Beer in WW2

I've tried to find out some info online about what kind of beer was around during WW2.

found this site http://www.europeanbeerguide.net/warbeer.htm and heres a good photo http://www.military-history.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/BATTLING-BOOZE-IN-BLIGHTY.jpg (beer looks pretty dark there)

just curious about the evolution of beer and what would have been wanted/produced. it seems like british beer OG stayed pretty solid right through while german OG dropped big time on average. any more information or thoughts would be cool

i think id heard before that the first world war was the death of strong bitters in england

I've read many books on WWII pilots and most drank beer from the local pubs. They had to get used to warm beer for the first time in their lives.
There are accounts where pilots got cans of beer, put them in the wings of their fighters and flew to altitude to get the beer ice cold.

You could look through Shut Up About Barclay Perkins blog from Ronald Pattinson who writes about beer history. Here's a link to the articles from him with the "WWII" tag. Might give you some interesting tidbits.

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/search/label/WW II

I should add, he surely gets into the changes to the beer due to war-time austerity and availability of different ingredients.

This, also by Pattinson, is also an outstanding resource, in my opinion:

http://a.co/37h9SP3

Hope this helps -

Add my vote for Ron Pattinson. He is a prolific blogger posting at least once a day making finding specific topics sometimes difficult... but worth it. Either use the search box on his blog or scroll down the the topic index where you will find 174 posts about WWII and over 200 for WWI.

Ron also has a couple of books on beer and brewing during the war years and inter war years... the book WAR! contains everything you want to know about English brewing during both world wars and the book PEACE! covers the period between WWI and II. Both contain recipes. Heads up! Get ready for a lot of beers with an ABV of 3% and lower.

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/search/label/WW II

*GASP* I see hops in these beers, @fredthecat these are clearly not True Beers (tm)

One beer that was around for our troops was beer from the Medford Brewery. Most of the output was canned and shipped overseas during the war years.

I suspect that any beer was good beer to WWII troops. One uncle of mine said where he was stationed the only tobacco available was Copenhagen snuff. The smokers would dry it out and smoke it.

Here's the story mentioned earlier of the RAF pilots carrying beer to the troops in Normandy.

http://spitfiresite.com/2012/01/modification-xxx-beer-carrying-spitfires.html

As for this: "it seems like british beer OG stayed pretty solid right through..." That's not accurate. The OG's of most, if not all British beers dropped 25% or more over the course of the world wars.

kevin58 said:

As for this: "it seems like british beer OG stayed pretty solid right through..." That's not accurate. The OG's of most, if not all British beers dropped 25% or more over the course of the world wars.

Click to expand...

But the OP was specifically talking about the course of WWII. Government attitudes were very different in the two WW's, notably the crackdown on the demon drink in 1917 which did so much to shape modern British drinking. In WWII drinking was mildly encouraged to keep up morale, albeit there were restrictions on some ingredients so you saw extensive use of eg flaked barley and in 1943 oats, neither of which had been widely used before the war. But things were pretty miserable with poor harvests and rationing in the immediate aftermath of WWII, and beer took another hit in the late 1940s.

Northern_Brewer said:

But the OP was specifically talking about the course of WWII. Government attitudes were very different in the two WW's, notably the crackdown on the demon drink in 1917 which did so much to shape modern British drinking. In WWII drinking was mildly encouraged to keep up morale, albeit there were restrictions on some ingredients so you saw extensive use of eg flaked barley and in 1943 oats, neither of which had been widely used before the war. But things were pretty miserable with poor harvests and rationing in the immediate aftermath of WWII, and beer took another hit in the late 1940s.

Click to expand...

I was only addressing what the OP wrote: "it seems like british beer OG stayed pretty solid right through while german OG dropped big time on average." And I responded to that statement true.... OG's fell. They did not stay pretty solid.

old thread, yeah i read or assumed since then that gravities dropped a lot. guinness and i think i read about fuller's brewlogs showed decreasing OGs over time. but man some of those historic FGs i saw would be undrinkable for me. ive made some stuff that ended up over 1.02 before and it was like liquid candy

Westy 12 was brewed back then. Monty visited the monastery, I am sure he quaffed a few before retreating to Jolly Old England.

Moderator Note: Please do not let conversations from the True Beer thread bleed into other threads. That is, by definition, off-topic. I'll delete a few, but if it continues, more stringent actions will follow.