Ron Pattinson

AllBeer Writer
Written By Rob Cadwell

Welcome to we are beer people, a podcast all about the many different people who help us enjoy beer.

One of the things I love about beer and brewing is that it is of its time, of its place and of its people. We can look into a brewery – see why it brews certain beers, what was popular, who was making it, where the ingredients came from and how it was brewed - and it tells us so much about the time, the place and the people.

That’s why I’m really excited to speak with today’s guest, Ron Pattinson.

Ron’s a beer writer and a beer historian – well known for researching uncovering, deciphering and documenting historical beer styles and brewing practices.

That’s no mean feat, when you might have to navigate a brewery’s idiosyncratic archives take thousands of notes and photos and make sense of large amounts of data recorded and stored with variable consistency.

You might have heard of him from his website Shut Up About Barclay Perkins or his publications, which range from the homebrewers' guide to vintage beer to city and country guides around Europe.

So let’s head into the archives and have a chat with one of the beer people about the beer and its place in history. 

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Ron Pattinson

Intro/outro music: That One Time by Midnight Daydream

Transcript

Please note this is an automated transcript (so will certainly contain errors and mistranslations but should give you a good gist of the conversation):

Ron: Yeah, I think this is exactly what people think. Ron: You get the wrong idea if you just think about the beers that have survived from that time, and that's how it was. Ron: You might think these were all just boring brown bitters that all tasted the same, but that's not the case because they were far more distinctive. Ron: What you have to think about is a beer like Harvey's. Ron: So beers like Harvey's didn't used to Italy stand out because there were loads of beers like that. Ron: That's the one that stayed the same. Rob (Host): Hello and welcome to we are beer people, a podcast all about the many different people who help us enjoy beer. Rob (Host): I'm your host, Rob Cadwell, and I reckon if you're listening to this, then there's a good chance that you are one of the beer people too. Rob (Host): You might be involved in the world of beer. Rob (Host): You may want to find out more about the industry, or perhaps you simply enjoy drinking the stuff. Rob (Host): So join me now as I have a chat with one of the beer people. Rob (Host): I love about beer and brewing is that it's of its time, of its place, and of its people. Rob (Host): We can look into a brewery and see why it brews certain beers, what was popular, who was making it, where the ingredients came from and how it was brewed. Rob (Host): And it tells us so much about the time, the place and the people. Rob (Host): And that's why I'm really excited to speak with today's guest, Ron Pattinson. Rob (Host): Ron's a beer writer and a beer historian, and he's well known for researching, uncovering, deciphering and documenting historical beer styles and brewing practices. Rob (Host): And that's no mean feat when you consider that might involve having to navigate a brewery's idiosyncratic archives, take thousands of notes and photos, and make sense of large amounts of data recorded and stored with variable consistency. Rob (Host): And you might have heard of him from his website. Rob (Host): Shut up about Barclay Perkins or his publications, which range from the home brewer's guide to vintage beer to city and country guides around Europe. Rob (Host): So let's have a chat with one of the beer people about beer and its place in history. Rob (Host): Hello, Ron, and thank you very much for joining us today. Rob (Host): And a very big welcome to we are beer people. Rob (Host): How are you doing? Ron: Oh, very well, thank you. Rob (Host): Fantastic. Rob (Host): We've got snow here at the moment in England, which saying is quite a big thing. Rob (Host): And I heard you had snow earlier on this morning. Ron: Yeah, we had a dusting that didn't even. Ron: A few spots here and there, but I'll count it as snow. Rob (Host): Yeah, I'm sure there'll be traffic chaos here later on with our dusting we've got here. Rob (Host): But as we're recording through the wonders of the Internet, can you tell us a little bit about where you're recording from and help paint a picture for our listeners? Ron: Well, I'm here in my house in Amsterdam, so, yeah, I've got my garden just out there. Ron: Well, I say my garden, it's my wife's garden, really. Ron: Just out there that I can look at. Ron: It's very pleasant and very cozy, especially now I don't have to work anymore. Rob (Host): That always helps massively, I think. Rob (Host): And how long have you been in Amsterdam for? Ron: I moved to Holland in 1987, so quite a while ago. Rob (Host): So I wonder, Ron, if you could take us back to the beginning and how did you get into beer writing to begin with and why beer, I guess. Rob (Host): What was it that brought you here? Ron: Okay, how do I get involved in beer writing? Ron: Yeah, that's an interesting one. Ron: Well, the first thing I ever wrote was a long time ago, which was, I think, in 1989, which was for an article I wrote for what's brewing about pubs in East Berlin. Ron: And that was the first thing I did. Ron: And then I didn't do anything for ages until the Internet arrived. Ron: And then I started having my own website, which evolved into the European Beer Guide, which I started in. Ron: The first stuff I did was in 1996. Ron: So for about another ten years after that, I was writing a lot of basically travel guides, guides to pubs, but also guides to breweries and stuff like that, and the occasional article. Ron: And then when I was still doing that, I started to get interested in beer history. Ron: And then once I started looking at. Ron: Started doing things like looking at a lot of original sources, then that's when I started doing my blog and publishing basically the stuff I was researching on that. Ron: And then, yeah, I put some of that stuff into books. Ron: And then I got asked to do a proper book by a publisher, which is a home brewer's guide to vintage beer. Ron: So that came out in 2014. Ron: And since then, I've been doing a lot of self published books along similar lines, really. Ron: So a combination of beer history and homebrew recipes. Ron: So I've got a whole series of things. Ron: I mean, the idea is, this was my grand project many years ago when I first started this was to write a history of british beer from 1700 to 1973. Ron: And I thought I might get that in one book, which was a bit. Ron: Being a bit optimistic. Ron: So basically, each chapter from that book has ended up being a book of its own. Ron: So I've done from 1914 to 1970 now in ones I've already published and currently I'm working on one about the 1970s and another one which is 1880 to 1914, which is actually a book I really want to do because I think that's probably the most interesting period of british beer. Ron: I think that's when, if I was able to go back in time to any period to go and drink the beer, that'd be the one I'd pick because I think you've got a point where they start to get fairly good control of the beer that was being brewed. Ron: They're bringing quite a range of styles, quite a lot of nice strong beers. Ron: So yeah, I think that'd be quite fun to go back to. Ron: It's a book that I'm really interested in doing and especially seeing as I can write loads of recipes and hopefully get people to brew the beers. Rob (Host): That sounds brilliant. Rob (Host): I love the sound of that. Rob (Host): And how did you get into writing in the first place? Ron: Well, I'd always been into it when I was a kid, and then I wrote for the student newspaper a bit in Leeds, writing music stuff, mostly because one of my friends was the arts editor, so he got us to do all the reviews for him. Ron: And then a lot of it was when I was living in the States in the mid eighty s and I was writing a lot of letters because I didn't want them to be boring. Ron: I was making quite a bit of effort. Ron: So I was writing maybe five or six letters a week all by hand in those days. Ron: Not even cheating, doing on a computer. Ron: Yeah. Ron: And so basically through that I sort of got a style of writing and then that carried on to when I started doing the stuff on my website. Ron: Yeah, it just sort of went on from there. Ron: But for a while I was writing things for airline magazines. Ron: So the little sort of town reviews you have where you have a few restaurants and a few pubs and stuff like that. Ron: I was doing those. Rob (Host): No, I know those. Ron: Yeah, it was a time when I was unemployed, but it was really dead good practice because you get like 100 words to write about somewhere and it's incredibly difficult to write anything that's even vaguely amusing in that number of words. Ron: So it was quite good fun trying to get jokes in and trying to be informative at the same time in a really small number of words. Ron: So it was very good practice in some ways for writing. Rob (Host): Yeah, every word's got to count there. Rob (Host): I guess there's been that common thread for where you've done city guides and things like that around Europe. Ron: Yeah, I tried quite hard when there was a certain point when I was doing writing pub reviews, when I realized that if you just describe the pub and how it looks and stuff, it's really boring. Ron: And what that you really wanted to do was describe what your reaction to the pub was and how you felt in it. Ron: So a more emotional description of the pub rather than a physical one. Ron: And that's why I tried to go for it, to try and say, well, what was it like for me in this pub? Ron: What was my feeling about it? Ron: Well, I hope people like that, and I thought it was more fun to write that way. Ron: But the whole thing about writing pub guides is it's just a complete mugs game, especially nowadays when things change so quickly. Ron: It's why I gave up trying to keep them up to date, because it was just so much work. Ron: And, yeah, as I spent the whole of my life just trying to keep everything up to date and that's not what I wanted to do. Rob (Host): Absolutely. Rob (Host): I mean, it's a good excuse to go out to a pub again and try it again, but I think you're fighting a losing battle there, aren't you? Rob (Host): And it's best you can take a snapshot of that moment in time and that visit you made at that time to describe how that was and share that. Ron: Yeah, and sometimes I had some quite nice stories about pubs and that was nice to share. Ron: But, yeah, also my pub guides, I always say it's a secret family album as well, because in the photographs in the pub guides, there's loads of my family and friends in the background, just not particularly looking like they're having their photograph taken. Ron: So obviously there's loads of people who are just in the background, but also in quite a lot of the photos, there's people I know in the background and I've deliberately used those photos. Ron: So, yeah, you can see my kids and everyone in there. Rob (Host): That's really nice and really autobiographical. Rob (Host): So you can look back at those and can chart your different visits that you made? Ron: Well, yes. Ron: Well, that's also why I always write a whole series of blog posts about when I go traveling with my kids, partly so they'll be able to read this when they're older. Ron: I mean, they find it really annoying when I'm taking photographs of things all the time and making notes and stuff, so they're always getting really angry. Ron: But I told them they'll appreciate it in one day. Rob (Host): So much so that they've inspired the name of your blog as well. Ron: Though. Ron: Yeah, I should have. Rob (Host): About Barclay Perkins the Barclay Perkins brewery was founded in 1616 in Southwark, south London. Rob (Host): And around 200 years ago, it was the largest brewery in the world. Ron: When I first started looking at brewing records, Barkley Perkins is one of the places I started, and I'd keep going on about it to the kids and my wife, and they got really fed up with it. Ron: And so that's what the kids would say to me. Ron: Shut up about Barclay Perkins. Ron: And so the blog originally was somewhere where I could put all this stuff that I was finding out that my family didn't want to hear about and maybe tell someone who did actually want to listen. Rob (Host): Fantastic. Rob (Host): There's definitely an audience, though, of people there that do go to it, and it's such an amazing repository, if you're looking for old classic styles. Rob (Host): And I love when you kind of share the grist that was used in a certain year versus another year, or from one brewery to another brewery. Rob (Host): And I think I love sort of seeing that sort of information, that detail, and just quickly. Rob (Host): Grist is the ground mold and grains ready for mashing? Ron: Well, yeah. Ron: Well, I find it fun as well. Ron: I'm never quite sure who else does, but, yeah, they get hold of that stuff. Ron: It's an awful lot of work. Ron: And I often think that if I'd realized how much work some of the stuff was, I'd never have started in the first place, because, yeah, the whole thing about collecting photographs of brewing records and then going through them, it takes a lot of time. Ron: So, I mean, I've got literally thousands of photographs of brewing records and I've still not gone through all of them at the moment. Ron: It's on a need to do basis that I go through them. Ron: So I'll go through them ones I haven't already done, I'll go through them when that's a period that I'm working on. Ron: I've got other ones which are periods, yeah. Ron: That I'm not doing, writing anything about at the moment. Ron: So I'll just leave those often, because I know I'm not going to use them in the future and it might take me quite a lot of time to actually transcribe everything. Ron: So, I mean, what I do is I take everything, I go through the brewing records and I've got spreadsheets and I'll put all the information in the dose. Ron: So it means that I can go pull up information really quickly, see which malts brewers were used, a brewery was using in a certain year, how strong their beers were, stuff like that. Ron: Just so I've got it all to hand. Ron: And then, yeah, I mean, I spend a lot of time just manipulating all the data I've collected. Ron: So making tables of things, comparing stuff. Ron: Yeah, it's all very time consuming, this type of thing. Ron: So at the moment, at one time, I was not as focused and I was just going through doing loads and loads of different stuff. Ron: But now I've realized, well, yeah, I've got to use my time a bit more sensibly and think, well, what is it I'm trying to achieve at the moment? Ron: What makes the most sense to go through? Ron: I almost got really distracted with some Heineken stuff the other day. Ron: Just happened to see on the city archive site something from 1948, so I could see what the strength of their beers were. Ron: They were brewing in 1948, which I found quite interesting. Ron: So their domestic pilsner hadn't gone up to full strength again yet, and it was 10.7 Plato. Rob (Host): And Plato here is one of the units used to measure a beer's density, known as its gravity. Rob (Host): So a thick and multistout is going to have a much higher gravity or density than a very clean and crisp lager. Rob (Host): And gravity is also an indication of the extent a beer has fermented. Rob (Host): As yeast eats sugar during fermentation and converts it to alcohol, the density of the beer will change too, giving it an indication of progress. Ron: So probably, I think only about 4%, but they were brewing an export version at full strength, and then Munich one was eleven degrees Plato. Ron: So they're dark lager, so probably also about 4%. Ron: Yeah, I mean, I find this sort of stuff interesting, but I don't know. Ron: I mean, partly because I've got a whole load of information about Heineken's beer during the war, but only up until, like, I think, 1943. Ron: And then there's a bit of a gap because they don't have the brewing records after that, even though I know they were brewing right up until 1945. Ron: Yeah, I've got some amazing information about dutch brewing during World War II. Ron: Oh, God. Ron: The minutes from the dutch brewing organization. Ron: They're really interesting because it's got lots of stuff about how they're trying to. Ron: I mean, they say in the minutes at a certain point that what their aim is is to have not happen. Ron: What happened to Belgium during World War I, where most of the breweries got all the copper stripped out by the Germans and loads of the breweries never reopened. Ron: And so the dutch brewing organization said right at the start of the war that one of their aims was to try and keep all the breweries open and not have that happen, not have them have their equipment stripped out. Ron: And in that aim, they're actually incredibly successful. Ron: And the main way they argued to the Germans that they should leave the breweries alone was, you want us to brew beer for you, don't you? Ron: And so they were basically said, well, yes, you should leave the breweries open so we can supply you with your beer ration. Ron: And, I mean, the stupid thing is that the Germans let the brewers organization organize the beer rations, so they knew exactly where all the german troops were and how many of them were there were, because they knew what the beer ration was. Ron: So if they had to supply so much beer at this location, they knew exactly how many german troops there were there. Ron: And this information they passed on to the Allies. Rob (Host): Wow. Ron: Yeah, it's a really interesting story. Ron: But the whole thing of it, you can see the minutes of the brewers organization, is, it's a wonderful insight into how people would react under occupation, because what they're trying to do is they're trying to mitigate all the bad effects of it. Ron: So they're always negotiating with the Germans, trying to keep things as favorable to them as they possibly can. Ron: And it's a really interesting insight that you often don't see in the things that are going on behind the scenes. Rob (Host): No, it's fascinating that. Rob (Host): And where would you get that information from? Rob (Host): Because I guess from brewery to brewery, from country to country, or even from brew to brew. Rob (Host): The type of information and where you're able to get it from, how it's stored, how it's accessed, varies, but also chronologically, that's going to vary hugely. Rob (Host): If you're looking at the 1970s, the 1940s, the 19 hundreds, and you're talking about documenting it from the 17 hundreds onwards, that's going to be a huge range of how you're accessing that information. Ron: Yeah, personally, I'm now easy going back much more than about 1800, because there's not that much hard information about beer before then. Ron: You got a few analyses from the late 18th century where people. Ron: Early analyses of beer. Ron: So you got, was it this guy in the 1770s, did some of the first experiments with the hydrometer and analyzing beers. Ron: So you got some stuff from early Porter, which is interesting, but other than that, you don't really get much hard information until after 1800. Ron: So I prefer to go on from there. Ron: Most of the stuff I got comes from brewing records. Ron: You've also got things like analyses that were published, analyses of beers that were published in chemical journals, medical journals, lots of stuff from the British medical Journal and the Lancet, weirdly enough, both of them where they had some quite good analyses of beer at various points in the 19th century. Ron: So things like that. Ron: They're also training manuals for brewers, those types of technical manuals. Ron: They're good sources, though you have to be a bit careful with those, because some people had some weird theories at times, which, thankfully, it's easier to spot nowadays than it might have been at the time. Ron: But sometimes the things where you think, well, yeah, that's a bit weird. Ron: There's one who goes on about electricity all the time, and how you have to try and avoid electricity in your beer. Ron: And it's a bit weird working with. Rob (Host): The notions and information they had at the time. Ron: Yeah, but this is reasonably late eight, 19th century, so, yeah, I should have known better anyway. Ron: So, yeah, sometimes you have to take those with a pinch of salt, whereas with the brewing records. Ron: Yeah, mostly I take those at face value, partly because after a certain point, these things are legal documents, so this is part of the tax system, so they're not things you could just throw any old information into. Ron: These things are supposed to be accurate. Ron: Right. Ron: And you could get into a lot of trouble if they weren't. Ron: So, yeah, I mean, I believe those pretty much, though there might have been cases before certain ingredients were legal, when they might have been thrown in without them saying. Ron: So things like licorice and a stout, they might have done. Ron: Yeah. Ron: Then again, maybe not, because the penalties were quite big for not using authorized ingredients. Ron: So it probably put most people off. Ron: So mostly you can believe those as being true. Ron: And then for statistics, it's this thing, the Brewers Almanac, which is published by the Brewers Society, and then its successor, the statistical handbook, which is basically the same thing, but with just the statistics and not the other stuff that you had in the earlier ones, which is like all the legislation and things like that, which is dead handy for people like me. Ron: So those. Ron: I mean, I've got loads of different years of them between them. Ron: I've been able to assemble these really long strings of statistics. Ron: So things like UK beer production, I mean, I've got it going back to, I don't know, the 18th century sometime right through, until whenever the last time I bothered picking them up. Ron: So they're probably about 2015, 2016, something like that. Ron: So 200 od years worth. Ron: And of other statistics, maybe not quite that long, but quite long spreads of them, because that's what I like. Ron: I like to look at things over a very long period of time. Ron: So it's nice to have really long sets of statistics. Ron: And so the individual books will have ones for like, maybe ten or 15 or 20 years. Ron: So I don't have every edition of them. Ron: If I get one every ten years, they'll get all the statistics I need. Ron: I just have to put them, piece everything together. Ron: That's another thing that takes time. Rob (Host): I can imagine. Rob (Host): Yeah. Rob (Host): And how would you then go about sort of bringing that data together with data from an individual brewery or that type of thing? Ron: Well, then you can do something like, okay, one of the statistics they have is brewing materials. Ron: So I could look at any specific year and I can say, well, how much malt sugar, adjuncts, hops went into beers on average? Ron: How does this compare with the recipes of this particular brewery? Ron: Then you can say, well, what do they compare to on average? Ron: Because when you look at it, at the numbers of the materials for the whole country, that gives you a genuine average for all beer that was. Ron: So you wouldn't be able to do that without. Ron: Those mean I've got masses of information for certain individual breweries, but you don't know how representative that was. Ron: If I'd only ever looked at William Younger's brewing records, I would have an incredibly false impression of scottish brewing, because it turns out they were different to all the others, at least all the others'brewing records I've ever looked at. Ron: They were not just a little bit different, but incredibly different. Ron: That's why you have to be very careful about just about making two broad conclusions from a small amount of data. Ron: I mean, at the moment, I'm quite interested in Ireland, and I'd like to go and have a. Ron: Go to Ireland and do some more research. Ron: But I'm reluctant to write anything much about Ireland because I've only got a very limited number of brewing records that don't give me a very complete picture. Ron: I don't even have ones that can cover very long periods of time. Ron: And so, yeah, I've just got these little snapshots. Ron: It's very interesting little snapshots, but it's not enough to actually start writing a complete book about. Ron: I'd need way more information. Ron: And Ireland in general, it's harder to find information about than it is for the UK, is what I've found. Ron: Unfortunately, even though there do seem to be quite a lot of brewing records preserved, a lot of them at Guinness, which is a bit of a problem. Ron: It's really annoying. Ron: I went around Guinness a few years ago with some people from Goose island. Ron: It was really friendly, the young archivists there, but it seems like it's changed now. Ron: Yeah, I have emailed and asked if I can have a look around, but not a personal contact anymore, which is annoying. Rob (Host): So I guess you really need that context then, from the brewing records, the statistics. Ron: Yeah, they all give you a complete picture. Ron: I mean, other things I use are price lists, because what you find, I have access to the british newspaper archive. Ron: And in there you'll find newspaper adverts from breweries, which used to be for the beer that they were selling to private customers for people at home. Ron: But you'll have a full list of their beers and the prices. Ron: And so you can see, well, yeah, these are the beers that people were producing, these are the draft beers, and you can see which are the bottled beers that are producing. Ron: So it's really interesting. Ron: And because the prices were incredibly stable between 1870 and 1914, you can really say, okay, well, if a beer is costing 36 shillings for a barrel, it's probably going to be about this strength from breweries, where the brewing records might not exist anymore. Ron: You also get a pretty good idea of what beers they were brewing and what strength they were. Ron: And you can see how much they were charging for them as well. Rob (Host): Were there particular things, you think, that drove the types of beers that we were drinking over the years? Ron: Well, fashion a lot of it. Ron: Exactly how beers were. Ron: Well, a lot of that's driven by external factors. Ron: So, I mean, if you look at the development of beer styles in Britain, an awful lot of it just comes from the effects of war. Ron: So you see that you have this transformation at the end of the 18th century, when the malt tax goes right up to pay for all the wars with the French. Ron: And that makes porter brewers look at how they were brewing and move away from using an all brown malt crisp to one that was mostly pale malt. Ron: And that was a huge transformation in the way the beers were brewed, and also had an impact on how the beers tasted and how the beers looked. Ron: And that was completely driven by external factors. Rob (Host): In a way, tax is a key kind of component. Ron: Yeah. Rob (Host): Like tax today, for instance, know, low abv beers have a lot less tax on them. Rob (Host): And so you're seeing those beers being brewed under a threshold. Ron: Yeah, yeah. Ron: Things like that have a hugely distorting effect. Ron: Or you have the thing in the states where beers, whatever the strength, tax at the same level. Ron: And that's why you have so many really strong beers in the states, because there's no tax disadvantage in doing that. Ron: And why people trying to produce three and a half and 4% beers struggle so much because of the way the tax system is. Ron: They cost almost as much to produce as full strength beers, so they have to sell them for the same price. Ron: It completely distorts the american market. Ron: And yeah, the way they're doing in the UK, yeah, it's going to distort it as well. Ron: It's fairly obvious. Ron: And money is the thing that drives everything. Ron: So that's what's driven changes in the past. Ron: I mean, some of it's been technological as well. Ron: Well, a lot of it's just fashion people. Ron: You don't want to drink what your granddad's drinking. Ron: That's a big part of what it is. Ron: I keep telling people lager is going to go out of style soon. Ron: It really is. Ron: You just watch when it does, how quickly sales drop off. Rob (Host): I hope you're enjoying our chat, and if you like what you're hearing, there are a few things that you can do that really help us out and help other people find the podcast. Rob (Host): Number one, follow or subscribe to we are beer people podcast wherever you get your podcasts and leave a review or rating. Rob (Host): Number two, share the episode on your socials or even in actual real life. Rob (Host): And if you want to stay up to date with all things, we are beer people. Rob (Host): You can visit our website, wearebeerpeople co. Rob (Host): UK, where you can sign up for a monthly newsletter and you can follow us on social media at wearebeerpeople. Rob (Host): And if you have any questions or comments or want to hear from any beer people, then pop me a message. Rob (Host): Now back to the podcast. Rob (Host): It is really interesting. Rob (Host): Obviously, the bulk of mainstream beer sales in the UK is lager, but that increasing interest that you're seeing in craft breweries, making craft lagers and those sorts of things which wasn't there maybe five years ago. Rob (Host): I think there's a renewed interest where people have had lots of really hoppy beers, parallels ipas and things like that, but are now getting more interest in lagers. Rob (Host): So we're seeing the growth of those as well as interest in dark mean. Ron: If I can say I actually didn't go to the States last year, I'm talking about what I saw from the year before that. Ron: And also from what I've seen on the Internet, there seems to be a lot more interest in dark lagers in the US. Ron: But even so, I say that it's still a small fraction of what the market there is. Ron: So it's very much a niche of a niche. Ron: But there definitely seems to be more interest in things like czech dark lager styles, I think, especially seeing as the BJCP and people have finally recognized they actually exist. Ron: So I've encouraged people to make them. Ron: But I had a few last time I was over in the States. Ron: I mean, a really nice czech style one in Atlanta. Ron: So people seem to be more interested in that. Ron: My son was telling me that they were making a much better job of german style pilsner in the States when we were over there in 2022. Ron: So yeah, people do seem to be. Ron: I think there's more interest in lager, but I actually found the variety when I was in the States recently. Ron: Not that great. Ron: And virtually no dark beers, other than the few dark lagers, I found virtually no porters. Ron: But the only stouts I saw were nitro stouts, which I don't really like. Ron: Yeah, but yeah, in the UK. Ron: I'm just trying to think. Ron: When I was in the UK recently, oh, I was pleased to see some nice dark mild. Ron: Actually that was good. Ron: Yeah, really nice. Ron: Marble mild. Rob (Host): Oh, lovely. Rob (Host): Yeah, really good. Rob (Host): You mentioned licorice earlier as a ingredient that was maybe added in from the unauthorized list of ingredients I saw today on an email for a new low alcohol beer from a craft brewery near me, siren. Rob (Host): They're doing kind of a new porter, which I guess it's to make up the kind of flavor that you need on a low alcohol beer. Rob (Host): So it's half percent, but it included licorice as well. Ron: But people did that. Ron: What you'll see is you'll find loads of recipes in 19th century books and 18th century books, 19th century books where they'll be saying about, oh, using licorice in it and people will get the wrong idea. Ron: They're thinking, oh, commercial breweries would use this. Ron: But no, these are recipes for domestic brewers where you could use what the h*** you liked. Ron: This is one of the advantages you had over commercial brewers, that you could use things like licorice, which they would have liked to use, but which they weren't allowed to do. Rob (Host): We know how big, like, domestic brewing was, versus commercial brewing at that time. Ron: Oh, when you're looking at the early decades of the 19th century, I think domestic brewing was maybe about a third of beer production. Ron: Is this everything from the agricultural laborer making a little bit of beer for himself to the local lords like tracker house having their own reasonably sized breweries? Ron: Because you have to remember that domestic brewers were often on a larger scale than commercial brewers because a lot of the commercial brewers were just brewing for their own pub at the time. Ron: So not brewing huge quantities, whereas if you've got a large estate and you'd got hundreds of workers, you would have a decent sized brewery. Ron: And, I mean, this also covers domestic brewers. Ron: That also covers things like the universities, where the colleges, a lot of them had their own breweries. Ron: I think the last college brewery only closed in the 1930s, and they would be brewing in reasonable quantity. Ron: So it's not just thinking, oh, these are just like home brewers. Ron: Some of these people were brewing quite a lot of beer, so they'd often party gale and run off a weaker beer. Ron: So obviously that would be the stuff the servants would be getting. Ron: Then they'd have sort of like a normal strength beer, which I guess is the stuff that would be the everyday drinking for the members of the actual household. Ron: And then you'd have the really strong beers they'd make and lay down for years and years on our end, which is what they get out when they had their posh guest round and wanted to show off. Ron: No. Ron: And so they'd have different classes of beer, depending on who it was for. Ron: And, yeah, for things like the harvest. Ron: People expected beer at the harvest, but it wasn't stuff that was very strong. Ron: It would only be like maybe 4%. Ron: It was about rehydration, it wasn't about getting plastered. Rob (Host): In an early episode, we spoke with Henry Kirk, who mentioned during his time at Fuller's, he was aware that you were helping out with going through kind of the fuller's brewing records and helping to unearth those and decipher those. Rob (Host): So when they were brewing their new recipes there from the past, masters, talk us through how that came around and what you did. Ron: I think it was something that John Keeling had been thinking about. Ron: And then he commented on my blog, and I just said to him, can I come and look at your brewing records? Ron: And he said, yes. Ron: So I went round there and I was photographing some of their old brewing books, and we were talking about this, and I think this is where it came up. Ron: I suppose this is something you must have had in mind before on about them doing some beers. Ron: Based on previous brews they'd had, I would have be interested in taking part. Ron: So, yeah, I was never quite sure how much I genuinely contributed to this. Ron: Maybe a bit. Ron: Because the thing is that with fullness, it's not that difficult, because the old brewing records are in exactly the same format as their modern ones are. Ron: But, yeah, well, it was nice always having a chat with Derek and John about the old recipes, so it was a very fun thing to take part in. Ron: I did get quite good at reading their brewing records because I got a whole load of photos of them, and I've been through a lot of them, so I do know where I have a good idea about what this stuff means. Ron: But they still got types of sugar in that. Ron: They don't know what they are. Ron: Even ones that they were using as recently as the 1960s and 70s, they've no idea what they are anymore. Ron: Yeah. Rob (Host): Henry mentioned there's a few instances where, for hops, it might just say a farm or a region, but I think you could know, actually, it means this farmer. Rob (Host): And they were using this type of hop. Ron: Well, yeah, sometimes. Ron: And you can see the sort of get used to the sort of abbreviations they use. Ron: Yeah, mostly you're lucky to get anything more than just the region. Ron: That's all they really give you, mostly. Ron: And then you just have to guess from that. Ron: And sometimes you can guess from you've got some idea from the grower's name, where the hops come from. Rob (Host): And are there any particular trends and things you think you've seen over the years? Rob (Host): I'm sure there's lots from historic brews as we go through the years. Ron: Loads of trends. Ron: Yeah. Ron: To and from various types of beer. Ron: I mean, if you're talking long term trends in british beer, one of the interesting things in the 20th century was the move away from bottled beer that you see in the, which is interesting if you're looking at, say, the 1950s and 1960, you're looking at 35% of beer was bottled at a time when 90% of beer was drunk in pubs. Ron: So, meaning a big percentage of the beer drunk in pubs was in bottled form, which is very different from what you've seen at any point since. Ron: You don't see very many people drinking bottled beer in a pub, do you? Rob (Host): No. Rob (Host): You don't? Rob (Host): No, not at all. Ron: And so it used to be a lot more common. Ron: So that's one long term trend. Ron: I mean, that's one of the things it did for things like light ale and brown ale, which you see have gone from, have just fallen off a cliff. Ron: It's interesting because I found some quite good figures on the percentage of sales of things like brown ale, and that went from, like, 4% at the start of the. Ron: So really incredibly severe decline, losing sales, falling 75% over a decade. Ron: That's not good. Ron: Yeah. Ron: And so you can see there's always been movement in what people drink as beer styles. Ron: Has IPA really made a dent on the styles that people drink. Ron: I don't know if it has. Ron: I don't know if craft's a big enough percentage for it, actually, to make much difference overall. Ron: Maybe they're going to persuade everyone to drink hellers. Rob (Host): You never know. Rob (Host): Yeah, I think we're still lager drinkers, aren't we, by and large, in Europe? Ron: Yeah, I think mostly. Ron: Don't talk for me. Rob (Host): No, no. Rob (Host): I'm of the opinion that there's a beer for every moment. Rob (Host): Sometimes it's lager, but a lot of the time it's ale, if I can find one. Ron: Well, I do like a good lager. Ron: In fact, the only two festivals I go to nowadays are both lager festivals. Rob (Host): Oh, really? Rob (Host): Are they ones local to you? Ron: Yeah, they're ones local to me. Ron: It's also because I'm lazy. Ron: They're the ones they have at butcher's tears, so they have one that's Auntiek Fest, so it's franconian beer straight from the barrel. Ron: And the other one they have is a czech festival, so it's beer from small czech brewery. Ron: So that one's always really good. Rob (Host): Oh, lovely. Rob (Host): We were in Salzburg on holiday in Austria and stumbled down into. Rob (Host): Down a load of stone staircases on the side of a hill, basically through a nondescript doorway. Rob (Host): Keep going down, down, right angle, turn, right angle, turn, get to the bottom and you are basically in this foyer where you can pick up a stoneware mug, you can rinse it in a font that's in the middle, and then they've got two wooden casks that they've got lagers in, basically, and a load of lovely smoked food going. Rob (Host): And it was just amazing. Ron: It's a brilliant place, Augustina, in Salzburg. Rob (Host): And it was just incredible for having that. Rob (Host): And it's not an experience you can have in the UK. Ron: No, it's one of my favorite spots, Augustina. Ron: I really love that place. Ron: Were you there in the summer or the winter? Rob (Host): It was in the winter, actually, and it would have been about five years ago or so, and we didn't really know quite what we're getting into, other than they sold beer there. Rob (Host): And then you realize quite quickly you're in somewhere special. Ron: Yeah, no, it's a brilliant. Ron: Their beer garden is wonderful as well, if you're there in the summer. Ron: I mean, it's only. Ron: The first few times I'd been there had only been in the winter. Ron: But the beer garden is wonderful. Ron: It's really nice. Rob (Host): We never made it there. Rob (Host): I think we were just in one of the drinking halls. Rob (Host): But yeah, incredible place. Rob (Host): Definitely recommend it to people. Rob (Host): And it's why I think you can have one idea of what lager is in your head, but it's not what they're. Ron: No, the beer is really nice there as well. Rob (Host): I wondered if you've talked about a little bit about how you go about things, and I'm sure there's no typical day or week for you, but what might one of those look like for you? Rob (Host): If you're looking into something, or you're researching or just generally trying to write about something, how would your week look? Ron: Well, depends on which I'm working on the stuff I'm doing at the moment, it's mostly been messing around with tables of numbers of beers and then writing bits of stuff about those. Ron: So that's been a combination of manipulating tables in excel and writing text and then writing some blog posts. Ron: So most days I have a blog post every day. Ron: So unless I'm a few days in advance, I'm normally writing a blog post at some point during the day, looking stuff up on the Internet sometimes, or consulting. Ron: I've got various things here, like brewers of the British Isles, which I quite often look at, which has got all sorts of details about UK breweries. Ron: So if you want to know when they were founded, when they closed, stuff like that, that's really handy. Ron: So depending on exactly what I'm doing, I'll often be looking in that to find out information. Ron: Yeah, sometimes when I don't have the information to hand, then I'll be having to go and look through brewing records and pull the information out, or go to sources of statistics and pull stuff out. Ron: So the other day I was looking at stuff about. Ron: I wanted things about, basically about the percentage of canned beer sold in the UK in the 1970s, because I guessed it increased a lot, which is fairly obvious. Ron: But anyway, I wanted some numbers and I realized I didn't have those, so I had to go through a couple of statistical handbooks. Ron: Luckily, I'd already got the pages scanned that I needed, because I quite often scan especially the statistical books. Ron: Some of them I've just gone through and scanned all the pages because I assume at some point I'll need them. Ron: I haven't done that for all of them, but normally the most useful pages I have. Ron: So anyway, so I could just go and pull this all out. Ron: So that took a half day or something, just basically, so I could see what the increase in the percentage of can be assault was during the 1970s. Ron: So yeah, it takes a bit of work to do something like that. Ron: Yeah, it's mostly boring rubbish, really, just going through various sources. Ron: I mean, sometimes also, I'm going through other books or looking through the british newspaper archive. Ron: The whole reason I'm writing this book about the 1970s is finished. Ron: The books I'd been writing in the summer. Ron: And I was just wanting to get some blog posts. Ron: And I thought, okay, I was just looking for original gravity in the newspaper archive, basically looking after World War II. Ron: And I happened to come across a Sunday Mirror article from 1970, I think it's 78, the first one, which had got a whole load of analyses of beers. Ron: So their original gravity and their percentage abv and their price per pint. Ron: And so I found this dead interesting. Ron: So I was starting to write some stuff about this and I found some other articles as well, by searching a bit more. Ron: So suddenly I got all this information about the 1970s, and I'd written quite a few blog posts about it, and I thought, well, I may as well write a book about this because this is quite interesting, because I can also throw in a load of personal stuff, which is what I've been doing. Ron: So personal memories as well, because it's a fear read where I was actually alive and drinking. Ron: So I thought it'd make it quite fun. Ron: After writing maybe seven or eight blog posts, I decided, well, I'll do this as a book. Ron: So then, rather than writing blog posts, I was writing actual bits of the book and then posting some of those on the blog. Ron: So, yeah, I just sort of fell into writing the book, sort of. Ron: But it's been quite interesting because what I've been doing is deliberately throwing stuff out in the blog and getting people to react, because I want other people's memories as well. Ron: So it's not just bare facts or anything, it's my memories and other people's memories of beer and pubs in the 1970s. Ron: So I think that makes it quite interesting. Rob (Host): And I guess, as well, if you think about the 1970s in your head and drinking, you might think it was probably quite mono beer culture, that type of thing. Ron: Yeah, see, this is exactly what people think. Ron: I'm guessing it wasn't. Rob (Host): I'm guessing there's a lot more color than that. Ron: Well, yes, because you get the wrong idea if you just think about the beers that have survived from that time. Ron: And that's how it was, because beers were way more distinctive. Ron: So I actually wrote something about this for the introduction to the section of my 1970s book, in the introduction of the bit about beer, saying, well, you might think these were all just boring brown bitters that all tasted the same. Ron: But that's not the case, because they were far more distinctive. Ron: And what you have to think about is a beer like Harvey's, right? Ron: So beers like Harvey's didn't used to particularly stand out, because there were loads of beers like that, and that's the one that stayed the same. Ron: So what you have to think about is loads of very idiosyncratic beers. Ron: I think partly because they had maybe not the most technologically advanced systems of yeast management, and so they had all sorts of stuff in their pitching yeast that all added to the character of the beer. Ron: I think my experience of UK beers is that they've got blander, generally the traditional ones, most of them, since the Harvey's is what I use as my marker to show that it's not just my taste buds having changed, it's actually beer having changed, because that's still the same. Ron: And so, yeah, it's the other ones that have changed and not me and not Harvey's. Ron: There were still loads of weird beers left hanging around. Ron: I mean, yeah, courage and stout, for God's sake. Ron: The best beer ever brewed? Ron: Well, the best beer I've ever tasted. Ron: But, yeah, there used to be lots of southern beers that were similar to Harvey's. Ron: So, yeah, it wasn't just dead dull. Ron: And he had some weird old strong beers that were still hanging around, so was more varied and more interesting than people might think. Ron: And also you got mild everywhere, so it wasn't just bitter. Rob (Host): Do you think we'll see mild in its non dark form come back in the UK? Ron: Well, weirder things have happened. Ron: Milk state made a comeback. Ron: I wouldn't have put money on that. Ron: That, to me, seemed like the most unfashionable style imaginable, and that managed to make a comeback. Ron: So I don't mean I jokingly say that I think it will do, but I don't know if I genuinely believe that. Ron: But you never know. Ron: I mean, a certain point, the IPA name's bound to become poison. Ron: That's what happens with mean. Ron: I think it's getting pretty close to saturation points with IPA. Ron: I really don't think you can take that one very much further. Rob (Host): It's interesting as well. Rob (Host): I think, you know how language changes over time with people using language differently. Rob (Host): So if someone says something was cool a while ago, that might mean one thing to one generation and another thing completely to another generation after it. Rob (Host): But the same thing happens with beer, I guess, to an extent, which you've. Ron: Probably seen well, I was just thinking about this today with the word stout and the word stout, what that originally meant was strong. Ron: So it didn't particularly mean any specific style of beer, it just meant strong beer. Ron: And what you say, well, what does stout mean now? Ron: What stout means now is black and roasty, pretty much. Ron: And maybe not even so much the roasty nowadays, but that's basically all it means. Ron: Because someone was saying to me, well, how can you have a stout? Ron: Because I published a recipe that was 1950s stout that was, I think, 3% abv. Ron: And they say, well, how can you have a stout that's 3%? Ron: Well, yeah. Ron: When all stout means is black and roasty? Ron: Well, yeah. Ron: You never stout of any strengths. Rob (Host): That's it. Rob (Host): Yeah, but it's just really interesting how that changes over the years. Rob (Host): So you've talked about a little bit about how you work and that kind of thing. Rob (Host): What would you say you most like about your role? Rob (Host): What's your favorite thing? Ron: I actually quite like doing the research. Ron: Some of it, some of the bits of just transcribing things aren't that much fun, but the manipulating the numbers I quite enjoy and the writing is good fun. Ron: But yeah, I do quite enjoy a lot of the research. Ron: Actually going out and getting the brewing records is a real pain. Ron: That's sort of 4 hours standing there just taking photographs constantly, which isn't a great deal of fun. Ron: But yeah, it's worth it for looking through the stuff later. Ron: So most of the research I quite enjoy, it's only a few bits of irritating. Rob (Host): And how would you say your role has evolved over time? Rob (Host): I don't know, really. Ron: Well, I've seen you have become more orientated towards home brewers over time. Ron: Not necessarily consciously. Rob (Host): Do you think that's because home brewers might have more capacity to try out different recipes and explore those ones versus commercial breweries at the moment. Ron: I think for home brewers, it's interesting because I've published lots of different recipes and things that aren't necessarily like modern beers or other recipes they might see. Ron: So I guess they find that interesting. Rob (Host): You're the first port of call for home brewers, I think. Ron: Well, hopefully, yeah. Rob (Host): But you also do work with the brewery in the States, don't you? Ron: Well, I've worked with quite a few different people in the States. Ron: I did quite a lot of work with Goose island. Ron: I've done three beers with them over ten years, actually. Ron: It's over a long period of time. Ron: You teach beers taking a couple of years, so I've done three beers with those and then I've done various other ones with people in the States. Ron: Pretty things. Ron: I did a whole load of beers with mean they don't exist anymore, but I mean, they're in the UK now, so they've also brewed some of my recipes over there. Ron: Yeah, one of my mates and school friends in Britain, he's got a brewery, he's brewed quite a few of my recipes. Rob (Host): Is there a style, you think that's particularly of interest that brewers keep coming back to nowadays? Ron: Probably stouts more than anything. Ron: Well, there's also more room for variation with stouts, if I'm honest. Ron: I realized this when I was doing some of my books. Ron: I was trying to collating the information together about various types of beer. Ron: And when it came to stouts, there's just masses of stuff and of really different beers as well, even being brewed in the same period. Ron: So you'll have stouts that. Ron: Some periods in the UK when you got stouts that were being brewed at 2% abv and other ones at ten and a half. Ron: So it's like quite a bit of variation there, or even under 2%. Ron: Some of the scottish sweet stats, just ridiculously weak. Ron: So it's an interesting style stout. Ron: There's been lots of things. Ron: Well, especially if you start including things like pale stout. Rob (Host): Is there anything you think that brewers and breweries could learn from vintage ales and vintage beer recipes? Ron: Blending? Ron: This is something that I've really become a fan of since the last two beers I did with Goose island, where we did thing called obadiah poundage, which was a keeping and a running port of blended. Ron: And the last one we did, which was a similar thing, but with a barley wine with a keeper and a runner blended. Ron: And yeah, I was lucky because I got the chance to taste the unblended beers and the blend. Ron: And in both cases, I thought that the blended beer was better than either of the individual beers. Ron: And the age beer was just like too much too intense. Ron: And then when you put a third of that in with two thirds of the young beer, they got much fresher characteristics. Ron: Then you got the nice complex flavors from the age beer, but you got some youth and vitality to sort of like, move that along. Ron: It made me think, well, yeah, people are really missing a trick here. Ron: And these are flavors that you could not get in an individual beer. Ron: You could not get one beer that had a combination of those characteristics, because it's just not possible and virtually no one's doing it. Ron: You only really get it much in Belgium nowadays. Ron: And I'm surprised no one's really picked this up, because I was dead impressed by the impact of it and how you could really come up with something that was better than the sum of the parts. Rob (Host): I think it's really interesting because in other industries, like winemaking and things, blending is common practice to make sure you're sort of consistent as well, across harvests and vintages and all that sort of thing. Rob (Host): But also, it hasn't really got that the same place in the beer world or anything like that. Rob (Host): It's also interesting, I think. Rob (Host): So the beer that Henry made at Dark Star, sort of bringing back the gale's prize old ale, which did involve taking that beer that had been maturing since 2006 and then combining it with a new brew. Rob (Host): And what resulted was an incredible kind of mix of time that had just added something that you'd never get from a beer that had been brewed and then matured and conditioned on its own. Ron: Yeah, I didn't get to taste that, but, yeah, I mean, that's exactly the idea. Ron: And it used to be fairly common practice in Britain, and the Belgians got the whole idea of blending from the UK, so it's really od that. Ron: It's completely fallen out of use. Ron: I think you've only got the Green king beer that I can really think of. Ron: It's the only real survivor that's been brewed for any length of time. Ron: Of course, you've got fries, old ale, but that's been produced very erratically in recent years. Rob (Host): And when was blending last a thing in the UK? Ron: Yeah, probably before World War I, really. Ron: But mostly because the age after World War I, you didn't get very many people doing any stock beers of any type, because the flavour went out of fashion, so people weren't as interested in having that until you just got a few throwback beers that still have that sort of age character. Rob (Host): What would you say to younger Ron or someone else who's looking to get into the world of beer writing, beer history, travel, beer writing and those sorts of things. Rob (Host): What would your advice be? Ron: Probably don't bother unless you're prepared to waste huge amounts of your life on this. Ron: Take more notes. Rob (Host): More notes. Ron: I do have a few tasting notes from East Germany in 1988. Ron: I do have some quite old notes, tasting notes that I took before it was fashionable to do that sort of thing. Rob (Host): Nowadays, everyone's logging out on an app or that kind of thing. Ron: Yeah, this was done on paper. Rob (Host): Do you still do that? Rob (Host): And are you logging on paper or. Ron: Do you can't be asked to do the beer tasting anymore. Ron: I found at a certain point it was taking all the pleasure out of the actual drinking. Ron: So I'd rather just drink a beer rather than think too much about it. Rob (Host): And if I had to press you to pick just one, could you tell us what's your favorite beer? Rob (Host): Style or beer? Ron: Well, obviously courage, rich and stout, the best beer. Ron: And I've still got some, so I can still keep drinking that. Ron: I've still got enough to drink a couple of year until I die, so probably even more than that. Ron: Other than that. Ron: St. Ron: Bernardus out. Rob (Host): Lovely beer. Ron: Yeah, that's my go to beer. Ron: I do like that style of beer. Ron: A strong, dark, belgian type, whatever you want to call them. Rob (Host): Lovely bears. Rob (Host): And what's your favorite place to enjoy a beer? Ron: Well, a pub, preferably, but not that I get to do very much of that nowadays. Ron: And God knows what's going to happen when they knock down my current local. Rob (Host): Oh, nay, is that on the cards? Ron: Yeah. Ron: Well, where I normally go is butcher's tears, their tap room, and that whole area is due to get demolished. Ron: So currently they're due to close 2 March. Rob (Host): You got any things that you're coming up that you're excited about? Ron: Well, going to Brazil again in March, that's always fun. Ron: Get a couple of days in Rio, which is. Ron: Yeah, and it's nice because there's some quite good beer there as well. Ron: So good to go around a few craft beer places there and then do some judging and hang around, hopefully with some other beer people I know. Ron: And then. Ron: Well, yeah, end of May, June, supposed to be doing some stuff in North Carolina and South Carolina and Tennessee, so that should be fun. Ron: So my mate Jim Karnovsky, who has this brewery in just outside Asheville, can't remember what we're doing this time. Ron: Oh, I know. Ron: We're doing World War II recipes. Ron: It's always fun at his place. Ron: He always has a really nice select. Ron: He always does a selection of beers. Ron: Just the things I want to drink. Rob (Host): He's laid them on for you. Ron: Yeah, like he did one of my dreams, which was a full selection of beers from a 1910 London pub. Ron: So, yeah, he's a really good brewer, and it should be a fun event. Ron: And, yeah, I get to do a few more things around that part of the world. Rob (Host): So you're able to combine a bit of some time off, but also probably still thinking about beer as you go around all these places. Ron: Oh, no, this is going around giving talks at a whole load of places there. Ron: Won't be much time for just relaxing. Ron: I don't think she's going to be quite busy. Rob (Host): But at least there's beer. Ron: Well, yeah, at least there's beer. Rob (Host): And where can people keep up to date with everything? Rob (Host): To Ron Pattinson and all the work that you've got coming up. Ron: Well, shut up about Barclay Perkins, my blog, there's all the stuff on there. Ron: So I post every day. Ron: It's mostly beer history, but occasionally some travel stuff. Ron: Yeah. Ron: And then I've got my books, which people can buy, which, my most recent ones being Blitzkree, which is about World War II. Ron: She's got two volumes because there's so many recipes. Ron: So one is just, I think it was 550 recipes there are in that one. Ron: And then my other one, which came out recently, is stout, which is about London stout. Ron: So that's got, I think, 250 recipes, something like that from 18, five. Ron: Now, the last one is 1970 something. Ron: So quite a wide range of recipes in there. Rob (Host): They're all available on your website. Ron: Yeah, you can find links to them on my blog, these books, and there's kindle versions of them as well. Ron: People just look for Ronald Patterson and then you'll find them. Rob (Host): And when's your book on the 70s due to come out? Ron: Not sure when I finished writing it. Ron: It depends because I was just thinking today, oh, I've got all these technical brewing journals from the 1970s. Ron: Maybe I could have a look through those and find some stuff so that might keep me occupied for a while. Rob (Host): That's right. Rob (Host): I don't want to give you a. Ron: Deadline or anything like that, because I self publish. Ron: That's the joy of this. Ron: I can finish it when I like. Ron: So it depends when I get fed up, probably because I can most likely keep finding stuff to add to it. Rob (Host): Brilliant. Rob (Host): Well, I want to say a big thank you for joining us today, Ron. Rob (Host): It's been lovely chatting with you, hearing all about vintage beer styles and how you got into it as well. Rob (Host): So thank you very much. Ron: No problem. Rob (Host): Have a good day. Ron: Yeah, bye. Rob (Host): I thought that was fascinating and a real privilege to hear from Ron. Rob (Host): I feel quite fluent about the beers around us today, but it was eye opening to hear about the beers, breweries and people that set the scene for what we enjoy today. Rob (Host): So thank you very much for listening and I hope you can join me on the next one. Rob (Host): And this is a part where I ask for your help. Rob (Host): If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review or rating, or share it with others. Rob (Host): This really helps us out and helps other people find the podcast, particularly as we're starting out. Rob (Host): And you can follow us on social media search for we are beer people all one word. Rob (Host): You can also email us at wearebeerpeoplepod@gmail.com let us know what you think, share your thoughts, and if you have any recommendations for beer people you'd like to hear from. Rob (Host): And until next time, don't forget you, me, us, them, we are all beer people.

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