"real ale" two hundred years old.

In message , Tim writes

In 1809 strong ale (as distinct from beer) was still the most popular drink in rural and northern parts of Britain. Probably that's what was in the bottles.

All the books say ale didn't keep well, mostly on no authority at all. I've never heard of any modern tests of the keeping qualities of ale. The stuff in those bottles seems to have kept well in spite of the Indian climate. It's a pity they didn't say where it was brewed, but presumably it'd been shipped from Britain in casks and bottled in India like Hodgson's.

In the very early days of CAMRA I seem to remember some correspondence about bottled Guinness.

In those days it had sediment in the bottle as well as TASTE!. The bottle label had notches cut to help

Landlords and Stock Takers to establish when it was bottled. This was long before Best Before Dates.

Bottled Guinness was usually good for two or three weeks shelf life before gradually going off. However,

after eighteen months or so it became very drinkable but distinctly different from the rich smoky, burnt flavour

so loved by drinkers of the bottled stuff.

In message , Brian Waine writes

That's interesting. I could experiment with some of the bottle-conditioned stouts that are fairly easy to come by now, except for the difficulty of keeping them undrunk for long enough. I don't think they go off after three weeks, the distribution chain's longer than that.

I was never a great fan of Guinness, but the bottle conditioned stuff had real character - if not to my particular taste. It's so sad that they have dumbed it down so much.

Clearly moving back in time to primeval fish is far more important than having a quality product. :-(

In message , snipped-for-privacy@googlemail.com writes

A pub I worked at in the 80s had a couple of dozen bottles of White Shield gathering dust on the shelves. They'd been there for two years (no best-before dates then). They were lovely. When I'd drunk them the boss got some more: it was perfectly drinkable, but sweeter, less interesting and less moreish. They stopped making it for a while then started again, and the beer bores said it wasn't as good - of course it wasn't, it needed a couple of years to mature.

Courage Imperial Russian Stout - it was brewed at Simmonds' in Reading after Courage closed their own place in London. They brewed it every three years and it was said to be undrinkable when first bottled. It was usually about three years old by the time the previous brew ran out. It wasn't exactly a secret, you could buy it from any offie round here (ie Reading). Students used to try it because of the silly alcohol content, but it took us a while to develop a taste for it.

I took some home for Mum to try, and after all these years, this Xmas she said she missed it! I sent her a dozen of Comrade Bill Bartram's anti-Imperialist, which is nice but not matured properly - nor will it be, she'd drunk most of it already! Dark Star's is a bit closer to the original but still needs some cellar time. Brewdog's is a strong stout but not an imperial one.