Amber, Gold and Black by Martyn Cornell

Author:Martyn Cornell
Format: epub
Tags: Amber, Gold and Black: The History of Britain’s Great Beers
ISBN: 9780752475943
Publisher: History Press (Perseus)
Published: 2011-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

7

GOLDEN ALE

… her muscles felt sore from the unaccustomed strain of riding astride. Nothing had ever tasted so good as the cool golden ale she swallowed from a pewter tankard. She slept deeply that night and longer than she had intended …

Forever Amber, Kathleen Winsor, 1944

History is seldom straightforward, even when it’s only twenty-odd years old. In 1986 the Golden Hill brewery in Wiveliscombe, Somerset made a one-off beer to celebrate the 1,000th brewing of its Exmoor Ale. The beer, made only from pale Pipkin lager malt, with no crystal malt to bring it up to the amber/cornelian colour of most British bitters, but enough hops to give it the bitterness of an IPA, was given the name Exmoor Gold. It became a popular choice for drinkers and the brewery carried on making further brews of the beer.

Since then an army of similarly golden-coloured beers has appeared. There are currently more than 125 beers brewed in Britain with ‘gold’ or ‘golden’ in the name plus a dozen or so others in the same style called ‘summer ale’ or ‘blonde ale’ and others whose name does not immediately give them away, such as Big Lamp of Northumbria’s Prince Bishop Ale.

Based on the fact that Exmoor Gold was first brewed before any of its competitors, the Golden Hill brewery, now known as Exmoor brewery, markets its version of the style as ‘the original golden ale’. But was it? The tradition of golden beer went back at least to 1842, when William Saunders’s brewery in Burton upon Trent was advertising its ‘East India Pale and Golden Ales’ and Josef Groll was producing the first pale lager in Pilsen, Bohemia. The Germans now have Helles – ‘light’ – and the pale top-fermented Kölsch from Cologne and the French have bière blonde. Belgium has its own strong golden ale style pioneered by Duvel in 1970.

While most British beers continued to be ruddy-to-dark, there were very pale-coloured bitters in England before 1986, notably Boddington’s Bitter from Manchester and the ‘straw-coloured’ Taddy Bitter from Samuel Smith of Tadcaster, the forerunner to Old Brewery Bitter. Strong’s brewery in Romsey had Golden IPA; Holden’s brewery in Dudley was making Holden’s Golden Pale Ale before 1974, Offiler’s of Derby sold Golden Bitter and Burt’s brewery on the Isle of Wight brewed Golden Ale in the 1960s, while J.W. Green, the Luton brewer, called its Masterbrew pale ale a ‘golden brew’ in the 1950s. Earlier still, Duncan Gilmour of Sheffield sold a bottled Golden Pale Ale and Barclay Perkins of Southwark, London, brewed Golden Hop Ale. Back in 1887, exactly ninety-nine years before Exmoor Gold appeared, Charles Watkins & Son of the Hereford brewery was advertising Golden Sunlight Pale Ale.

Hall & Woodhouse in Dorset introduced the pale, strong Tanglefoot bitter in 1981, but it was always described as ‘lightish’ or ‘straw-coloured’, not golden. After 1986 more very pale beers began to appear, such as Miners Light from the Miners Arms brewery in Somerset, first made in the summer of 1989, but

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