THE STRENGTH OF BEER

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 83, 31 December 1937, Page 13

THE STRENGTH OF BEER

' Origin of "X" Symbol

Sir Edgar Sanders, vicg-president of 8he Federation of British Ipdustries^ in a recent broadcast address, talked of "XXX." $ /The X's of your mathematics were never more puzzling than the origin of those X's you see on beer barrels," he said. "They are used, of course, to denote brews of varying quality and •trength. The more the X's the greater the strength of the liquor, and so it has beep for centuries. But wby X's were cho* en nobody knows. It was a hero of nursery xhymo, Dick Whittington, who flrsfc xegularised the use of X. When Lord Mayor he ordered that no brewer in London should charge more than lid a gallon for the best ale. Having ensurgd that ale should be good and eheap, he saw to it tha? measures should be of standard size, forbi-dding breweris to make their own casks and eommanding the eoopers to brand the X's on eaph of their barrejs. "Even Sir Walter Raleigh contented himself wi.th a cup of XX on the morning he was.beheaded. It is to Queen Elizabeth} however, that we really owe the suryival pf single X. While her own bepr was ' so strpng that there was no man able to drink it," she complain- **, ed, by royal proclamation, that brewers had cewsed to make any single beer, bpt 'brewed a kind of very strong beer, calling the same double-double, which they did commonly utter and sell at a great and excessive price,' She commanded, in effect, that single X should

have. as good a showing as XX, ordering that for every barrel of double X brewed there should also be brewed a barrel of single. "The treble X was not legalised until fifty years after Elizabeth's death. Charles II. not only permitted their use} but allowed a fourth X. Eor each X on the barrel the buyer paid two shillings, so that the weakest variety stiU costs no more than l^d a gallon Manv inns, of course, continued to sell cnly the cheaper-X and XX. A customer calling for a pint of treble X at a country inn might find himself served with a mixture of one X and two X, and if he eomplained, the innkeeper would say: 'If two and one don't make three, then I don't know a hop from a barley corn.' "Eventually some beers of great strength, whose quality could only be represented by seven or eight X's, were prpduced. By turning her thumb up or down a lady at a dinner in the eighteentli century would discreetly indicate whether (she required the many X or the treble X beer. N Perhaps, though^ the simple devotion to treble X pf a Persian ambassador in the reign of Queen Victoria is more amusing. On lamenting his fate at being xecalled from London, he confessed to his conception of Paradise. It would be to live in Chelsea Hospital, whiiing away the hours in drinking treble X beer beneaih the trees in the gardens there."