Saturday 25 December 2010

Allsopp beers 1870 - 1948

Allsopp. I just never tire of them. Hopefully you don't either. Otherwise things are going to get very tedious for you. I'm nowhere near finished banging this particular drum.

I haven't published a table for, ooh, must be two or three days. Another is long overdue. This one, as the title reveals, covers a period of more than half a century. And it covers quite a wide range of styles. Sadly there are only a couple of Lagers. One of the bizarre twists of the Allsopp story is that they became principally a Lager brewery at one point. From the labels I've seen, they brewed quite a range of Lagers, including a dark Munich-style one.

Luckily there are some typical Burton beers. Burton Ales and IPA. You can probably guess what I'm going to bring up now. Look at the gravities. Pre-WW I, there are only a couple of beers weaker than the IPA: a Mild and a Light Dinner Ale, beers very much in the relegation zone of the strength league. The genuinely strong beers, Burton Ales, are almost twice as strong as the IPA. Hang on, I'll start a new paragraph to make this stand out more . . .

IPA was not a strong beer.

I feel better now. That out of the way, we can discuss some other points of interest. Like attenuation. Some of the beers, IPA for example, have a very high degree of attenuation. 85 to 90%. That's not such a surprise in the case of IPA. That was one of its characteristics. And what differentiated it from standard Pale Ale. More surprising is the 90% attenuation of one of the strong Burton Ales.

One more IPA point. Between 1901 and 1921 its gravity dropped from 1062 to 1054. That's quite a small decline, when you consider that over the same period Whitbread Porter went from 1055 to 1028. Having looked at the gravities of beers from Worthington and Bass, it seems Burton brewers were much less affected by gravity cuts.

But that's enough of me. Time for you to wonder and some numbers:


Allsopp beers 1870 - 1948
Year
Beer
Style
Price
size
package
Acidity
FG
OG
Colour
ABV
atten-uation
1870
Old Burton Ale (brewed March 1869)
Strong Ale

pint
draught
0.32
1040.38
1121.63

10.64
66.80%
1870
Old Burton Ale
Strong Ale
6d
pint
draught
0.25
1030.11
1111.45

10.69
72.98%
1870
Burton Ale
Strong Ale
4d
pint
draught
0.56
1008.61
1086.4

10.30
90.03%
1870
Mild
Mild
2d
pint
draught
0.22
1014.78
1057.33

5.53
74.22%
1879
Burton Ale
Mild



0.235
1013.99
1069.51

7.88
78.79%
1896
Burton Light Dinner Ale
Dinner Ale



0.198
1007.72
1053.92

5.81
85.02%
1896
Luncheon Stout
Stout




1011.51
1063.47

6.69
80.94%
1901
India Pale Ale, Red Hand
IPA



0.144
1008.62
1061.57

6.80
85.27%
1921
IPA
IPA
8.5d
halfpint
bottled

1004.4
1054.4

6.56
91.91%
1922
PA
Pale Ale
8d
pint
bottled

1009.5
1045.7

4.71
79.21%
1922
Extra Stout (Belgian sample)
Stout

pint
bottled

1014.7
1053.7

5.06
72.63%
1926
Stout
Stout
8d
pint
bottled


1048.4



1928
Stout
Stout
8d
pint
bottled


1049.3



1932
Lager
Lager

pint
bottled

1009.4
1041

4.10
77.07%
1934
Brown Ale
Brown Ale

half pint
bottled


1035.90



1935
Milk Stout
Stout
9d
halfpint
bottled
0.06
1013.8
1049.3

4.61
72.01%
1937
Milk Stout
Stout

pint
bottled
0.05
1015.1
1050.6

4.60
70.16%
1937
Milk Stout
Stout
6d
halfpint
bottled
0.05
1014.5
1050.3

4.64
71.17%
1937
Lager
Lager

pint
bottled
0.05
1011.8
1045.2

4.33
73.89%
1948
Burton Pale Ale (bottled in Brussels)
Pale Ale


bottled
0.08
1008.9
1052.8

5.73
83.14%
1948
John Bull Ale
Pale Ale
13d
half pint
bottled
0.05
1008.2
1038.2
40 + 9
3.90
78.53%
1948
Burton Pale Ale Export (bottled in Brussels)
Pale Ale


bottled
0.07
1007.1
1052.6
18
5.95
86.50%
Sources:
British Medical Journal January 15th 1870
Whitbread Gravity Book
Truman Gravity Book



One last point. The Burton Pale Ale brewed for the Belgian market. See how that remained a reasonable strength of over 1050 even in the late 1940's. A time when British beer strengths were at a low, second only to 1919. The average gravity of UK-brewed beer was 1032.59 in 1948 and 1030.55 in 1919. Note that beer strengths hit bottom after the end of both wars.

2 comments:

mrbowenz said...

Dumb question maybe, why is Burton ale sometimes called a strong ale and sometimes called a pale ale ? I would think it would be a nice rich brownish color with amber or brown malts for color and residual unfermentable grains for body, rather than pale single or two malt varieties. Any insight ?

Ron Pattinson said...

mrbowenz,

that's because I've got one of them wrong. It should probably read Mild Ale.