It’s the stuff of legend, the muse of poets, the nectar of the gentry. Strong beer, brilliant as topaz, sweet as dew, and dripping with the perfume of hops, was for centuries a revered icon of English culture. In typical language-loving English style, these beers had nicknames such as angel’s food, clamber-skull, huffcap, dragon’s milk, and many others.
October beer was the most laudable product of country brewing, specifically country house brewing. Beer wasn’t a readily transportable product in the ox-cart era, so the maintenance of an estate, large or small, required beer to brewed on the premises. I was inspired to write on this topic by a fascinating and well-written book called Country House Brewing in England, 1500-1900 (1996). Written by Pamela Sambrook, it is still available and is a great read on the social history of those times.
(Kinsley Dey)
From about 1600 to 1900, four classes of beers were brewed on estates, although not all kinds were brewed by every brewer. On the bottom was the weak and watery small beer, usually the last runnings of whatever was being brewed, although occasionally brewed on its own in summer months. Next up the scale in strength was “table” beer, a beer of what we today would regard as ordinary strength, roughly in the 1050 (5 percent alcohol) range. Next came March and October beer at about 1080 or a bit higher; and then the rarely brewed “double” beers, well over 1100 (10 percent plus). The latter were reserved for very special occasions.
Beer was allotted according to employment or familial status on the estates. Everyone was allowed liberal access to the weak small beer, as a means of providing a safe form of water. The table beer was allotted as part of employment contracts, as was the stronger beer-although, as you would expect, much less liberally. It was a point of civility that the family drank the same small beer as everyone else, and no upgraded version was made strictly for their use. Of course, they had access to the stronger stuff whenever they wanted it.
Sambrook’s book has lots of pictures of extant old house breweries, and it makes one appreciate the skills of the brewers who could turn out a praiseworthy product from these rough and rude facilities, sans thermometers and hydrometers (prior to the late 1700s).
Before the invention of refrigeration, brewing was much more strictly tied to the whims of the seasons, both on the brewing and consuming sides of the tun. The summer heat, availability of ingredients, need for large amounts of quenching–but not too intoxicating–brews in the summer, and warming ones in the winter, all played a part.
October was generally regarded as the best month to brew. The barley harvest was in, so new malt was available and was widely believed to contribute to a beer that kept very well. Fresh hops added their own special charms. Cooler fermentation temperatures made long-aged beers less vulnerable to frets and souring than March beers. And by October, the strong beer made in the previous year was starting to be tapped, and so the necessity of brewing a replacement became obvious.
Top-grade Ingredients
October and March beers are just about identical, except that the use of last year’s malt and hops, and the warm summertime fermentations, gave March beer a lesser reputation for quality than the October brews. The old recipes vary a bit but generally agree that only the very top grade of ingredients should be used. Malt is invariably of the pale “white” variety, and contemporary diatribes about the evil noxiousness of “smoak” make it clear that there would have been little of it evident in a well-made beer.
Hops, too, were of the best quality, which in England has long meant East Kent. One commercial example that is instructive is J. W. Lee’s Harvest Ale, made solely from the two aforementioned ingredients. Considering its utterly simplistic recipe, it is a beer of startling depth and an object lesson for a brewer at any level. Of course, the name bears directly on our subject here.
Today we would call these beers barley wines, but that term is a relatively recent invention, appearing just a little after the turn of the last century or around World War I. Strong beers were so ubiquitous that they really weren’t thought of as a category. Instead, each district had its own–Yorkshire’s Stingo, to cite an example–for which it was renowned–or infamous. To call these special brews “wines” was confusing at best, even insulting, as they were certainly capable of standing on their own without reference to an altogether different class of drink.
