I promised you numbers

I apologise for yesterday's post. I promised you numbers and all you got were bad jokes and dodgy photographs. I'll try to do better today.

Though today is a Barclay Perkins day, courtesy of Stonch, who provided the photo of an example of their signage.

I've just finished going through the draught Pale Ale entries in the Truman's Gravity Book (see yesterday's post for unfunny gravity jokes). Fascinating stuff. I'll be more precise: fascinating stuff for me. But as I'm only writing this blog for my own amusement, that's good enough.

These are the edited highlights, with an emphasis on beers that were still around during my drinking lifetime. (Sorry about the huge blank spaces. I haven't quite mastered this blogging yet. Keep scrolling down to find all the loverley numbers and perhaps even a crap joke.)







You'll see the effect of a big rise in duty in the early 1930s (80 shillings to 114 shillings per 36 gallon barrel). It was reversed in 1933, though it seems many drinkers switched permanently to the cheaper (and weaker) Bitters introduced to negate the effect of the tax increase. The same thing happenned with draught Mild, with Barclay Perkins introducing a new beer - XX - at the gravity their X Ale had previously been, and dropping the X down to 1035.

If you've had the patience to read all those dull statistics, I feel I owe at least one joke. This is from my younger son.

"Why did the chicken cross the road?" "To get to the Burger King Fox." Don't ask me what it means. Look, I just promnised you a joke, not a good quality or even vaguely amusing one.