NOT ALL FROTH

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32252, 21 March 1970, Page 4

NOT ALL FROTH

Beer, Glorious Beer. By Cyril Pearl. Nelson. 173 pp. (Illustrated). In this sprightly book the author has assiduously collected everything about the brewing, history and folklore of beer (chiefly with reference to Australia) and in the course of bis jackdaw activities has piled up some startling facts. The first Australian beer was heavily adulterated, often with deleterious substances. Was the name “she oaks” given beer because the wood was an additive or merely because some grew’ near a brewerv? Cooling beer goes a long way back: in 1855 Sydney imported ice for this from Canada.

Cyril Pear! makes no attempt to defend the indefensible: his condemnation of a majority of Australian hotels as suppliers of food and accommodation extends to the present. He mentions too the now-vanished 6 o’clock swill and defective bar hygiene. In the realm of history he gives a spirited account of

Victorian barmaids, some of whom practised more than one trade. He has chapters on toasts, shouting, dietetics of beer, and an alarming rollcall of beer recipes: beer soup, trout boiled in beer, German beer cakj, and “improved” beer, with everything added from milk and eggs to the unmentionable, to produce mum, cock ale, buttered ale, purl, flip, lambs’ wool and. it is hoped, no hangover. The poets too are drawn on liberally, especially those who favoured the Sydney “Bulletin” with their work. Even President Hoover in his youth, on an engineering stint at Kalgoorlie, had occasion to write a romantic poem to a local barmaid. The legal, economic and fiscal aspects of beer are explored. Here, against the tide, the real cost of living has fallen: in 1925 a week's wages would buy 77 bottles of beer, in 1969 93 bottles. No wonder the “wowser”, for whom also Mr Pearl finds a little niche, has been routed. f/ a