Just ploughing my way through Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks and come across a reference to the head of the eponymous family enjoying his porter while the Bavarian hop merchant who has been squiring his daughter sings the praises of Bavarian beer (presumably golden). It’s set in the 1860s in a North German port that approximates to Lubeck, while Mann was writing this towards the end of the 19th century — this suggests that German porter was still common enough to be noted. Presume that the unification of Germany in 1871 was the beginning of the Reinheitsgebot being rolled out through the whole of the Second Reich. This is not exactly breaking news, I know, but also makes me think about other great works of literature that feature beer. Flann O’Brien and porter are synonymous (whether in At Swim Two Birds or other works I know not), I seem to recall Bass’ No 1 barley wine being mentioned in the evening section of Joyce’s Ulysses, while a bit more closer to our time, Graham Swift’s Waterland featured a town brewery that produced an extra strong ale for some local event (possibly the end of WW1), mass consumption of which caused the brewery to be burnt down. Swift also wrote Last Orders, though for me one of the best books about pub life is JM O’Neill’s Duffy Is Dead — if you ever spent time in Hackney’s Irish pubs in the 1980s then this is a glorious if bleak evocation of time ill spent.
(by the way that’s not a glass of German porter, it’s actually an Alt from a brewpub outside Dusseldorf and I’m not making comparisons with various forms of fermentation either, I just thought it a nice picture)
It's your only man.
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to find some German porter to try. I saw some on an on-line store sometime last year, but I can't recall the brand. However, my neighbour comes from Saxony and said a brewery relativly local to his home town makes one. Although he did go on to say it was women's beer, whatever that is, he promised to bring a few bottles next time he visits his family.
Hoepfner Porter has been recommended to me.
ReplyDeleteAhh, that's the one I spotted last year! Thanks. Although it's not the one the Saxon was talking about. At least he said it was a porter.
ReplyDeleteThere's a long history of Porter brewing in Germany. I've got a couple of German-language descriptions of how to brew it: one from the 1830's and the other from 1950's East Germany.
ReplyDeletePorter seems to have been more popular in the north and east of Germany. There were at least half a dozen East German breweries that made one in the 1980's. I had one, though I can't recall from which brewery it came.
In the 1860's Bavarian lager would have been dark. They didn't brew any pale lager in Munich before the 1880's.
Ron: that’s why I put ‘presumably golden’ (another version of ‘allegedly’), because I wasn’t sure and wasn’t going to spend the afternoon trying to find out; in fact I thought of you when I saw the passage in the book, given your passion for porter.
ReplyDeletebit of 'blog bling' for you at my blog....though it may be too rude for your sidebar.
ReplyDeleteyo, Adrian, howdy. So you really ARE the beerlord. Love it. Also vaguely nostalgic for this template. It was mine before. And blame me for the rude bling. I gave it to Jane. She gave me a much nicer prettier sparkly one instead, as is right and fitting
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