Reminiscences

[CD]

I'm intrigued... what was so awful about the Ken Shales book? I don't have it and not familiar with it, but I do still have ragged copies of all the Berry and Lines stuff. I used to have a glossy thing that was exclusive to Boots ( McDonalds being the publisher, I think), but that disappeared years ago. Wish I could find it.

I expect you mean ‘Beer and Brewing’ published by Macdonald Guidelines in 1977. My copy gives the reference ISBN 0 356 06009 B, and you’re welcome to borrow it if unable to track one down.

The SIBA Beer Festival I went to yesterday was as good as ever despite the new location. Organised by my friendly brewer and supplier of yeast – every home brewer should have one – they’d had to carpet the marquees as they were pitched on a football field, which gave them a nice homely feel.

I’m probably a bit picky, but of the 50 or so beers sampled (among us), only about half a dozen produced those lovely tiny bubbles on the side of the glass when tilted, showing that they were in perfect condition. Now if they’d all been connected to cask breathers or Noddy balloons . . . !

 

[Gunge]

I expect you mean ‘Beer and Brewing’ published by Macdonald Guidelines in 1977. My copy gives the reference ISBN 0 356 06009 B, and you’re welcome to borrow it if unable to track one down.

That's the one! I googled it and got an image of the cover, don't know where I got the "lot of red" bit from! Thanks for the very kind offer of the loan but I'll decline... maybe my copy will turn up in due course and I'm glad that someone else remembers it out of all the oft-mentioned ones out there.

 

[Cwrw666]

I often think I'm living in a parallel universe. I'm sat here holding a copy of the Farmer's weekly book - home made country wines, beer, mead and metheglin - published in 1955. No mention of beer brewing needing a licence and there are several recipes, malt extract and hops, treacle and hops (yuk), but also proper malt beer.

 

[nottsbl]

Not an old-time home brewer but i did spend 1984-1990 in Saudi Arabia. You could buy distilled liquor (Sid - short for Sidiqi) but distilling it, even having it was dangerous - if cought, the Saudis would crucify you. By comparison, nearly all western expats made wine and beer at home, and as long as you didn't go out drunk in public, or drive drunk (a lot of expats did) the authorities would leave you alone (if caught, it was a standard result - 6 months in jail, followed by 80 lashes - laid on the floor, alternate strokes from 2 coppers with bamboo canes - followed by deportation. "Lashes" is actually misleading, as it didn't actually break the skin, just bruised it - a bum like black charred meat; western nurses, if caught, were instantly deported, never harmed - which made them very dangerous as they were reckless as hell! Not allowed to drive so you'd find yourself ferrying 6 drunk nurses back to their hospital from a party - you'd be sober but bricking it, as you'd be flogged, if caught, not them! ).

Anyhoo, how did you make your beer and wine I hear you ask. Well, all the supermarkets (big US-style, probably bigger than anything in the UK at the time) - sold what was effectively brands of non-alcoholic beer, red and white wine. It didn't say this on the label obviously. You bought a bin, say 6 cases of the beer stuff, 7 kilos of sugar and a packet of bakers yeast; some tubing; you reused the swing-top bottles this stuff came in; used Milton as a sterilizer; tipped it all in. In summer, in an un-airconditioned room, you could bottle ("beer" or "wine" ) after 3 days. Chilled, as I remember, this was quite palatable. But I guess it was like prison booze i.e. after months without, you tend to become less discriminating.

I do remember it was always very strong - going on holiday, standard pub measures of spirits, beer and wine tasted virtually non-alcoholic.

[If anyone was in Riyadh during that time, we probably ran into each other - the expat world was small and self-enclosed! Groups of expats living together in a villa used to run bars, to get on the party circuit - anyone on here remember "The Orphanage" or "units"? Expat alcoholic version of friends reunited]

 

[An Ankoù]

I'll dig it out from wherever I've chucked it and give you a few indicative quotes. It's his written style which is over-fussy and condescending, if I remember right. I'll have to identify it from the back cover as the cat pisssed on it in the early eighties and I had to rip the front cover off.

Was it this one?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/BOOTS-BOOK-HOME-WINE-MAKING/dp/0723407940

Nope, can't find it. It's probably gone the same way as your Boots book. I do remember that Shales came across as far too deferential to the Chancellor and gave (me, at least) the impression that home brewing was still some kind of semi-shady business that only naughty children were grudgingly allowed to engage in.

 

[pilgrimhudd]

Not an old-time home brewer but i did spend 1984-1990 in Saudi Arabia. You could buy distilled liquor (Sid - short for Sidiqi) but distilling it, even having it was dangerous - if cought, the Saudis would crucify you. By comparison, nearly all western expats made wine and beer at home, and as long as you didn't go out drunk in public, or drive drunk (a lot of expats did) the authorities would leave you alone (if caught, it was a standard result - 6 months in jail, followed by 80 lashes - laid on the floor, alternate strokes from 2 coppers with bamboo canes - followed by deportation. "Lashes" is actually misleading, as it didn't actually break the skin, just bruised it - a bum like black charred meat; western nurses, if caught, were instantly deported, never harmed - which made them very dangerous as they were reckless as hell! Not allowed to drive so you'd find yourself ferrying 6 drunk nurses back to their hospital from a party - you'd be sober but bricking it, as you'd be flogged, if caught, not them! ).

Anyhoo, how did you make your beer and wine I hear you ask. Well, all the supermarkets (big US-style, probably bigger than anything in the UK at the time) - sold what was effectively brands of non-alcoholic beer, red and white wine. It didn't say this on the label obviously. You bought a bin, say 6 cases of the beer stuff, 7 kilos of sugar and a packet of bakers yeast; some tubing; you reused the swing-top bottles this stuff came in; used Milton as a sterilizer; tipped it all in. In summer, in an un-airconditioned room, you could bottle ("beer" or "wine" ) after 3 days. Chilled, as I remember, this was quite palatable. But I guess it was like prison booze i.e. after months without, you tend to become less discriminating.

I do remember it was always very strong - going on holiday, standard pub measures of spirits, beer and wine tasted virtually non-alcoholic.

[If anyone was in Riyadh during that time, we probably ran into each other - the expat world was small and self-enclosed! Groups of expats living together in a villa used to run bars, to get on the party circuit - anyone on here remember "The Orphanage" or "units"? Expat alcoholic version of friends reunited]

My dad worked in Tehran in the early 90's they used to smuggle alcohol in by changing the weights for things that they'd ordered and the shipping company would stick the alcohol in the middle of the container. One day my Dad got a call from Bandar Abbas the main shipping port to ask if they could send someone down as a piano was leaking.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

One day my Dad got a call from Bandar Abbas the main shipping port to ask if they could send someone down as a piano was leaking

 

[Slid]

I'll dig it out from wherever I've chucked it and give you a few indicative quotes. It's his written style which is over-fussy and condescending, if I remember right. I'll have to identify it from the back cover as the cat pisssed on it in the early eighties and I had to rip the front cover off.

Was it this one?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/BOOTS-BOOK-HOME-WINE-MAKING/dp/0723407940

I had Ben Turner's book. This is a nice "coffee-table" book, with two rather weird beer recipes. The bitter uses a lot of sugar and the mild is a bit darker, Both are extract beers. At the time you could get Fuggles and Goldings in 4 oz poly bags and they were rubbish. I mean rubbish.

Lovely book, with pastel coloured pages, but very little for a beer brewer. Heavy focus on the then "real and sophisticated world" of wine making, using apples, elderberries and even less suitable ingredients.

 

[CD]

Harking back to the Dark Ages, when there was precious little printed information about home brewing , I had another go at making booze in 1958 (following my Dad’s primitive recipe), and it proved so popular with pals at the RAF Station where I was posted during National Service, that I thought I’d see if I could buy malt cheaper from a local brewery than from Boots.

I was most surprised when the worker whose palm I’d greased produced a sack of something that rustled, instead of the tub of sticky brown liquid I expected. Reckoning that if it works for them, it should for me, that night I boiled up 4 lbs of the stuff with the sugar, golden treacle, and hops. Don’t try this at home! Sixteen years later I learnt about mashing from Dave Line’s book.

The place I visited was Hole’s Brewery in Newark, which was bought by Courage in 1967 and closed 16 years later. This caused great sorrow among the locals, especially the wits who could no longer leer suggestively at a pretty barmaid and ask her “Have you got any Holes darling?”

 

[Hoppyland]

Well, I can't go back before 1963, but I do remember my dad brewing something called "Sarah's Bitter". Must have been about 1966/7?
He thought it was the bee's knees, because it was supposed to be a "traditional" recipe (as best as I recall, there was a note explaining how this "Sarah" was a wizard brewer in the NE, whose beer was so good that the locals flocked to her house) Plus, it had credibility because it used real grains. With hindsight, I can now see that it was a bag of crystal malt, together with some brown, wizened, dry things that could have been autumn leaves but were supposed to be hops. It needed a load of sugar because there was little real malt in there! Dad thought it was great (but then his normal pint was keg Ind Coop Double Diamond). I had no idea, but at least a couple of halves made me squiffy!