Beer Rations

Introduction

Here, Arthur Machen is in high form. He maneuvers deftly from pleasant travelogue, through philosophizing upon the wonders of drink, and finally, ends with a strong condemnation, not only of Germans and Conscientious Objectors, but upon English brewers whose concern lies more with profit than quality. At the beginning of this New Year, let us toast with cwrw dda!

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Beer Rations
by
Arthur Machen
April 24, 1917

A many years ago I was in the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranée train going southward through France. There came a time in the journey when the train fled through a generous plain, bounded by low hillsides, open to the sun, very fruitful, and happy aspect.

And then the names of the railway stations became significant. One of them I noted, because it gave its name to an eighteenth-century “Encyclopædia,” an orthodox Encyclopædia, which tried to fight the Encyclopædia of Diderot and the coming revolution. But the other stations had happier and more festive memories; for they all came out of the wine-list. We were going through Burgundy and the station-boards bore such names as “Pommard,” “Romanée Conti,” “Richebourg,” and “Chambertin.”

A noble journey; a pilgrimage through the land of happy and immortal juices! It is with a shock that one realises that there are ruffians who dare to speak of these great wines as “alcohol,” just as there are other ruffians who called fried potatoes “starch.”

Well, I was reminded of this French journey the other day when I came to Burton. For no sooner does the train approach this city of beer than the great names appear in golden letters from every wall:—“Bass.” “Alsopp,” “Worthington,” “Salt,” ale is everywhere blazoned.

For Burton is a city, I feel assured, that is built about a vast barrel the model from which all barrels were fashioned; the huge vat whence flow all the streams of ale about the ways and cities and villages and inns of England. And, by a natural consequence, the scenery of Burton is wholly of barrels.

There are low and pleasant hills about Burton as there are about Burgundy; but hills are nothing there. There is a long street of smoky brick with savoury mist of seething malt about it, and at every few yards, as it seems to the stranger, a railway crossed the road. And look to the right and look to left along these railways, and you see nothing but pyramids of beer barrels. There are yards and spaces and sidings and enclosures, and they are all barrels. All these railway lines but exist for barrels; to carry barrels full of beer, to bring back barrels empty that they may be refilled.

The Germans boast falsely of beer, as they boost falsely concerning all things. They praise their mythical King Gambrinus as the first inventor of ale, but I believe they deeply err in this matter. Ale I claim as matter of Britain, together with the Legend of the Holy Graal and many other excellent and precious things.

For the Low Latin for ale is cervisia, which must be derived from the Welsh cwrw, and thus it may probably be inferred that at the time of the breaking up of the Roman Empire and in the wild days afterwards, it was the Britons who were notable for the making of beer.

However this may be, it is certainly the English—and the Scotch—who have excelled in the brewing of ale. German beer is well enough if a man be thirsty and in the humour for a few quarts of innocuous moisture, but it is not seriously to be compared with the product of our English vats. And other foreign ales are inferior to the German attempts. I once saw Flemish beer at Calais—and avoided it. It was muddy and unpleasant to the eye, and meat or drink which looks nasty usually tastes nasty. Burton has no serious competitor to fear.

There is a curious instance of the fame and merit of English Ale in the “Adventures of Casanova.” That ingenious rascal, being in company, I think in Germany, on one occasion, saw the servant handling round small glasses of a golden brown liquor. He tasted, found the drink strange, rare, delicious, and was asked by his hostess what he thought he was drinking. He guessed that it was Imperial Tokay.

He was wrong; it was old English ale, so esteemed as to be served as a liqueur. Such a drink, less strong but still mighty, pleased Charles X., the last legitimate King of France. When an exile in Edinburgh he drank Scotch Ale, and liked it so well that he called it the Burgundy of Scotland.

For the present it is almost treason to think of such generous and noble drinks as these. The Government says that the barley cannot be spared; there is nothing for it but to hear and obey. But when peace comes at last with victory then I trust that that great tun or vat which I have spoken of as being somewhere in Burton, the parent barrel of all lesser barrels, may once more be replenished with mighty ale to gladden the hearts of all the true maltworms of the isle Britain.

No we must be sparing of ale as we must be sparing of bread and of meat; but let us make no mistake; these three are the food and drink that make men. The others, the Conscientious Objector and the like, are no doubt produced by a ferment of cocoa and cabbage acting on an intelligence naturally feeble.

Indeed, I hope, though I fear I do not expect, that after the war English ale will be purged of some recent innovations, which are all for the worse, and restored to all its ancient honours. I was once taken over a modern brewery; I saw there many sacks of crushed Indian corn, many buckets full of a thick treacly fluid, many heaps of what looked like grey lumps of limestone. But I saw little malt and less of hope.

All this should be changed; true ale is the creature of malt and hops and of nothing else. Away with “invert sugars”—I suppose the grey lumps were invert sugars—away with strange grain, and let us return to the wisdom of our fathers and to the true and orthodox doctrine of brewing.

The brewers say that they make their ale out of chemicals because people won’t drink “the old heavy beers.” I am sorry, but I am afraid I don’t believe them; I think that they brew as they do because it pays them better.

There ought to be a war after the war; a war against all “substitutes”; that is, shams.

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The Weekly Machen

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Introduction and supplementary material – Copyright 2025 by Christopher Tompkins. All rights reserved.

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Dale Nelson contributed the following: