1937-08-20 — Page 10

Lawton Mackai

NEVER SOAP THE BEER GLASS

AGER is modern. The original

beer was ale old as Egypt. And potent, as we learn from pap- vri of 1300 B. C. which tell not, only of brewing but also of a pro- pensity on the part of the subjects of the Pharaohs for getting them- selves squiffed with suds. After all, the mummification by which we know them best was for pur- poses of interment, not entertain- ment; a fellah was entitled to something else perfectly live. her first.

The Greeks and Romans missed out on it through wine snobbery. Tacitus Beer was "barbarian."

reported it as being the staple tip- ple of the Germani. Pliny went on record with: "The natives who in- habit the west of Europe have a liquid with which they intoxicate themselves, made from grain and water.

coun-

The manner of making this liquid is somewhat different in Gaul, Spain and other tries, and it is called different names, but its nature and proper ties are everywhere the same. The people in Spain in particular brew this liquid so well that it will keep good a long time. So exquisite is the cunning of mankind in grati- fying their vicious appetites that they have thus invented a me thod to make water itself produce intoxication."

(Meanwhile, just on the side, the Japanese have been brewing sake, out of rice, and drinking it

warm

The Chinese have been

making and lushing something similar, under the name of scm- shu The Russians have been kvassing. And the Abyssinians since time immemorial have turn- ed out a beer not unfittingly nam- ed bousa).

Among the inhabitants of Bri- tain ale-drinking has been con- tinous since Druid days. Caesar found them busy at it 2 brew of barley and wheat and with arrival of the two-fisted, seeming- ly bottomless Saxons, the ale-feast as main feature of social life be- came quite a packaging contest, ritualistically conducted. The

lady of the house buttled the flow- ing bowl. unto her lord, even were she a queen. Attended by a train of maidens she would ceremon- iously bear it first to the high

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settle where sat His Nibs, in the centre of things, then to the ale- benches round about the walls, while the gleeman sang hero- songs in tones of earnest hope that she would eventually come his way.

Ale etiquette would continue as long as anybody was right side up..

It wasn't a complete beer, for there were no hops in it, and wouldn't be till introduced from Flanders in the 16th century. Yet the English managed somehow, brightening the Dark Ages

There were best they could. "church-ales" (livelier versions of the modern strawberry festi- val) to raise funds for the church, "clerk-ales" for the benefit of the parish clerk, and wedding whoo pees known as "bride-ales," from which we get the word bridal. In front of every tavern stood an ale- stake bearing a garland or bush in token of what the ale-wife serv ed within. Nor did those he-tan- karders known jocosely as "ale- knights" have any monopoly of carousing not if Chaucer bears true witness to the exploits of womanhood; and John Skelton, hot-doggerelist of modes and manners in the reign of Henry VIII, in The Tunnynge (cask cele- bration) of Elynoure Rummynge depicts a hen party which to-day would certainly have ended in the hoosegow.

Ale-making, though, was more than a mere matter of tavern activity and tavern supply; for, remember, there was neither tea, coffee, nor chocolate in England in those days, and ale being vir tually the sole beverage, its con- coction was a branch of domestic science practised by every house- wife, who prided herself on being a good brewer or rather, to speak according to my dictionary, brewster. But gradually the lad- ies of the Middle Ages were out- shone by the monks, whose lov- ing care with yeast and barley re- sulted in famed ales, prized even on the Continent.

The most enviable of these pious breweries was an abbey founded in the thirteenth century at Bur- ton-on-Trent, approximately in the centre of England. It owed its saccess to the peculiarities of the

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local well-water. Modern chemi cal analysis has divulged that this water, which is notably hard, con- tains a considerable quantity of gypsum and other calcium and magnesium salts. For the making of "mild and bitter” it's a natural, and nothing has ever been found- to equal it. Consequently Burton- on-Trent is still England's su- preme brewing centre, home of Allsop's Ale and of the even more world-wide Bass & Co. The latter on the job since 1777, Concer now has 750 acres of layout.

of

They show you around in a pri- vate train. First, the malthouses. Here, upon vast floors punctuated with columns in the manner of the mosque of Cordova, steeped harley is spread out, re-moisten- ed, put through a course sprouts, turned with ploughing sticks by specially-shod maltsters, and finally taken to a kiln for curing. This routine accomplishes two things: it breaks down the barley's starch-cells and builds up a chemical whatsit, called "dias- tase, which in the mash tuns will convert the "starch into sugar.

Next, the brewery. (One of the them.) Business starts with grinding of the malted barley by means of metal rollers which, in- stead of crudely crushing its guts out, treat it politely In the oak mash tun the grain gets its Bur- ton water, served hot; mechani- cal forks and shovels thrash around in it while an overgrown lawn- sprinkler sparges. Proportions, temperature, and length of time. vary according to type of ale. When the brewmaster gives the signal to set the taps meaning, "Take it away, Graham "a false bottom functions like a colander, retaining the spent grain (cattle's delight) and allowing the clear wort, charged with exstarch that drawn off. is now sugar, to be ready for the kettle. In the lat- ter it is cooked with an admix- ture of hops which impart the top of the banquet" before being remaindered out as was done. with the grain

The fermenting house functions on the principle that beer, if given a lift, will travel down pipes as readily as it travels down the human gullet. That is to say, the wort (kettle-juice) begins its course in the refrigeration de partment on the top floor, is pitch- ed with yeast just below, and then fermenting vats large enough for water polo but much too sudsy This surface fluff is so bountiful and so active that, after three days of fermenting, the ale is brought down into a species of mill-races called barm- ~troughs which are attended un- derneath by rows of barrels the way little pigs attend mamas The barrels imbibe the ale and, they fill up, give off the excess yeast through safety-valve pipes in their tops, returning it to the maternal trough till the later is all wool. For a finishing, the ale is run off into still more ponds and lagoons, whence, strained of any lees, it is barreled for the

trated upon, t entirely cousi

But the world pats up with

sit can obtam situation so long Bass's Pale Ale, which is trans- portable even on the desert, creat- ing cases everywhere it goes.

Here in the States, where "beer" means "lager" to the same bigot- ed degree that in England it "means "ale," there are neverthe

less whole clumps and clusters of people who admit not only ac quaintance with a certain creamy- headed brew, but actual friend- ship. Sentiment, even. For it wasn't solely connoisseurship in rare books that created 'the Gro- lier Club-not if you've seen the old Dutch tap-room, brought along and enshrined in the club's present building as a souvenir of those early evenings when ideals were still in the making and mugs were mugs. Nor could the Sal- magundi, fond home of painter men. ever have attained its mel- low delightfulness on a regime limited to oils and water colours. any more than the St. Botolph Club in Boston could have con- sistently skimmed the cultural- cream of that city without ócca- sional uppage of bottoms. As for the historic Players, founded by Edwin Booth in a mansion over- looking Gotham's Gramercy Park, one may learn its club traditions from the names graven on pew- ters pendant from the plate rail in the grill room: Joseph Jeffer- son, Grover Cleveland, Stanford White, Samuel L. Clemens (rather better known as Mark Twain), and so on. Apparently, ale isn't as strange to Americans as some drinkers assume it to be.

For the sake of the scattered yet staunch demanders, sundry ales, of Anglo-American type, aré being brewed over here. Recently I visited a modest little million- dollar plant where the British system is emulated most interest- ingly.

Another member of the beer.

family I wouldn't mind seeing transplanted over here is the rich, lusty brunnette called stout. Un- fortunately, Dublin hangs on to it, sending mere bottles when ra prefer the whole brewery, which happens to be the biggest in the world. Then, too, there's a diffi- culty about water. Guinness gets it soft and special from certain springs in the County Kildare, to the tune of four hundred million gallons a year. In this flood go well-calculated landslides of bar- ley malt, of which a portion has been roasted for flavour's sake. imparting the dark colour which is a natural outcome and not win- dow dressing. In the copper the work if destined for full-bodied Guinness receives bountiful load of hops

ordinarily get. Cooled and fer mented, it is stored for a sold year in great cylindrical vats where, denied the benent any artificial temperature, to worry through ges like the rest brew that "can

I'm Ex

nis so pleasant

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scuits at, say,

foot of Dubli

mean is that this affair, brewed for us Continued on Page 8)