Friday 14 June 2013

Barclay Perkins news

I'm just back from a brief trip to London. Obviously I dropped by the London Metropolitan Archives while I was there. Mainly to complete my Whitbread set.

Unfortunately they seem to have forgotten to bring up one of my internet orders. Bugger. And I forgot to order another two through sheer incompetence. So I still don't have the full set. But, because Whitbread's brewing books mostly cover one brewing year (July to June) I do have photos from every single year.

My side project was the Lager logs of Barclay Perkins. Tracing the trajectory of Lager in the UK has become an obsession. And good old Barclay's, with their embracement of Lager in the 1920's, played a much more important role than most now realise.

Just had a quick look at a couple of brewing records from the 1925 and something sprang out: they were using Carlsberg yeast. Repitching from earlier brews, but clearly identified as Carlsberg. Not such a surprise, as their Lager brewer was Danish. Still nice to know.

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