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  Was This The Earliest Brewing In English Canada?

  Posted: November 3rd, 2011, 8:35pm CET by Alan McLeod

  

  Sneath, Pashley and Rubin all mention the 1600s brewers of New France - Hebert (1617), Ambroise (1646) and Talon (1670). But I just came across this reference in a footnote in the Minutes of the Hudson's Bay Company, 1671-1674, published by Toronto's Champlain Society in 1942, describing payments being made on 16 February 1674 for goods supplied to the ships of the Hudson Bay company:

  John Raymond, "By Severall quantities of Ship Beere at 40s p. Tonn Strong beere at 12s, 9d a barrell & Harbor Beere at 6s 6d p. barrell with Malt & Hopps dd. Capt. Gillam, Morris and Cole", £ 79.

  A few months later, a committee of the Hudson Bay Company on 6 July 1674 directed payment to the same John Raymond £ 30 on account of ""Beer and Malt. dd. on board the Prince Rupert." These items appear among a long list of payments for other necessary goods for taking aboard the ships Prince Rupert, Messenger and Employ. You will see in footnote 2 to this post on a blog by Norma Hall subtitled "Northern Arc: the Significance of Seafaring to Western Canadian History" that these three ships were sailing between England and Hudson Bay in the first half of the 1670s. The Prince Rupert and Messenger, at least, over wintered.

  There are loads of interesting questions and observations from these passages from the Minutes of the Hudson's Bay Company, 1671-1674 including why are they shipping malt and hops separate from barrels of beer. If these ships overwintered and carried malt and hops it is pretty obvious that they must have been brewing. We know the British brewed on ships in the Arctic in 1852 so why not in 1674? But also - what is "harbor beer"? It costs about half of "strong beer" and we know from Gate's work on Kingston that in 1825 "small or ship beer" was being sold in Kingston. But most of all the question is this - was this the first brewing of beer in English Canada? Or did other earlier over wintering ships brew, too?

• 

  Book Review: The Art And Mystery Of Brewing in Ontario

  Posted: November 3rd, 2011, 3:49pm CET by Alan McLeod

  While I stand by my statement:

  "...brewing history can be a tool or route to understanding for some but is ultimately unimportant if you do not need to tap into it..."

  ... I have to admit that I do like dabbling in it - as long as I stay within the reach of my own capabilities. I especially like dabbling in it care of a stack of bedside books when I am, like today, on the third day of the treatment for a blip of pneumonia. And good thing, too, as it's not like the weeks of cough medications leading to this stage have left me longing for a tart gueuze. But, while we are at it, would it kill big pharmacy to make a expectorant that tastes like an imperial stout?

  Anyway, one of the books recently added to the pile is 1988's The Art And Mystery Of Brewing in Ontario by Ian Bowering. We suffer in Canada from a lack of understanding of ourselves and no where more than here in Ontario. Atlantic Canadians, Quebeckers and Western Canadians all are rightly proud of themselves even if it is largely based on how they have each been screwed in their own special way by that place to stand, place to grow, Ontar-i-ar-i-ar-i-o.

  Bowering's book helps with Ontario's blandness. It sits in an important place with others on brewing in Canada and does one thing particularly well. It lists the breweries by town. Simple thing but it shows that brewing advanced across the province as the population advanced westerly from the early 1790s or before in eastern Kingston to the late 1890s in Rat Portage, over 2,000 km to the NW. It also shows that brewing was going on at a far larger scale, unexpected industrialization with far greater distribution earlier on than some might suggest. Brains Brewery in rural 1834 was producing 100 barrels a week. Lager was being made in Kitchener well before 1850 and even wee Huether Crystal Springs in little Neustadt delivered in a 70 km radius a few year later.

  Information will advance and it is evident more information has come to light when we compare the listings for Kingston and compare them to the brand new book The Breweries of Kingston and The St. Lawrence Valley by Steve Gates which follows a similar structure. But as one wag recently stated:

  ...that there are others out there who will identify errata and offer corrections is something which will ultimately contribute to the further development and maturation of this particular field of study.

  I might add that it is the only way it will further develop and mature. And not only through peer review and correction but building on the shoulders of others who have gone before. So Gates cites Bowering, Sneath cites Bowering, Mr. B cites Bowering, Pashley cites Mr. B and Sneath. It's the way things work, the way we build the collective body of knowledge - if, that is, we are actually interested in presenting what actually was.