Home delivery in wartime

You wouldn’t want to run out of beer at home. Especially not during wartime.

Luckily, Davenports were there to see you right:

“BEER AT HOME
IF YOU ARE FINDING IT DIFFICULT TO OBTAIN REGULAR SUPPLIES OF ALES AND STOUTS AT REASONABLE PRICES, YOU WILL BE INTERESTED TO KNOW THAT BY JOINING OUR REGISTERED CUSTOMERS SCHEME YOU WILL ENSURE REGULAR FUTURE DELIVERY.

A glance at our price list given below shows clearly that our well-known policy of QUALITY and VALUE is being continued during the war period.

	Magnums Per Doz.	Large Per Doz.	Small Per Doz
“C.B” BEER	6/-		4/-
BROWN ALE	6/6		4/4
MILD ALE	7/-		4/6
BEST BITTER	7/6
EXTRA STOUT	8/-	6/8	4/10
STRONG ALE			5/6
PALE ALE			4/10
GUINNESS (Harp Label)	9/-	7/2	5/2
BULMER'S CIDER	6/6	4/8	4/-
EVANS’ CIDER	6/-	4/6	3/10
CHAMPAGNE CIDER			7/6
BASS			5/6
WORTHINGTON			5/6

DAVENPORTS
All information as to our splendid REGISTERED CUSTOMER SCHEME may be obtained on application to Mr. F. WILLIAMS, the Manager of the Lichfield Depot, at THE OLD BREWERY, SANDFORD STREET, LICHFIELD.”
Lichfield Mercury - Friday 01 December 1939, page 8.

You may be wondering why I’m bothering with this. It’s very simple: the second and third beers in the table. The story is usually that Brown Ale was just bottled Dark Mild. But that wasn’t necessarily the case before WW II. Whitbread’s Double Brown, for example, was stronger than the strongest Dark Milds and much more heavily hopped.

In this case, it’s the other way around, with the Mild being stronger than the Brown Ale. Which has got me wondering about the strength of their bottled Mild. Because an analysis from a few years earlier show Davenport Brown Ale with a very respectable gravity of 1045º.

Here’s their Brown Ale and some other beers:

Davenport's bottled beers in 1931
Beer	Style	Price	size	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation
Bitter Beer	Pale Ale	6d	half pint	1036.7	1007.3	3.82	80.11%
Best Bitter	Pale Ale	8d	pint	1053.9	1017.9	4.66	66.79%
Brown Ale	Brown Ale	6.5d	pint	1044.8	1014.2	3.96	68.30%
Pale Ale	Pale Ale	5.5d	half pint	1055.8	1013.2	5.54	76.34%
Extra Stout	Stout	7d	reputed pint	1057.9	1012.3	5.94	78.76%
Strong Ale	Strong Ale	6.5d	half pint	1064.1	1012.4	6.76	80.66%
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001.