James Squire - Porter

James Squire was arrested in 1774 after being found close to a ransacked house in England, if he had been found a few meters inside the house he would have been charged with Stealing however as he was on a public road he faced the lesser charge of Highway Robbery.

Like all good convicts of that era he was sentanced to be transported to America. So how does James Squire end up becoming the first brewer of Australia? Well, it seems James served his time by enlisting in the army and thus avoided America, but as he was in the mix with highwaymen, robbers, smugglers and generally dodgy people he ended up being caught for nicking five hens and four cocks in 1785. This time he could not avoid a firmer sentance and thus was shipped over to Australia on the First Fleet - the first group of boats to settle in the land down under.

He does seem to be a colourful chap,  with him working a farm and also running a popular pub called The Malting Shovel. Mr Squire also tried his hand at running a bakery, a butcher shop and a credit union (!) and odd for a convict he also became a town constable in Sydney.

Apparently he was nicked a few times after that for stealing medicine - horehound - which oddly enough gives a similar smell of hops to beers. From there he established the first Australian brewery and various other beer firsts.

All in all a nice tale for someone to ‘tribute’ a brewery to and give a new brewery a nice backstory for it to have foundation against. This happened in 1999 when the old Hahn brewery was taken over by ‘Lion Nathan’ and renaming it Malt Shovel Brewery in honour of Australia’s first commercial brewer.  Marketing, eh?

Luckily enough the beer is quite good. The one I tried was a 345ml Porter, nice dark in colour but when held to the light there is a deep red hue. The mouth is nice and full, taste of light roasted malt with a hint of dark chocolates and coffee floating around.

It is an excellent beer, and quite deceptive as you would imagine it to be a fair bit stronger than its 5% abv. Its like a big dark cake that you can eat and eat but never feel full from. Ideal for the cold winter FA Cup ties on BBC 2 with your roast beef and yorkshire puddings. Yum.