Saturday 10 October 2015

Brown Ale in 1960

With draught Mild out of the way we can move on to bottled Dark Mild, or Brown Ale as it was usually called.

Though I should be careful about saying that. Not every beer in the tables below is a bottled Mild. Or something similar. There are some quite different stylistically. But we’ll get onto that later.

Starting with the Which? samples seems the logical place to start. They aren’t a very alcoholic bunch. Far from it. Only a couple are over 3% ABV and the average is below it. The strongest of the bunch, Double Maxim, wasn’t even classed as a Brown Ale but was lumped with the bottled Pale Ales. Of the ones they considered Brown Ales, only the Carlisle State Management example scrapes past 1040º.

The gravities are mostly in the low 1030’s, much like draught Mild. But the rate of attenuation is much lower, averaging 65% compared to almost 75%. That’s quite a difference considering they’re very similar, or in some cases actually the same, beer. That was certainly the case of Whitbread’s  Forest Brown which was the same beer as Best Ale. Only one has attenuation over 70% and that’s the one beer that’s different from the others: Double Maxim.

It looks as if drinkers liked their Brown Ales sweet. Even sweeter than Mild. This is borne out by the bitterness levels, which average to one point lower than Mild. The combination of light hopping and high FG must have left them drinking pretty sweet and quite full for the gravity.

Looking at value for money, Double Maxim is a clear winner. It’s only a little more expensive for its ABV than draught Mild. Surprisingly, Brown Ale is on average worse value than bottled Light Ale and bottled Pale Ale, which both came to about 6.5. I can’t understand why that should be.

Moving on to the Gravity Book examples, you can see that they are a more diverse bunch. The majority are still of the bottled Mild type, but there are also some that are quite different. There’s a stronger type consisting of Bass, Newcastle Brown and Federation. The latter two are intended to be similar, I’m sure. And the Bass one probably filled a similar niche. The all have reasonable to high attenuation.

The real outlier is Websters Old Brown, which you may recall began life as a Coronation Ale. Strong, dark and heavy. I wouldn’t mind a pint of that now. I’d guess that it was parti-gyled with their Sam Brown Ale.

There’s a similar variation in colour, ranging from not really brown at all (Brickwood) to near black (Strong). Though the average is typical in the Dark Mild country of 80 to 90.

Federation comes out as best value for money. Not really much of a shock. Clubs breweries kept prices low. And their Brown Ale is also quite well attenuated, which helps. It even manages to be better value than one of the draught Milds. At the other end of the scale is Atkinson’s Brown Ale, which costs double per 1% ABV.

Brown Ale in 1960
Brewer Beer Price per pint d OG FG ABV App. Atten-uation Index of Hop Bitter price per % ABV
Ansells Nut Brown Ale 17 1032.9 1010.5 2.90 68.09% 20 5.87
Ushers Brown Ale 18 1032.3 1010.7 2.80 67.03% 22 6.43
Friary Meux Brown Ale 20 1030.2 1011.6 2.40 61.59% 19 8.33
Tolly Cobblold Country Brown Ale 20 1031.5 1012.2 2.50 61.43% 23 8.01
Strong Rumsey Brown 20 1032.1 1009.7 2.90 69.78% 20 6.90
Watney Brown Ale 20 1032.1 1011.2 2.70 65.11% 16 7.40
Greene King Burton Ale 20 1033.4 1011.7 2.80 64.97% 16 7.13
Truman Trubrown Brown Ale 20 1034.7 1013.8 2.70 60.23% 27 7.42
Truman Trubrown Brown Ale 20 1035.2 1015.1 2.60 57.24% 25 7.70
Simonds Berry Brown Ale 20 1035.1 1015.7 2.50 55.27% 20 8.00
Carlisle State Management Nut Brown Ale 20 1040.6 1012.8 3.60 68.60% 20 5.55
Fremlins Double Elephant Brown Ale 21 1033.4 1011 2.90 67.07% 17 7.25
Courage & Barclay 'Doctor' Brown Ale 21 1034.7 1013 2.80 62.54% 26 7.49
Whitbread Forest Brown 21 1035.5 1012.3 3.00 65.35% 28 7.00
Georges Brown Ale 22 1035.1 1011.9 3.00 66.10% 20 7.34
Vaux Double Maxim 24 1047.4 1009.8 4.90 79.43% 40 4.90
Average 20.3 1034.8 1012.0 2.94 64.99% 22.4 7.05
Source:
Which Beer Report, 1960, pages 171 - 173.


Brown Ale 1959 - 1961
Brewer Beer Price per pint d OG FG ABV App. Atten-uation colour price per % ABV
Ansell Bruno Sweet Brown Ale 23 1034.4 1013.6 2.68 60.47% 90 8.57
Atkinson's Brown Ale 26 1037 1016.5 2.64 55.41% 95 9.85
Bass Brown Ale 36 1052.9 1015.6 4.84 70.51% 105 7.44
Brickwoods Brown Ale 24 1041.1 1013.9 3.52 66.18% 19 6.82
Hammonds Brown Jack Ale 20 1034.7 1009.3 3.18 73.20% 70 6.30
Newcastle Breweries Brown Ale 32 1052.2 1012.1 5.22 76.82% 50 6.13
Tennant Bros. Lion Brown Ale 23 1035.1 1009.2 3.24 73.79% 75 7.10
Tomson & Wotton Tom Brown Ale 1033.5 1014 2.51 58.21% 110
Websters Old Brown 46.5 1071.4 1023.1 6.27 67.65% 110 7.42
Websters Sam Brown Ale 18 1036.8 1011.1 3.33 69.84% 95 5.41
Hancock, Cardiff Nut Brown 1033
Northern Clubs Federation Federation Brown Ale 23 1051.4 1010.4 5.13 79.77% 70 4.49
Newcastle Breweries Brown Ale 30 1051.4 1008.2 5.40 84.05% 50 5.56
Strong Rumsey Brown 21 1032.3 1010 2.79 69.04% 140 7.53
Truman Keg Brown 18 1033.5 1007 3.44 79.10% 90 5.23
Whitbread Forest Brown 1033.0 1008.0 3.31 75.76% 100
Average 25.4 1041.5 1012.1 3.83 70.65% 84.6 6.76
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/01/127.
Stout next. Where I’ll be banging one of my favourite drums very loudly again.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's interesting to me that in the US somehow "nut" brown ale became a specific category when you see all of the different adjectives used - Lion, Berry, Trubrown, Country.... The brewers clearly would be baffled by the way Nut became a clearcut signifier.