An American friend, Julie Johnson, once told me the difference between our two countries is that the US has a past, but Britain has history. As she writes about beer and lived and worked here for several years, she’s well aware that beer has played an important part in our island’s story.

I have been attempting to untangle one element of that story since last autumn when the Dark Star brewery in Sussex launched a new batch of Gale’s Prize Old Ale (POA). The 9 per cent beer had been brewed by Gale’s in Horndean, Hampshire since the 1920s and was a blend of aged ale and a fresh young one.

The recipe for POA was brought to Gale’s by a brewer from Yorkshire and it raises the intriguing question: is it a type of beer known in the north as Yorkshire stingo? It’s a beer with a long pedigree and it has also travelled widely.

Between the 18th and 20th centuries, a large pub with its own brewery in London’s Marylebone district was called the Yorkshire Stingo. Ex-patriate Yorkshire people, along with locals, would gather in large numbers – often as many as 20,000 – to play games in the pub’s garden and drink stingo. The name is thought to come from the sting or kick that strong alcohol gives.

The brewery was bought by the Church Army in 1900 and turned into workshops, and the pub was demolished in 1964 to make way for the Marylebone flyover. The brewery’s recipes have disappeared, but if Gale’s POA is descended from stingo then we can gain an impression of what the original may have tasted like.

Fuller’s in West London bought Gale’s in 2005 and closed the brewery a year later. The final 80-barrel batch of POA was moved to the Chiswick plant and stored in a tank. From time to time, head brewer John Keeling would make a new edition by blending 10 per cent of the old beer with a fresh brew.

John says the aged beer was fermented in vessels made from pine and it was impossible to remove all the yeast and natural bacteria trapped in the wood. As a result, the blended beer had an acidic and slightly musty aroma that brewers call “horse blanket”.

The beer brewed by Dark Star is made with the best pale malt, torrefied wheat (similar to popcorn) and black malt. The hops are traditional English Fuggles and Goldings. It has a musty aroma with dates, raisins and sultana fruit. It’s acidic on the palate, with rich fruit and peppery and spicy hops. The finish is long and fruity with some sweetness that challenges the acidic notes.

Yorkshire stingo has made a comeback in its native region. Christian Horton, head brewer at Samuel Smith’s in Tadcaster, has brewed an 8 per cent interpretation of the style since 2006. He thinks it may have fallen from favour during World War One when brewers couldn’t afford to make strong beers as a result of punitive levels of duty imposed by the government to help finance the armaments industry.

His version is not a blend but is aged for a year in oak vessels, some of which are more than 100 years old. It’s brewed with best British ale malt and darker Munich malt that adds both colour and a touch of sweetness. The hops are Fuggles, Goldings, Phoenix and Styrian Goldings. It’s the brewery’s only bottle-conditioned beer and has delicious aromas and flavours of oak, vanilla, butterscotch, raisin fruit and spicy hops.

Stingo travelled south. Two breweries in Northampton, Phipps and NBC, both brewed the style. They had the misfortune to be bought and closed by the London brewer Watney Mann, but their beers have been revived by the Albion brewery that makes a 9.5 per cent stingo. The beer is aged in whisky casks for a year – one version was aged for five years.

Did stingo journey as far as Cornwall? The Blue Anchor brew pub in Helston brews beers called Spingo and it’s tempting to think it’s a corruption of the Yorkshire name.

The owners claim their Spingo ales are 600 years old when the inn started life as a hospice for monks who brewed on the premises but in fact the first Spingo was brewed in the 1920s to welcome soldiers returning from the Great War.

The two regular Spingo ales are Middle (5 per cent) and Special (6.6 per cent). While only pale malt is used, the beers have a tawny colour as a result of a long copper boil with Goldings hops during which time some of the malt sugars turn to caramel. The beers are notably fruity and vinous.

They are available in bottle-conditioned format as well as on draught. Special versions for Easter and Christmas are blends of the regular beers.

Stingo, Spingo, Prize Old Ale – beers that are part of the rich tapestry of historic ales brewed in Britain.

Dark Star and Fuller’s breweries are now owned by Asahi. Last November the Japanese group announced it would close Dark Star and move its beers to Chiswick. But it assures me POA will continue to be brewed.