I swear, I’m going to have to start sending Martyn Cornell thank you notes. Or a Valentine’s Day card. Such is the regularity with which he unearths jewels of information from yesteryear.
Take his post from today, for example. In one collection of tidbits/titbits – read it and you’ll understand – he unearths British beer in Australia in the 1820’s, reveals a delightful-sounding beer cocktail and debunks Vinnie Cilurzo – sorry, Vinnie – as the original developer of the double IPA.
And speaking of “double” and “imperial” beers, please note that the beer being imported to Tasmania in the early 19th century was Barclay Perkins imperial double stout porter. Strong and hoppy, one must presume, or else it would most assuredly not merit the use of twin descriptors.
Hoppy? How about “Extra Hopped India Beer” – surely the same as modern double or Imperial IPA – from, of all places, Scotland in 1868? Martyn has the evidence, and so we must return to rewriting our beer histories yet again.
Thanks, Martyn. Brilliant stuff.
It’s almost as though the strength of the beer has effected the ability of its chroniclers to create lasting supporting documentation.
Thanks to Cornell and his fellow sleuth Ron Pattinson, I’ve pretty much come to the place that, like plots, all beers are retreads. Unless some evidence shows that a particular beer COULDN’T have been brewed in a previous era (it’s made with a newly-invented ingredient, say), I now assume it was.