I've created a combined table. Including the best and worst value of each style, along with the averages. I sorted the original tables on gravity points per penny rather than ABV. Why did I do that? Because the tax, at the time, was paid on the gravity. So the tax was directly related to the gravity. While with the ABV, the value was partly determined by the degree of attenuation.
This does make Lager look slightly worse, as its degree of attenuation, as you can see in the table, was higher than that of Bitter or Mild, at over 80%. An average Lager, with an OG of 1033.4º cost 17.8p. While Mild of just 1.5º lower gravity only cost 11.2p. And the best value Lager was worse than the worst value Mild.
Compared to Bitter, Lager was on average 4.1º lower in gravity, but 4.3p per pint more expensive. Why on earth did anyone drink the stuff? More expensive and weaker. It makes no sense. Though the best value Lager did just beat the worst value Bitter. While Bitter and Mild were very similar, on average, in terms of value.
| Draught beer prices in 1972 | ||||||||
| Brewer | Beer | Price | º gravity per p | % ABV per p | OG | FG | ABV | App. Atten-uation |
| Greenall Whitley | Grunhalle | 16 | 2.33 | 0.24 | 1037.3 | 1007.3 | 3.90 | 80.43% |
| Tuborg | Lager | 22 | 1.33 | 0.14 | 1029.3 | 1005.4 | 3.10 | 81.57% |
| Average Lager |
17.8 | 1.91 | 0.20 | 1033.4 | 1006.3 | 3.51 | 81.15% | |
| Batham | Mild | 11 | 3.24 | 0.34 | 1035.6 | 1007.1 | 3.70 | 80.06% |
| Truman | Mild | 13 | 2.38 | 0.23 | 1031 | 1007.9 | 3.00 | 74.52% |
| Average Mild |
11.2 | 2.86 | 0.27 | 1031.9 | 1008.5 | 3.03 | 73.13% | |
| Three Tuns | Bitter | 12 | 3.42 | 0.35 | 1041 | 1008.7 | 4.20 | 78.78% |
| Truman | Titan | 16 | 2.28 | 0.25 | 1036.5 | 1005.8 | 4.00 | 84.11% |
| Average Bitter |
13.5 | 2.79 | 0.27 | 1037.5 | 1009.1 | 3.68 | 75.80% | |
| Source: | ||||||||
| Daily Mirror July 10th 1972, page 15 | ||||||||
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14 comments:
This is fascinating stuff. Are marketing and peer pressure really so powerful? I was born six years after this data and so my formative years when I acquired a taste for beer were very much in a post-CAMRA world where cask ale was mostly rehabilitated (if still much less popular than lager).
I've always assumed a lot of bitter and mild had become so bland and forced into kegs that consumers found lager more appealing. But are we really saying these weak <1.033 OG (mostly) lagers were more flavourful? The power of suggestion, perhaps — drinkers of the cold fizzy stuff felt like they were getting drunk faster, even though the old duffer's cask would have done the job just as well? Or was it simply young folk thought lager was more trendy/sophisticated and mild and bitter were a throwback to fusty old rationing-era Britain, and no amount of money would make them go back?
I suppose one thing to consider is lager never existed in cask form. So it was a reliable product across the country (dirty lines in dodgy pubs notwithstanding). There are many more opportunities for someone just starting out on beer to come across a poorly kept cask ale and decide it's all rubbish. (I can only think of Schiehallion as a ‘cask lager’ and I'm not sure many other breweries tried.)
There's lots to unpack here when you put it up against the light-speed rise of lager and the equally speedy decline of cask beer.
Why did anyone drink lager? Well in 1970, when I was not quite 18 and so a novice beer drinker I spent a week in Germany and the Netherlands. At that time my beer drinking experience revolved around the then popular keg beers, Watneys Red, Tartan, Double Diamond and the like. Compared to these offerings, Diebels Pils, Amstel etc were infinitely preferable.
So on returning to England I started drinking lager. It wasn't as good, it was never as good and eventually I gave it up. I discovered cask beer though at the time I didn't realise there was a difference between cask and keg, but I realised hand pumped Tetleys was the thing, and when I went up to Durham I knew enough to recognise the decent beers, albeit they may or may not have been cask. So Whitbread Trophy (formerly Nimmos's), Taddy Ales, Federation became preferred.
Basically I got good advice from my Dad. Tetley's was best. Handpulled was best. That set me on the path of righteousness. Otherwise I might have fallen for ever into the Pit of lager drinking.
I started going in to pubs and clubs in East Lancs in 1972. Usually the tap room or games room as we were well under age. Being a list-maker by nature, I've always kept notes on on beer prices in the various parts of the country I've landed in.
In !972 Burnley and Pendle, most pubs were ex-Masseys and were now Bass Charrington houses. They'd shut Masseys brewery in 1971 and were foisting Brew X on their customers. It was muck at 12np a pint. Dark Mild could be had for 10np a pint (more in saloon bars). Best value and best beers were Thwaites, Sam Smiths and Tim Taylors A couple of pence under Bass and Whitbread and nearly always cask. Thwaites have a history of pushing keg beer. They had a keg mild called 'Danny Keg' which could have seeped out of the bottom of a motor-bike and a watery in-house lager called 'Stein'. Foreign holidays gave us the taste for Brit 'lager' and the will to pay through the nose for it. All kinds of piss followed.
Owd Burnly,
was that Brew X coming from Tadcaster? Or was it from their disaster of a brewery in Runcorn? I never cared for Brew X. The XXXX Mild from Tadcaster was a bit better, but still not a patch on Tetley's Mild.
Iain,
some of the Lagers - like Harp - did start out reasonably authentic. But were some bastardised to save money. But the low gravities demanded by the UK market didn't do them any favours. They were bland and watery even compared to keg Mild and Bitter. I think fizzy and inoffensive were selling points to many young drinkers. Mild was seen as an old man's drink. And Bitter had the same fate some years later.
Chris Pickles,
it's often been said that foreign travel was behind the increase in popularity of Lager. I've always been sceptical, but you've provided at least one example. Maybe I should ask around, see how many others had a similar experience.
I remember Skol being for sale in a working man's club in 70's Liverpool with an exciting lit up pint glass counter display thing and it must have sold otherwise it wouldn't have been available. Nobody in that club was travelling abroad. Heineken advertising was very heavy in pubs and on TV - I recall the Heineken advert that turned JR Ewing into a saint. My Dad's first trip to Spain in the early 80's did not convert him to lager and he remained resolutely a bitter and Guinness man. Not saying foreign travel wasn't part of the rise in lager drinking but a lot was just marketing imho.
Ron, the Brew X we had came from Tadcaster. It was always in keg form in Nelson. Two miles up the road in Colne, it came as cask (electric). It was still awful. The mild was cask as well and from Taddy. If we strayed into W.Yorks at Barlick we could get Bass Blue (light mild) and Stones on cask, (diaphragm dispense). Skipton was the best town locally to drink in. Plenty of pubs, variety of breweries (including Camerons), usually hand-pulled. And open all day on Mondays for the livestock market.
When I left school and went to work in Germany in 1974 for a few months, the beers were served draught lager-style but were properly done and tasty (and cheap - like a few pfennigs). I used to spend my weekends off going down the Rhine on country walks, and calling into beer gardens, where they served beer out of giant wooden casks. I could never drink a British-brewed lager after that.
Tetley's dark mild was very good but they also did a creamy light mild at the time which
I've haven't seen for years.
OB (still on mild).
OB
I remember having a pint of Brew Ten after an ascent of Pendle Hill. Anything cool and liquid would taste good after that, and that was thus by default the best Brew Ten I ever had. But otherwise it was desperate stuff. Then again a bit later on I had a pint of Brew Eleven in Coventry and thought perhaps I had been a bit harsh on the old Brew Ten!
Ron
I have sometimes wondered if Brew Ten was an original recipe devised by Bass Charrington, or if it may have been a continuation of an originally Hammonds brew, in the same way that Whitbread continued to brew beers from breweries they had taken over under the Trophy label.
PS My bad. It was Taylor's light mild, not Tetley's which I'm pretty sure they are still brewing. Age-related memory lapse (or bad handwriting in my original notes). Tetley brewed Imperial which we couldn't get in East Lancs.
OB
Tetley's did have a light mild (Falstaff) though it was rarely seen in Bradford.
Imperial was only sold in the Middlesbrough area - those steel workers demanded a stronger bitter such as Draught Bass, John Smiths Magnet and Camerons Strongarm.
Imperial did spill over into my now time home town of Darlington (clubs more than pubs). It was pretty damned good even though it was rarely in cask form.
Falstaff, of course. I knew I wasn't going quite so senile. Drank it in Leeds and York.
Chris Pickles,
I know all about Falstaff. I never drank it, but I do have detailed information on how to brew it.
Apart from the colour, it differed from their darker Mild by being a little more highly-attenuated, a little more bitter and using a different type of sugar.
Looking at the specs of Imperial, it was very dark for a Bitter and was almost the same colour as the Mild: 48 EBC compared to 56 EBC.
Funny, I don't remember Imperial being dark at all. My memory of it being the same colour as the regular bitter, a bit denser but basically in the same pale amber area.
Having said that, the regular Teesside offerings were relatively dark, so perhaps my memory is faulty.
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