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Sunday, 17 March 2013

Home Brewed (part two)

Now it's time for a nice table of Home Brewed details. Not as many entries as I would have liked, but better than nothing. It gives us a chance to see in Andrew Campbell's description was correct.

There's one area where straight off I can see something that doesn't tally: not all of the examples were bottled beers. A couple were draught, at least before WW II.

I'm surprised to see the difference is strength between examples brewed at different breweries in Bristol. The Home Brewed from Georges and Rogers are pretty different. At 1036.7º, the one from Rogers is about the same strength as standard Mild of the day. Whereas Georges, at over 1050º, was closer in strength to a Burton. It's odd because beers with the same name brewed in the same town were usually generally similar.

You can see that WW II knocked down the strength, though Georges remained a respectable 1043º. The Starkey, Knight and Ford version is more like what I would expect a Brown Ale of the period to be, a little over 1030º.

There are only two entries with a colour given, unfortunately. Both are indeed brown, Starkey, Knight and Ford's somewhat darker than Georges. Nothing that contradicts Andrew Campbell's description is all I can really say.

Here's the table:

Home Brewed
Year Brewer Beer Price size package Acidity FG OG colour ABV App. Atten-uation
1928 Devenish Home Brewed 7d pint bottled 1002.7 1032.6 3.90 91.72%
1922 Georges Home Brewed Ale pint draught 1011 1052.1 5.35 78.89%
1928 Georges Home Brewed 8.5d pint bottled 1010.4 1055.3 5.86 81.19%
1930 Georges Home Brewed 6d half pint bottled 0.06 1012 1056.6 5.81 78.80%
1936 Georges Home Brewed 8.5d pint bottled 0.06 1016.2 1055.6 5.11 70.86%
1937 Georges Home Brewed 8.5d pint bottled 0.07 1016.7 1053.2 4.73 68.61%
1952 Georges Home Brew 11d half pint bottled 0.08 1009.9 1043.3 1.5 + 40 4.34 77.14%
1994 Home Home Brewed pint bottled 3.60
1932 Hoskins Home Brewed 8d pint bottled 1008.8 1043.7 4.54 79.86%
1922 Rogers Home Brewed Ale pint draught 1008.4 1036.7 3.67 77.11%
1948 Starkey, Knight & Ford Home Brewed 1/6d pint bottled 0.05 1008.3 1033.4 40 + 5.5 3.25 75.15%
Sources:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002
The Best of British Bottled Beer

Were Home Ales the last brewery to produce something called Home Brewed? I suspect they might have been.

6 comments:

  1. Martyn Cornell17 March 2013 at 04:56

    Certainly Courage was still producing a bottled beer from the Bristol brewery under the name George's Home Brewed in the late 1970s, possibly later.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ron Pattinson17 March 2013 at 10:39

    Martyn,

    be great to know when the George's one disappeared, as it seems to have been a big brand for them.

    But 1994 - what could beat that?

    I used to quite like Home Mild, clearly the base of that last Home Brewed. Great value for money, it was. Not as good as Shippo's, mind.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous17 March 2013 at 13:05


    Ron,

    I think that I have spent the last four days pouring over your blog - and I've only covered the last 8 months...

    I would like to fill in the empty hollowness in my life by researching the recipes of the Luton brewer, JW Green. Given its fate, I would imagine that the Whitbread archives may be the place to start, but I thought that I would ask if you had any information first.

    I realise that I've gone off-topic, but I don't know how else to contact you.

    Thanks,

    Jeremy

    ReplyDelete
  4. Martyn Cornell18 March 2013 at 02:35

    Jeremy - (1) ask Luton Museum/Luton Local History Library/ Beds County Record Office what they have
    (2) - get the Luton News to do a story on your hunt for old JW Green recipes. I'll almost guarantee you'll have elderly Greens/Flowers brewers getting in touch

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ron Pattinson18 March 2013 at 03:37

    Jeremy, the good news is that the records you're looking for almost certainly exist. Whitbread were very good at keeping brewing records of companies they took over.

    The bad news is that the Whitbread Archive was broken up and spread all over the country. Martyn is probably correct that they will be in an archive somewhere close to Luton.

    If you need any help understanding the records when you find them, I'll be happy to help.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Jeremy18 March 2013 at 06:22

    Many thanks both.

    Why didn't I think of Luton Museum as a starting place? Its about 200 yards away as write this!

    One success already. I know where the brass plaque for the registered office ended up. I saw it this morning!

    ReplyDelete