UNIVERSITY BEER

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 84, 7 January 1928, Page 26

UNIVERSITY BEER

Odo of the relics of the past, when all large establishments in England and many small ones, too, browed their own beer, is brought to notice by the retirement of Mr. Fred Hunt, who has brewed beer for Queen’s College, Oxford, for tho last 30 years, and has been in the service of tho college for over half a century. Tlio retirement of Mr. Hunt doe,-, not incan the cessation of the brewing, which will go on as it has done for centuries (says ‘'Landmark,-” the organ of tho English-speak-ing Union). “I have been in service hero 56 years,” ho said, “and although I am going now, I will still como m and see if the brew keeps up to tiro good old standard of Queen’s. Queen’s is tho last of the undergraduate colleges in Oxford to brew its own beer. I started my last brew yesterday. It has ten days’ fermentation. I have three vats going, and the beer will fill nine barrels of 36 gallons each. The work of brewing is all done by hand. There is no machinery, The extract of malt is pumped into tho copper by a pump which dates back to about 1600. That will bo done by my successor.. 1 have passed on to him tho teaching I received, and with it the good old traditions of tho college brow. When I had been here 50 years the college presented me with a ‘fellow’s plain’; tiro same as the fellows gel when they call for a ‘plate of beer.’ My health was.toasted in the famous chancellor brew. That is more than double the ordinary, strength, and is drunk on special occasions.”