Tuesday 4 October 2011

Scottish beer in Holland

We all know that Scottish brewers were big exporters in the 19th century. Here's proof - lest we forget - that they exported to continental Europe as well as the Empire.

Let's begin with a rather vague advert, touting just generic Scotch Ale:

 "Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant" 16th May 1869.

What surprised me about this was that they were selling Scotch Ale by the barrel. Mostly you only see bottled British beer in Dutch adverts.

You couldn't get much less generic than this one advertising what looks like close to the complete Tennent's range of beers:


"Het Nieuws van den Dag", 23rd May 1881.

As you can see, these are also on sale by the barrel.  And they're not just flogging their Scotch Ale  but IPA, Porter, Stout and Table Beer, too.

I told you there was much more to Scottish brewing than just Scotch Ale.

2 comments:

Alan said...

OK, OK. I believe.

Have you seen anything at the same time getting into what is now Poland? When I worked there 20 years ago there was a street with historic Scottish trader houses in Gdansk. They would have been there through a variety of jurisdictional phases:

1569–1793: as part of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
1793–1805: as part of Prussia
1807–1814: as a free city
1815–1871: as part of Prussia
1871–1920: as part of Imperial Germany
1920–1939: as a free city

Ron Pattinson said...

Alan, in a word, no. Not gor that far yet. Sounds an interesting area to investigate, though.