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.