There is a new biography of Monty Python etc activist Terry Jones out (Robert Ross, 2025) a chapter of which touches on his part in the Penhros micro-brewery which existed for a brief-ish period between 1977 and 1984.
The brewery was constructed under the guidance of Peter Austin who went on to found Ringwood brewery.
My interest lies not just in the new biography but because porter is becoming a familiar sight on at least some bar tops again.
As a style it peaked in the 1820s and by the post-1945 era was hardly to be found. Guinness stopped selling the variant plain beer (aged porter mixed with a younger mild beer) in 1973 and by the time I started drinking real ale (the alternative then was old style keg) in the mid-1970s it had all but disappeared.
Terry Jones can take some credit for setting porter’s return to the bar but as Will Hawkes noted in 2017 it took the craft beer scene from 2008ish to see porter re-establish itself, often based to an extent on historic recipes, Kernel being perhaps particularly well known for this.
This weekend I’ve enjoyed a Hook Norton 5.5% Twelve Days porter in Wetherspoons on cask and a bottle conditioned Fullers 180th anniversary porter at 7%. Not an invented tradition but a reimagined one
BBC Hereford and Worcester on Penrhos Brewery
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