Branded Odds and Sods in 1953

These are the beers which didn’t fall neatly into any of the other style categories. Or I just missed. It’s a bit of both.

Some are in recognisable styles: Golden Ale, Honey Beer, Black Beer. Others – Dark Ale, Dark Beer, Dark Heavy Ale – are extremely vague. Are they bottled Mild? A type of Brown Ale? One certainly was, Trubrown. I know that was Truman’s Brown Ale brand.

And I should have had Tuborg Export in the last set. I just missed it when I pulled out the Lager set. I’m pretty sure Tuborg Gold was/is in the Export style. Tuborg Guld (as it’s called in its homeland) is still brewed by Carlsberg. It’s the only one of these brands to survive. And, typically, it’s the one non-UK brand.

It’s sad to see how few British beer brands have survived. Even ones from successful breweries like William Younger. Even the mighty Bass struggles everywhere except North America.

Brown Bracer is my favourite. Conjures up all sorts of images, not all of them salubrious. While Kentish Beer could easily be used for comic purposes by someone with a coarser sense of humour than I.

Golden Mead Ale, to give it its full name, intrigues me. “The original and genuine honey ale” it says on the label. Which implies it did indeed contain honey. Though how much is the question. Having seen hundreds of barrels of Oatmeal Stout brewed from a grist contained just a few pounds of oats, I know how they took the piss. Honey was often appears in domestic beer recipes from the 18th and 19th centuries, but for most of that period wasn’t legal in commercial beer.

Hope & Anchor, you may recall, was where Eddie Taylor began on his merger spree. A spree which eventually led to the creation of Bass Charrington, Britain’s largest brewing group. Even before Taylor arrived, Hope & Anchor had been ambitious, trying to get their bottled beer – in particular Jubilee Stout – into other brewers’ pubs. No surprise someone like them would come up with a gimmicky Honey Ale.

Branded Odds and Sods in 1953
Brewery	Brand	Type
J. E. Mather & Sons	Jem	Black Beer
South Wales and Monmouthshire United Clubs Brewery Co.	Brown Bracer	Dark
Cairne's	Vat 25	Dark Ale
Truman	Trubrown	Dark Ale, bottled
Benskin's	Jubilee	Dark Beer
Wm. Murray	Wee Samson	Dark Heavy Ale
Andrew Buchan's Breweries	Chestnut	Dark, bottled
John Richdale	Brit	Dark, strong, draught
T. & J. Bernard	Grouse Brand	Export
Tuborg	Tuborg Gold Label	Export Beer
Wm. Hancock	Five Five	Export Pale Ale
Fremlins	Kentish Beer	Export Quality
Wm. Younger	Monk	Export, bottled
South London Brewery	Jenners	Golden Ale
Robert Younger	Old Edinburgh	Heavy Ale
Hope & Anchor	Golden Mead	Honey Beer
Source:
Brewery Manual 1953-1954, pages 382 - 394.

I’m finally done with this crap.