Sacred Ales

An interest in imported beers will always require a journey back to Europe, and I find it best to begin with England and Ireland, then over to the mainland. The British Isles including Ireland are the sacred site of top fermented ales that are bitterly hopped, malt driven brews providing a plethora of popular styles which include bitters, milds, porters, stouts, strong ales and seasonal beers. Walk into any English public house (pub) and chances are your draught will be brown, cask conditioned and drawn from hand pumps. Until the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the use of coke in kilning malt, all beer was brown as the malt was cured over wood fires. So let’s have a look at a couple of these beers that are available here in Australia.

The southern county of Suffolk, a rural flatland area once known as East Anglia is the largest growing region for malting in England. The dominant brewery, Greene King is based in Bury St Edmonds, Suffolk. Anglia’s King Edmond was murdered by the Vikings and buried at the local abbey. When Henry VIII dissolved abbeys in the 1500’s the monks hid in the tunnels which more than likely became the brewery cellars. A brewer called Greene acquired the brewery in the 1700’s and along with a partner; Greene King has become one of the largest independent breweries in the UK. Among many products my favourite is their Strong Suffolk Ale. A remnant of a bygone era dating back to the eighteenth century, Suffolk Strong employs the ancient practice of blending old and young beers. The ‘old’ brew is aged in wooden tuns then blended to achieve sweetness and acidity. The two blends settle down to 6% A/V, tawny in colour, with hints of passion fruit and chocolate.


Manchester’s most famous beer, Boddingtons Draught is classified incorrectly, but befits the image of the working class centre of textiles in north-western England. Two hundred years ago the brewery was erected north of town by Thomas Carsten and Thomas Fry to provide parched palates after work with dry bitter ale, and to avoid the excessive tax on grain. Manchester is synonymous with the industrial revolution of the 18th century, and the logo employed on the Boddington cans, a barrel keg and two bees, represents the “hive of industry”. The Christmas bonus for brewery workers during the era was two days pay and a quart of strong ale.

Locals demanding an assertively dry, pale bitter style of beer provided Boddingtons popularity and international fame. Changes to the style occurred with the takeover of the brewery by Whitbread Brewing Group in 1989 and the introduction of the widget in the can in 1992. To reach a larger target audience, the bitterness was toned down to create a smoother thirst quencher. The typical Manchester pub draught is hand pulled for a thick creamy ‘Queen Anne’s lace” head. To recreate this appearance, the widget was introduced to the Boddingtons can which injects liquid nitrogen to assist in compacting of the carbonated beer bubbles.

In North-east England, brown ale has been as important as shipbuilding and mining and was developed as a rival to the pale ales of the eastern midlands. Newcastle Brown was created by Colonel Porter in the 1920’s as another blend, this time a dark brown beer and a 3% A/V Amber Ale. The recipe is made up of pale and crystal malts, brewing sugar and a touch of caramel. Hallertau, Northdown, Northern Brewer and Target hops provide mild back palate bitterness. ‘Newky Brown’ as we call it is the biggest selling bottled ale in Britain and exported to over 40 countries. Tradition has it that Newcastle Brown should be served in small glass that’s constantly ‘topped up’. Sounds good to me.

Just the mention of Ireland and the words stout or pubs usually follow. Other than the Czech Republic, Ireland is the smallest nation to impose a major beer style into the consciousness of drinkers around the world, and since 1759 that word is Guinness. Arthur Guinness was shrewd enough to know that his stout would be a winner and took out a 9000 year lease on his newly acquired St James brewery. Other than the city of Cork where Beamish and Murphy’s stouts are brewed, just an order from the bar for a glass of stout will bring you a Guinness. The ‘dryness’ of an Irish dry stout is achieved by deep roasted barley and generous hopping. The original recipe was actually a scam to avoid tax which in those days was assessed on the amount of malt, not alcohol. Arthur Guinness 11 experimented with using unmalted, therefore untaxed, barley in the grist. The heavily roasted blend provided colour and a slightly charred taste to the brew, making it darker, drier, and more bitter than the English styled porter of the day.When first exported to Australia, the recipe was tinkered with to add more alcohol. This brought on the continual criticism of our Guinness not tasting the same as it did in Ireland. This anomaly was amended two years ago when the company went back to the original 4.1% A/V levels.


Crossing the pond to the mainland we land in France and Italy, places not usually associated with the consumption of beer. Over here, the beers of choice are lagers and seasonal wheat beers with their noble hopped fruitiness and moderate to low bitterness making them popular. In France beer is drunk throughout the country in bars and cafes called Brasseries-breweries. Over half of the countries total beer production is achieved by Kronenbourg located in the northern region of Alsace-Lorraine, an area under German rule from 1871-1919. Kronenbourg 1664 began along the banks of the Rhine, and gained fame for the aromatic hoppy fruity citrus notes plus a sweet smooth malty full bodied lager. The title K1664 was introduced in the 1980’s and the label and bottle were jazzed up in 2003 to help it compete on the international beer stage.

It was the Romans who brought the concept of beer to Europe from the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East. But as we all know, the vino was the go at toga parties and has dominated the preferred drink category since . Brewing transplanted from the Austrian Alps wasn’t introduced until the nineteenth century. It took the youth and fashionable Italians of the 1960’s to re-launch beer into modern times. Wine was their parents and the peasant to drink; they wanted English-styled pubs and Bavarian Beer halls. Market leader Peroni’s main brand Nastro Azzuro is the ‘Blue Ribbon Italian Pilsner’ which includes 20% corn maize to sweeten the brew and then hopped with Saaz to spice it up. At 5.3% A/V Nastro Azzurro is quite a refreshing well balanced lager for its sweetness.

We’ll continue the beer tour in the next issue when we look at Northern Europe and how this region has affected the beer consciousness of drinkers around the world.