I've just finished ploughing through the WW I brewing records of Thomas Usher. The Edinburgh brewer. Fascinating. For me. Unsurprisingly, the logs told a similar tale to those of the London brewers I've already looked at. Falling gravities after 1916 and a savage reduction in types of beer brewed during 1918.
Take a look:
I haven't included all their pre-war products. There were a couple of other Milds (44/- and 50/-), a few low-gravity Pale Ales and two more Stouts. After the war their product range was very different. Susprisingly, it was almost all Pale Ale. They brewed four: PA, PA 60/-, PA 70/- and PA 80/-. X disappeared without trace. The Milds were trimmed down from 5 to 1 and the Stouts from 3 to 1. And the Mild and Stout were party-gyled. Something I've never seen before. And there werre the odd few barrels of Strong Ale brewed, party-gyled with PA.
For comparison purposes, here are Barclay Perkins AlesI:
And Whitbread's:
Not sure what all that tells us. Maybe you can tell me.
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4 comments:
It doesn't look like X disappeared without trace. It looks like it was replaced by MA and the GA.
Was PA weaker than PA 60/–?
If 60/– aka Light was a Pale Ale and not a Mild, it would make sense to me. McEwan's core advertised products for decades were "Pale and Export Ales" (sometimes with the addition of Strong Ale).
Barm, er, well, I'm not 100% sure X do really was Mild. From the logs, it looks more like a Pale Ale or Stock Ale.
I still need to digest Usher's beers. Not in an interesting (physical) way, sadly. There's much I don't understand.
Barm - "light" in Scottish terms, surely, means "mild", as "heavy" means bitter ...
Ushers had a big export business to Belgium, where Scottish beers were popular, after the First World War = I wonder if this distorted the sorts/proportions of beers they brewed?
I have never been comfortable with the notion Light = Mild, but only the logs will show up whether there is a real difference.
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