Ron Pattinson joins me this week to discuss his recently published book on British Brewing in World War II (WWII).
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Topics in This Week’s Episode (46:19)
- This week I welcome back Ron Pattinson. Ron is the author of dozens of books and articles on historical beer brewing including his most recent effort to document British brewing during World War II. You can find his articles and purchase his books from his blog which is Shut Up About Barclay Perkins.
- Ron talks a bit about the projects he has been working on including some books on beer history that he published this year. You can find Ron’s books on his blog at the link above.
- We start the WWII discussion with how British beer became “weaker and more expensive”, and also how hours were controlled.
- Ron covers overall beer production during the war which managed to grow slightly in spite of shortages and manpower pressures.
- Despite production continuing, the strength of beers had a steady decline during the war years due to limited ingredient supplies. Both barley and hops were tightly controlled by the government during the war.
- We discuss some of the lasting effects of shortages and government control which lasted until the early 1950’s.
- Ron tells us what barley alternatives were used to compensate for shortages in ingredients.
- We talk about how malt was in short supply because of barley shortages as well as shortages in the manpower and energy needed to produce the malt.
- In his book, Ron covers styles and even individual recipes from the war and discusses how they have changed. We talk about how styles evolved during the war.
- Ron covers how the number of breweries changed, and why really no new breweries could be added. We also talk about the post-war period and eventual consolidation that took place in the 1950s.
- Ron shares his closing thoughts on brewing in WWII.
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