'rite drink

Does most conduce to cheer:

They've yet to know the spirit's flow

That lives in Lager Beer

Chorus - Then give me, &c.

The Temp'rance men, with tongue and pen,

(Spirits white, black and blue,)

May still engage to turn the age

'Gainst my celestial brew.

They work in vain, nor converts gain,

And fastly disappear

The feeble few of that watery crew -

The Foes of Lager Beer

Chorus - Then give me, &c.

Old Germany is still the land

Of most prodigious thinkers,

Because of this, my fav'rite brand,

They are profoundest drinkers;

And though their metaphysics slow

Our feelings feelings sadly wear,

'Tis after all to them we owe,

My much loved Lager Beer

Chorus - Then give me, &c.

Each thirsty elf will please himself

'Chaque un a son gout;'

But 'tis the topmost cheering drop

That ever tapster drew.

Should all the rest, at Fate's behest,

Forever disappear,

The world may still its ends fulfil,

Possessed of Lager Beer,

Chorus - Then give me, &c.

Great beverage of this our age!

Most happily combine

In thy bright drops the malt and hops

To make a draught divine;

The human race should have the grace

To celebrate the year

Which gave thee birth, thou soul of mirth,

Immortal Lager Beer,

Chorus - Then give me, &c.

T. G.

- New Orleans True Delta

(Via The Dundalk Democrat - 14th November 1857)

 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 images on this site.

Some (Unhelpful & Incoherent) Thoughts on Irish Brewing History ...

It is said that history is written by the victors and that is certainly the case with Irish brewing history, where the need to shoe-horn events into a prescribed marketing narrative means that we often get a not-so-accurate view of our wonderfully rich and story-laden brewing past. But some of us are fighting back, and reporting the facts of that past as well as we can given the lack of records, while also calling out any errors - or blatant lies - that litter the projected image of our drink history, and although I have been writing on the topic for a relatively short length of time compared to others, I do feel that in that time - via my posts here as well as social media - that I have contributed greatly to the real brewing history of our country, as conceited as that might sound.

The research I do is to satisfy a general curiosity in the subject as well as to delve into why we think certain things about our beer, pub and brewing history, and the writing that follows is mostly done to scratch an itch of creativity that was unreachable to me for many years. I emphasised the word mostly, as obviously it is nice to get some recognition for the revelation of new facts or the rediscovery of old ones. I am quite sure that any author regardless of their field of interest or the quality of their work feels the same, and although I would never claim to be the best writer on my chosen topic with regard to quality of my output - not to mention syntax or grammar - I am sure that the recording of the content itself outweighs the need for perfection.

I write on a very specific subject, a niche-within-a-niche-within-a-niche, which means I will never appeal to a huge audience of readers and I am certainly okay with that, but what surprises me is the lack of interest and interaction by general historians, especially by those on social media and who publish online. Is it just because it is a subject that they are not so sure about? Or perhaps they have repeated some of the falsehoods that litter our brewing history? Is it because they have no interest in the topic? Or is there another reason? (It is worth me pointing out - before you do - that I can have a somewhat abrasive quality at times, plus I can be repetitive, and some of the content I produce can be quite, well, boring as a subject regardless of how I present it. But then again much of that can be said of many or perhaps most of those who post about any historical topic.)

The same lack of traction is somewhat true of food historians, although they do seem to get much better response with their content than those of us who comment and write about our country's drinking history. Although it is worth pointing out that - with some notable exceptions - food-based accounts in general rarely show interest in our brewing history, be they historical focussed or not - although it is also fair to say I and others on the drink side of things do not interact enough with those accounts either. But there is for sure a snobbish element within a sector of the food writing industry that sees beer - and probably therefore our brewing history - as something low-brow and vulgar compared to wine-related content, or even whiskey writing. It is certainly - along with cider - the black sheep of our beverages in the mind of many if not most of those in the food industry as a whole. A look at how many restaurants and chefs treat beer on their menus is testament to that ...

And ironically among the majority of my 'followers' on Twitter there is a total lack of interest in history in general which naturally follows on into brewing history. I can completely understand this, especially if you are of an age where the present and the future is what you look to and what excites your mind, not ramblings about some old beer style, brewery of bottle label, and in truth not too long ago I would have been in that very same mindset.

But the bigger worry is that in total we just do not care enough about the history of brewing in this country, or certainly not about its real history. Why do I worry - and worry is the wrong word of course - about this? It is possibly because certain aspects of history do have a tendency of repeating themselves. For example, we are at a relatively - and I do mean relatively - buoyant place with regard to the number of new breweries we have in it this country, so it would be a shame if in a hundred years’ time - or less - we ended up back where we were in the second half of the twentieth century with just a few large businesses owning all our brewing output, with once important breweries now relegated to brand names of bland products, with all that wonderful creative output from breweries both in liquid form as well as the paper and digital media lost, uncared for, and obliterated for the sanitised timeline of our then ‘new’ brewing history. (I will admit to being a little over dramatic and extremist about all of this but I have always preferred drama and enthusiasm to apathy and ignorance.) Of course, providing the servers that hold all the virtual information for those breweries still exist then we will have an inkling of what those ‘lost’ breweries produced and a good oversight of their businesses in general, but for example will we have their recipes? Will we know anything of the brewers themselves and others who work in the breweries? I doubt it, and this could leave the historians of the future wondering just what did all these beers taste like, not to mention why was it really brewed and who designed it.

Does any of this sound familiar?

So, what should be do about all of this …?

Do we need an archive for our past, present and future brewing history?

Should we have more general interaction and sharing of the subject by more people?

Do we need ‘proper’ historians to interact more with those who promote the topic?

Should we invest some time and provide more content to this niche history?

Should we care about it more?

Obviously you cannot force people to like something they have no interest in but I do think there is an obvious answer to all of those questions ...

Also, as a group, beer historians need to do better - and I am reluctantly including myself in that cohort in order to be tarred with the same brush. We can come across as a curmudgeonly and aloof lot at times, and we (almost) all seem to revel in ploughing a lonely furrow in the same field as others without make eye-contact with the plough-wielder beside us, rarely commenting on the quality and depth of the sod they have turned, because we are as blinkered and stubborn as the oxen we drive at times.

We need to try and get our message across to more people too, which might mean changing our writing style, varying our content and being a little more sociable and outgoing - something I have been remiss at - and would have difficulty with - but it is probably something I need to change.

Okay, in case you are wondering what exactly I am trying to say here, well I am not entirely sure …

Sometimes when you write you have no direction to take, you just follow a path and often retread old ground or stumble into a ditch until you are lost in a forest of thoughts and opinions that leave you as confused and unsure as your readers.

But perhaps that is the place we need to be to start a new journey.

If only we had a decent map and an accurate compass …

Liam K.

The Loop-Liner - Dublin's Lost Porter Measure

I have a tedious fascination with the various terms for measures of alcohol served around Ireland in our past and have featured some previously such as the 'Meejum' (Medium), so finding a new one is always of interest. In this case it is a measure that is uniquely from Dublin and confined to a certain area of the city - perhaps ...

A 'Loop-Liner' was a 'pint' - or perhaps a measure - of porter that retailed at cheaper than the norm, that being 1½ d. (one and a half pence) and appears to have also been attached to the public houses and publicans by the term 'Loop Liners' that sold porter at that price either side of 1900. It was served by pubs on Arran Quay and others along which the Loop Line railway (Officially called the City of Dublin Junction Railway, which connected to a number of larger railway routes.) travelled, so hence the name.

The first mention I can find is in Dublin's Sport newspaper from April 1894 which briefly discusses how new beer and stout pricing will not affect the consumer. It states that 'This will be particularly good news to patrons of "the loop liner," which means a pint of porter for three halfpence. The tariff for the "loop liner" is mainly confined to the quays.' There are mentions in various newspapers in 1907 too, where it stated that licenses would not be issued to publicans who served these reduced pints as 'the [rest of] licensed trade were against such practice, and the police objected to the disorderly class of customers such practice brought to the house.' 

Indeed in an infuriating cut off report in the Evening Irish Times from November 1907 under the headline '"Loop-Liner" Doomed' there is a writeup on a court case of a publican wanting to transfer a licence from an establishment on Golden Lane in Dublin where the licences was being objected to on the grounds that the publican was selling 'Loop Liners' and it was 'attracting the worst classes' and the ensuing disruption required daily supervision by the police. (The side of the report is cut off in the copy I have but we can get the general gist of the article.) This also shows that the practice was not just confined to the quays at this point.

By 1908 the Evening Irish News and other newspapers from October states that 'the "loop liner" trade had altogether disappeared in the Arran Quay district' due to those serving beer at this price being cautioned by the police. (Edit: It was rightly pointed out to me by Cian Duffy on Twitter that Arran Quay is nowhere near the Loop Line itself, but perhaps the practice spread along the quays and tramlines too, and ended up being focussed on certain areas beyond its initial starting point.) Interestingly an article on the passing of the "Loop Liner" in the Irish Independent in that same month states that it had 'its origin during the construction of the Loop Line, when some publicans, to win the trade of the workers, gave a measure of porter over and above a pint for 2d. Opposition traders in the district, as a countermove, began to sell "pints" at 1½ d., and these were dubbed by the navvies "loop liners."' This seems extremely plausible to me as an origin story and as the Loopline bridge over the Liffey was started in 1889 and completed in 1891 it gives an approximate origin date too.

It may be conjecture but my feeling is that a 'Loop Liner' was not actually a 'real' pint - even though some of those articles say it was - but a smaller measure closer to the 'Meejum' referenced above, and possibly served in a smaller glass than the official pint measure, as hinted at in the origin story. Indeed one reference in the Northern Whig from October 1907 states that it was a measure 'between a pint and a half-pint, and which enabled some publicans to sell porter at less than the regular price' and the same newspaper in May of the following year states the same regarding the measure size. Either that or it was in some way diluted or mixed with something else to achieve this pricepoint in a way that would make financial sense to both parties.

There is a further mentions in 1911, 1916 and 1917 but only in an anecdotal and somewhat jokey fashion. (Although one mention in the Irish Independent in October 1912 regarding the transfer of a licence seem to imply that the practice is still common at this time and attracting a 'criminal element' that requires extra policing.)

But it appears that a unique Dublin name for a measure of porter disappeared into our beer history some time before the 1920s.

And a small part of me is a little sad about that...

Liam K.

Edit: John Stephens via Twitter reminded me of the line in The Ragman's Ball, a traditional song famously recorded by The Dubliners on their debut album, that contains the line 'We drank Brady's Loopline porter until around the floor we rolled,' so it is nice - and fitting - to see the name has been immortalised in such a song!

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 source, 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 images on this site.

Giving it Both Barrels: 19th Century Sketches of Smithwick's & Sullivan's Kilkenny XX Porter

The history of brewing in Kilkenny is a topic I keep returning to again and again as there is such a wealth of real history to be mined in old newspapers and publications online, as well as in physical books. Although sadly, I am not aware of any publicly accessible archives for any of the breweries in the city, which is also very much the case for most of Ireland's lost breweries with a couple of notable exceptions such as Perry's in Rathdowney and Murphy's in Cork. My own hometown of Carlow also has some brewing history of course, but its beers and breweries are not as famous and never reached the successes of the two main breweries in the neighbouring city down the road, and although I am still sporadically researching the brewing history of this town - and I have amassed a sizable file about it - it is more often the case that I come across something relating to Kilkenny as far as any local-ish brewing history is concerned.

That was the case with two 19th century Irish scenes by Edmund Fitzpatrick that appeared four years apart in The Illustrated London News, and both of which I chanced upon at different times. In both cases my eyes were drawn to the casks in the corner of the illustrations and the names printed on them, names I was quite familiar with from my interest in Kilkenny's brewing history - although you would have needed to be living a very hermitic life to have never heard of Smithwick's St. Francis Abbey Brewery in this country, or further afield. Sullivan's Brewery, which was on James's Street, has been rebooted or reborn in recent years too, although its new brewery tap is on the opposites side of the river.

Edmund Fitzpatrick was and illustrator and painter who was either originally from Freshford in Kilkenny or certainly lived there for a period. According to one source he was born there 1822 and died in London in 1896 and he was certainly residing there in 1858 as he advertised in The Kilkenny Moderator in November that year that he had 'lately arrived from Paris and London' for a short stay and that he was available for commissions. (The Library of Ireland has a short but interesting biography about his life on their website here.) He has some paintings hanging in Kilkenny castle, so his finer artwork was also held in high regard it appears, which is hardly surprising given the quality and dynamism of his newspaper sketches.

He was quite prolific with his work and created many illustrations for newspapers, some of which were Kilkenny focussed so it has hardly a surprise that he was familiar with the two biggest breweries in the city, and that he decided to include them in his works. The first illustration appeared in The Illustrated London News of March 15th 1853 to accompany a piece about how St. Patrick's Day was celebrated in Ireland. It is a joyful picture of someone's home and full of interesting-looking characters and imagined stories. It also perhaps gives an insight to the dress of the day and what people drank, and what they consumed those drinks from - whiskey and porter at the very least, from stemmed glass and pewter tankards. How real or imagined it is I do not know but I quite like the picture when I first came across it and especially when I noticed the 'Smithwicks XX Porter Kilkenny' on the barrel. The accompanying text and other illustrations certainly have issues that I will not raise here, but it is just nice to see a name check for a famous local brewery.

Drowning the Shamrock on St. Patrick's Night - Drawn by E. Fitzpatrick

The second image is also from The Illustrated London News, this edition from January 24th 1857 and it shows a few travelling school masters debating various subjects. Again, it is full of wonderful characters and more importantly for us we can see a cask of 'Sullivans XX Porter Kilkenny' sitting once again in the right hand corner. And again, the accompanying text is full of 'Oirish' words but I quite like the actions and expressions here too, even if the drawing seems a little cruder and perhaps a little more hurried.

The Irish Schoolmaster - Drawn by E. Fitzpatrick

Regardless, it is good to see Mr. Fitzgerald being fair and giving equal advertising space to both of the big Kilkenny breweries! It might raise the question as to whether he was berated by the Sullivan's into including them in an illustration having used Smithwick's porter in the other one?

Of course, we cannot get too excited about these, after all it is not like the are factual records or photographs, but maybe that is not the point.

Perhaps we should just appreciate the illustrations and the recorded anecdotal history for what it is, just another way of getting the information about our lost brewing history out and findable, and in to the public eyeline - highlighting actual beers that really did exist in Kilkenny in the middle of the 19th century.

And they do say a picture is worth a thousand words ... so perhaps I need not have waffled on so much?

Liam K.

The original images and accompanying articles can be found here and here via Google Books. These images were originally posted by me on my Twitter account on the 18th of August 2019 and on the 15th of November 2021.

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 source, and a link back to this post.

The Burgundy of Ireland - Drogheda Ale or Cork Stout...?

My often-addled brain can get somewhat confused when scrolling through the many advertisements and other texts that I need to absorb before and during the writing of these articles. Or that is my excuse at least for not digging quite deep enough into a by-line for a beer that I wrote about a little while ago in a post on Beamish & Crawford's Cooper Stout. That beer has quite an interesting tale, which I have covered here, and it was in that piece that I made a passing reference to 'The Burgundy of Ireland' which according to adverts in very late 1862 and on into 1863 referred to Beamish & Crawford's XXX stout. In that piece I had originally wrote that this term was for Drogheda Ale but in rereading the piece I corrected it to mean the XXX stout as this Advertisement from the Brighton Gazette in December 1862 shows  ...

But there was a nagging sense of something being wrong with this so I felt compelled to investigate it at some point, as that 'Burgundy' moniker was a little odd for a stout or porter. Stouts are dark red generally, but they are much darker than any burgundy I have partaken of - although that is not a very common occurrence to be fair. Also, I wondered how I had made the original blunder in assigning it to the Drogheda ale before changing it to the stout. (Thinking back now I possibly just associating the general quality and strengths of Burgundy wine to the XXX and did not focus too much on the colour.)

But time passed and other projects made me forget about this until quite recently when the term once again dropped into my brain and I decided to finally research it more. It did not take long for me to come across the following advertisement from The London Evening Standard from 31st July 1862, which predates the one above by a few months ...

And here is another from the same year in The Morning Post of the 1st of August that shows a variant of the same advertisement and you can see how it possibly led to the words being attached to the stout and not the ale from the way it was written and the faded brackets ...

Lastly here is a much clearer - if you squint - advertisement from The West Middlesex Advertiser from November of that same year where the attachment of the Burgundy name is clearly for the Drogheda Ale ...

These are obviously some of the advertisements I first read and that had originally stuck in my head. They clearly state that Drogheda Strong Ale is 'The Burgundy of Ireland' and I think the error came when the advertisement wording for these adverts was reused, communicated and rehashed perhaps, and the term was somehow assigned to the XXX stout instead. This makes sense in many ways as colour wise the strong ale was possibly a deep amber colour, as for example was a vintage amber ale produced by Smithwick's brewery at around this time which is mentioned in an article in The Waterford News and Star from September 1873. I have previously speculated that Drogheda ales were originally dark in colour and perhaps this is another pointer to that conclusion, but let us not jump too far on to the Irish Red Ale train just yet as there can be no comparison with the modern style and this old ale, although all of this might necessitate a new line or two in the middle part of my red ale trilogy. (The Drogheda Brewery Company mentioned in the first to adverts was Casey's brewery by the way.)

Admittedly, newspaper advertisements should not be taken as factual content in areas such as this, but my conclusion still seems to be the most accurate presumption - if one can be the other! It is also worth mentioning that in many cases these are the only records we have of certain beers, so we need to use them as reference points but with care and wariness.

As to the alcohol content I came across The Dublin Quarterly Journal of Science from 1862 that states that the abw (alcohol by weight) was 7% which would equate to 8.87% abv for Cairnes' Drogheda Ale according to this calculator. I am not sure how accurate that is but it would be relatively close and this strength would also help with its association with a wine, even if the colour would have been probably quite a bit paler.

Although there are certainly lessons to be learned all round here - especially by me - it is nice to see Drogheda Ale, which was held in such high esteem by many, getting such a nice reference.

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 source, and a link back to this post. Newspaper images are © 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 these images on this site.