Whitbread's Ale and Stout

Random price list time. Today it's the turn of Whitbread bottled beers from 1937.

It comes from a bit away from London - Grantham in Linconshire. Which is about 100 miles due North of the capital. I usually refer to Grantham as Newark's evil twin. Especially when speaking with Dolores. She wasn't impressed by Grantham.

Whitbread was one of the small group of brewers whose products were sold nationally. Though it Whitbread's case the more distant trade seems to have been exclusively bottled. Whereas others - such as Bass - also supplied draught beer all overs the country.

Listed below is pretty much the full set of Whitbread's bottled beers. The only one missing is Extra Stout. But there's a good reason for that - it was brewed exclusively for export, principally to Belgium. There's still a beer sold as Whitbread Extra Stout in Belgium

Grantham Journal - Saturday 11 December 1937, page 4.

Here are the details of the beers themselves. Plus the relative price per strength.

Whitbread bottled beers in 1937
Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	price per pint (d)	gravity points per d
IPA	IPA	1037.1	1009.5	3.65	74.39%	10.00	1.58	7	5.30
X	Mild	1033.1	1011.0	2.92	66.77%	7.92	1.12	7	4.73
DB	Brown Ale	1054.7	1012.5	5.58	77.15%	9.98	2.32	9	6.08
LS	Stout	1044.6	1013.0	4.18	70.85%	6.94	1.26	8.5	5.25
LOS	Stout	1044.6	1013.0	4.18	70.85%	6.94	1.26	8.5	5.25
MS	Stout	1057	1024.5	4.19	57.02%	6.95	1.48	10	5.70
Sources
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/01/103, LMA/4453/D/01/104 and LMA/4453/D/09/125.
Thomas Usher Gravity Book held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number TU/6/11.

Surprisingly, Double Brown is the best value, followed by Mackeson. Though there are some caveats. The gravity given for X/Forest Brown is probably too low. From analyses I know that the real OG was higher - more like 1038º. The increase is due to the addition of primings at racking time. In value for money terms. it's prbably really about the same as IPA.

The OG and FG of Mackeson I've taken from an analysis rather than the brewing record. As the lactose added at racking time isn't recorded in the brewing record.