“For a quart of Ale is a dish for a king.”: celebrating Beer Day Britain

To help celebrate Beer Day Britain (raise a pint at 7pm on 15^th June and say ‘Cheers to Beer’!), this week we’re taking a look at some of the beer-related items held in the Library’s Special Collections.

St Andrews holds a few early 19^th-century treatises on brewing, one of those being Frederick Accum’s A Treatise on the art of brewing. The work begins with an historical sketch of the art of brewing beer, with a description of the difference between porter (“the most perfect of all malt liquors”), ale (“beer of a more syrupy consistence than porter”), and table, or small, beer (“a weaker liquor than ale”). The substances used in making beer are discussed before the work turns to the practicalities of brewing beer. Although the contents of this work cover some pages, it was Accum’s intention “to divest the art of brewing of the mystery in which it has been involved by interested persons”.

Accum, a German chemist, was concerned about the adulteration of food by the addition of chemical additives, and this concern extended to beer. Both his Treatise on the art of brewing and his A treatise on adulterations of food and culinary poisons, also published in 1820, contain information on ingredients forbidden in the use of brewing. Additionally, the former gives the laws forbidding druggists and other persons supplying illegal ingredients to brewers, whilst the latter lists druggists and grocers prosecuted and convicted for supplying illegal ingredients to brewers, publicans prosecuted and convicted for adulterating beer with illegal ingredients, and brewers prosecuted and convicted for adulterating strong beer with table beer.

The awareness of the need for food safety continued throughout the early 19^th century, and others too added their voice to this concern. One such person was an author identifying himself as ‘an Enemy of Fraud and Villany’ in his Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning; or, Disease and Death in the Pot and the Bottle, published in 1829. His chapter on ‘Beer and ale’ is addressed in part to ‘Sir John Barleycorn’, a personification of barley and the beer made from it, and in it he lists 13 ‘poisonous’ ingredients (including opium, tobacco, molasses, and lime) which some brewers (“monsters who secretly poison the human race”) could draw upon to adulterate their beer, in order to:

1. Give a factitious strength and intoxicating quality to the beer
2. Increase the bitter principle and consequently to save hops
3. Add a stimulating aromatic flavour
4. Produce a fine mantling head to porter, and strike a fine nut brown colour over the froth
5. Prevent acidity, or to diminish or destroy it when formed

But as the author noted, “porter cannot be made of the necessary flavour and taste to suit the Londoners’ appetite, and of the proper colour to tickle his fancy by its appearance, of wholesome malt and hops”.

Treacle beer
4lb Treacle to 40 bottles water
boiled together with a handful
of hops, strain all & put a cupful
yeast after standing 24 hours
bottle it & cork it next day

There is a long history of brewing in Fife. Our earliest record is a sealed pittance writ from circa 1215, granting one shilling annually from the profits of the brewery at Muircambus near Elie to be given for lighting the cathedral church of St Andrews. Four centuries later, a roll from 1671-1672 which lists brewers in Anstruther records at least ten names for each period recorded, suggesting a prolific trade in the town. Further north, St Andrews was lucky enough to have its own maltings. The Minute book of the Maltmen, St Andrews, 1762-1849, records such information as rules, fees paid, and names of those admitted to the trade. In the early 19^th century it was also used as an account book for the maltmen, with records of cash received and cash paid out.

In the 19^th century the town of St Andrews was home to two breweries: the West Port Brewery on the north side of South Street, which was sold to William Haig (of whisky fame) in 1864, who then operated the brewery as Haig, Laing & Co.; and the Argyle Brewery, founded circa. 1823, run by the partnership of Ireland and Halket until 1827, when it was taken over by Rea Ireland.

In 1860 the Argyle Brewery passed into the hands of Rea’s son, David Stevenson Ireland, who remained in charge until his death in 1890. Two years later the company D.S. Ireland Ltd. was formed, but after ten years the company went into voluntary liquidation, and the brewery was sold to Wilson & Co., who manufactured and bottled aerated waters. Although beer continued to be bottled at the Argyle site, from brewers such as John Aitchison of Edinburgh, this was the end of brewing in St Andrews until the St Andrews Brewing Co. was established in 2012.

A rather fun item in our collections is A Vade mecum for malt-worms. Originally published in around 1720 in two parts (a third was promised, but seemingly never published), St Andrews’ copy is a 19^th century reprint. Written in verse it’s an amusing and satirical 18^th-century ‘good pub guide’ to London hostelries.

Opening with the kinds of ‘sots’ one may find in a pub (the ‘sot rampant’, ‘sot couchant’, ‘sot dormant’, and ‘sot saliant’), the author then begins his tour of the hostelries, giving an account of the house, the landlord, and the frequenters. Each entry is headed by a woodcut of the sign of the house. Clearly the author didn’t feel obliged to give every pub its own verse; at the foot of some pages are ‘other houses of note’. By such a means we discover that “Old Winter, at the Stones-end, sells excellent Bub [strong beer], and has a Parrot that swears as fast as a Dragoon”.

I wish you a happy Beer Day, and if you are out celebrating, take a leaf from Isobel Clayton’s book, and head out suitably attired!

Briony Harding
Assistant Rare Books Librarian