The Bar Towel

Once again I encounter a beer I haven't had for a while that is at the top of its game. This beer is a very savvy melding of appetizing yeast, rich malt and spicy hop flavours, all of which spell English beer at its best. Short of the same beer cask-conditioned, it is hard to imagine an English pale...

Just tried the Innis & Gunn Blonde and am most impressed. Best I&G product yet in my opinion. The balance of beer and oak character here is well-nigh perfect. The label states 37 days aging in wood, which imparts a Chardonnay-like finish (from the American wood) which is not overbearing. Con...

Not directly relevant but some early 1800's statements about the aging of ale and porter (see p. 143): http://books.google.com/books?id=YGoAx-x6pNgC&pg=PA136&dq=hard+ale&lr=#PPA143,M1 The theory then was that aging could benefit beer where done in bulk, hence the very large porter vats (...

The current bottling is the best ever in my opinion. (My sample was sourced at Davisville). The beer is very fresh, with a hoppy nose and a gathering, prominent bitterness in the palate. The hops are not quite as flowery-like as in some of the Fuller's beers, but are a perfect foil to the rich clean...

Passed by Victory in the later afternoon and had a superb pint of Compass Empire. It had a clean, rounded, English palate, hop-edged yet malty, and got better as it got warmer. A bonus was running into the always affable Nick Pashley.

Gary

Here is an update: Dr. James Sumner of the U.K. teaches at the University of Manchester. He is a specialist in the history of science and has written scholarly works on porter's development and related subjects. In my view he is the world's greatest authority on porter's history. After I contacted h...

Sounds good and will try to get to Galt as the weather warms to try one of these.

Gary

Just to mention further thread references as I find them, William Black's A Practical Treatise on Brewing from 1866 refers to drinkers' practices in the early 1700's of ordering "one, two, or three threads, as they termed it" He states the threads were pale, brown and amber beers (see pg. ...

I would like to introduce another thought which is based on the idea of textile weaving/tailoring terminology as possibly at the origin of the term porter. (Porter is generally taken as the name the drinkers initially gave to entire butt beer which appeared in London in the early 1700's. Entire was ...

Incidentally, one of the 1800's slang or dialectical dictionaries states that hugmatee, meaning a strong ale, may derive from "hug me to yee". This was an ingenious theory of Murray, well-known editor of the original OED. The source said Murray was brilliant on drink-related terms and I mu...

I am largely in agreement. There are various kinds of older dictionaries, commercial, slang and some others, that one can consult online. I have found some from the 1800's and they are helpful to a point (e.g., for terms like stitch-back, hugmatee or Old Pharoah), but I couldn't find anything on thr...

Thanks, many here know me anyway, and the old moniker seemed a bit stale, that's all.

As the years have gone by - and I've lived a generation of them since maturity - I find myself more and more interested in the history of beer and brewing; just a kind of fascination.

Gary

A plausible theory. Yet still I incline to the tailoring/thread theory and Pootz' comment which puts an interesting spin on it. It may be a centuries-old expression to say three threads for a patchwork or hastily-made job, and it might have been a jibe at a beer readily made by mixing at the bar (or...

That's very interesting and entirely possible, if that is the origin, one can see how the term thread got applied to further multiple mixtures, four threads for four beers, and so forth. Stitch is an old term for strong brown beer. I looked it up and one slang dictionary gives it as stitch-back. Thi...

Thanks, gents. Some of the drinks seem fortified by spirits, and maybe four threads was, say, 3 beers plus brandy. It is possible. Good point too about the connection to trades and I wonder if "thread" may have been a slang term for beers favoured by tailors. The full Dissertation states t...