Heap high the fire, and, O ye Lares, smile; And, Innocence, with plenty hither bring Hilarity; while Friendship brims the cup With home-brewed Ale, and every welcom’d guest Forgets the storm . . . _Booker’s Sequel Poem to the Hop Garden._
I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year, With your pockets full of money, and your cellar full of beer. _Old Carol._
_HOME-BREWED ALES. — OLD RECEIPTS. — HISTORICAL FACTS. — DEAN SWIFT ON HOME-BREW. — CHRISTOPHER NORTH’S BREW-HOUSE._
Hogarth’s _Farmer’s Return_ represents the worthy man just come in from his morning round or from distant market town. As he rests awhile in the farmhouse kitchen he draws sweet solace from the pipe brought him by his daughter, while he eyes with keen expectance the jug of foaming home-brew which his buxom wife, in her hurry to serve her lord, is spilling on the tiled floor. These two old friends, firm supporters of each other, the farmers and home-brewed ale, have almost parted company. Home-brew, indeed, has become, in some places, an extinct and almost forgotten beverage. It is a curious fact, however, that between the years 1884 and 1886 there was a slight increase in the number of persons brewing their own ale. { 46}
The late Mr. Wm. Cobbett, writing in 1821 on the subject of brewing, says, “To show Englishmen, forty years ago, that it was good for them to brew beer in their houses, would have been as impertinent as gravely to insist that they ought to endeavour not to lose their breath; for in those times, to have a _house_ and not to brew was a rare thing indeed. Mr. Ellman, an old man and a large farmer in Sussex, has recently given, in evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons, this fact: that forty years ago there was not a labourer in his parish that did not brew his own beer; and that now there is not one that does it, except by chance the malt be given him.”
The decadence of the art of domestic brewing is, for some reasons, a matter for regret. The causes are not far to seek. The improved machinery of the modern brewer, which enables him to make an uniformly excellent beer, and to sell it at a low price; and the railways which now traverse every part of the country, carrying his single, double, or treble X, as the case may be, to places where half a century back no one dreamt of purchasing ale for home consumption—to these great changes is undoubtedly due the partial downfall of home-brew that has taken { 47} place. Not only has the practice of domestic brewing much declined, but from the same causes there has been of late years an extraordinary and lamentable decrease in the numbers of small country brewers.