Watney's Brown Ale 1929 - 1964

Random beer from a random brewer again. This time everyone's favourite: Watney.

Bizarrely, I now feel sort of sorry for Watney. Unloved and unmourned, unlike most defunct breweries. Then again, they did try pretty hard to bugger up British beer and British pubs. Not that I ever went into one of their pubs, unless dragged. Even when they did start selling something drinkable, I still wasn't keen on their pubs. They were kings of the tasteless tarting up, ripping out the character and replacing it with bland, cheap tat.

The company I remember with so little fondness was the product of the first big brewery merger. Now here's an irony. When Watney, Combe and Reid merged in 1898, the latter two breweries closed and production was transferred to Watney's Stag Brewery. The irony? There's not a brick left standing of that brewery, while there's a substantial chunk of Combe's brewery in Long Acre left. Until last week I'd thought that Reid's Griffin Brewery had completely demolished. Then I found a large-scale OS map of London online. Which shows that the brewery was on both sides of Leather Lane. Only the part to the West was knocked down.

Back to Watney. They kept the Reid and Combe names alive until WW II. The former for Stout, latter for Brown Ale. Though there were also Stout and Brown Ale sold under the Watney brand. Given the similarity of the specs, I suspect there were the same beers differently labelled.

I'm going to indulge in some wild speculation now. What was the relationship, if any, between Watney's Mild Ale and their Brown Ale? Without any brewing books, this is a tricky one. All I can go by are the gravities I have from analyses. The Brown Ales from Barclay Perkins and Whitbread were most definitely not versions of their Mild before WW II. They were single-gyle beers with their own distinctive grists. And different gravities from their Milds. Whitbread's Double Brown had a much higher gravity than their Milds.

In the case of the first three examples in the table, the gravity is suspiciously close to the 1043º of their X Ale. But after 1931, it gets more complicated. 1931, if you remember, was the year of the disastrous rise in beer duty. An increase which actually saw the amount of tax collected fall, as brewers dropped gravities to be able to leave the retail price the same. The gravity of Watney's X Ale dropped from 1043º to 1034º, and the price remained at 6d per pint. But look at what happened with Brown Ale: the gravity only dropped to 1038º and the price increased from 7d per pint to 8d.

That in itself tells us something. Punters were prepared to pay more for Brown Ale, but weren't for draught Mild. It implies that Brown Ale was more fashionable and upmarket. I know, it's difficult to believe now that Brown Ale could have been either of those things.

After the tax increase was reversed in 1933, Watney's X Ale remained around the same gravity, but fell in price to 5d per pint. While the gravity of their Brown Ale went back to the pre-1931 level and its price dropped by 1d. Which is how things remained until WW II. By the end of which both had dropped to around 1030º. Post-war, both bubbled along in the low 1030's. My guess is that by then they were basically the same beer, with maybe the odd tweak to the Brown Ale, as at Whitbread with Best Ale and Forest Brown.

Here's an interesting fact. Watney's Brown Ale was about exactly the average OG of all beer brewed in the UK in the late 1920's and early 1930's. And Mann's, the original modern Brown Ale, had a very similar gravity, too. While post-war Watney's Brown Ale was 3-4 degrees below average gravity.

Year	Average OG	Year	Average OG	Year	Average OG
1928	1043.31	1941	1038.51	1953	1036.87
1929	1043.21	1942	1035.53	1954	1036.97
1930	1043.05	1943	1034.34	1955	1037.13
1931	1042.69	1944	1034.63	1956	1037.22
1932	1041.19	1945	1034.54	1957	1037.42
1933	1039.69	1946	1034.72	1958	1037.48
1934	1040.99	1947	1032.59	1959	1037.52
1935	1041.06	1948	1032.66	1960	1037.25
1936	1041.02	1949	1033.43	1961	1037.41
1937	1041.10	1950	1033.88	1962	1037.70
1938	1041.02	1951	1036.99	1963	1037.70
1939	1040.93	1952	1037.07	1964	1037.66
1940	1040.62
Sources:
Brewers' Journal 1921, page 246.
Brewers' Almanack 1955, p. 50
Brewers' Almanack 1962, p. 48
Brewers' Almanack 1971, p. 45

One last point. That XX Brown Ale. Judging by the colour, it wasn’t really brown at all but the colour of Bitter. I’ve no idea why it was called Brown Ale.

Watney's Brown Ale 1929 - 1964
Year	Beer	Price	size	package	Acidity	FG	OG	colour	ABV	App. Atten-uation
1929	Brown Ale	7d	pint	bottled		1010	1042		4.16	76.19%
1931	Brown Ale	7d	pint	bottled	0.05	1011.4	1043.3		4.14	73.67%
1931	Brown Ale	7d	pint	bottled	0.08	1007.5	1042.3		4.53	82.27%
1931	Brown Ale	8d	pint	bottled	0.06	1008.8	1038		3.79	76.84%
1932	Brown Ale	8d	pint	bottled	0.05	1008.2	1038		3.87	78.42%
1933	Brown Ale	8d	pint	bottled	0.06	1010.4	1038		3.58	72.63%
1936	Brown Ale	7d	pint	bottled	0.06	1011.6	1041.7		3.90	72.18%
1936	Brown Ale	13d	quart	bottled	0.05	1012.6	1040.6		3.62	68.97%
1937	Brown Ale		half pint	bottled			1040.13
1937	Brown Ale	13d	pint	bottled	0.05	1014.5	1040.8		3.40	64.46%
1938	Brown Ale	7d	pint	bottled	0.06	1010.8	1040.8		3.89	73.53%
1938	Brown Ale	7d	pint	bottled	0.05	1013.6	1041.1	13 + 40	3.56	66.91%
1938	XX Brown Ale	6d	pint	draught	0.04	1015.6	1043.4	23	3.59	64.06%
1941	Brown Ale	6.5d	half pint	bottled	0.07	1009.9	1034.3	12 + 40	3.16	71.14%
1944	Brown Ale			bottled	0.05	1010.4	1031.6	10 + 40 Brown	2.74	67.09%
1946	Brown Ale	13d	pint	bottled	0.06	1011.4	1031.2	17 + 40	2.56	63.46%
1946	Brown Ale	12d	pint	bottled	0.05	1008.5	1029.6	12 + 40	2.73	71.28%
1947	Brown Ale	12d	pint	bottled	0.04	1010.3	1028.3	13 + 40	2.33	63.60%
1947	Brown Ale	12d	pint	bottled	0.07	1005.5	1028.7	10 + 40	3.01	80.84%
1947	Brown Ale	13d	pint	bottled	0.04	1009.7	1029.8	11 + 40	2.60	67.45%
1947	Brown Ale	13d	pint	bottled	0.06	1007.4	1029.3	17 + 40	2.84	74.74%
1948	Brown Ale	15d	pint	bottled	0.05	1009.3	1030.6	14 + 40	2.76	69.61%
1948	Brown Ale	16d	pint	bottled	0.07	1005.7	1031	18 + 40	3.29	81.61%
1949	Brown Ale	16d	pint	bottled	0.05	1009.7	1030.3	16 + 40	2.66	67.99%
1949	Brown Ale	15d	pint	bottled	0.07	1007.8	1030	16 + 40	2.88	74.00%
1950	Brown Ale	15d	pint	bottled	0.08	1007.8	1029.4	10 + 40	2.80	73.47%
1950	Brown Ale	15d	pint	bottled	0.04	1007.9	1030.4	15 + 40	2.92	74.01%
1950	Brown Ale	8.5d	half pint	bottled	0.06	1010.8	1032.6	16 + 40	2.82	66.87%
1951	Brown Ale	8.5d	half pint	bottled	0.05	1010.3	1031.1	40 + 17	2.69	66.88%
1952	Brown Ale	9d	half pint	bottled	0.05	1009.3	1031.1	16 + 40	2.82	70.10%
1952	Brown Ale	9d	half pint	bottled	0.06	1010.8	1032	16 + 40	2.74	66.25%
1953	Brown Ale	9.5d	half pint	bottled	0.06	1009.9	1032.1	17 + 40	2.87	69.16%
1953	Brown Ale	9.5d	half pint	bottled	0.05	1009.8	1032.8	16 + 40	2.98	70.12%
1954	Brown Ale	9.5d	half pint	bottled	0.05	1010	1031.9	18 + 40	2.83	68.65%
1954	Brown Ale	10d	nip	bottled	0.06	1010.2	1032.8	120	2.92	68.90%
1955	Brown Ale	10.5d	half pint	bottled	0.05	1010.9	1032.3	125	2.77	66.25%
1956	Brown Ale	10d	half pint	bottled	0.05	1011.1	1032.2	120	2.73	65.53%
1963	Brown Ale	12d	half pint	bottled	0.04	1013.4	1033.1	135	2.54	59.52%
1964	Brown Ale	22d	pint	bottled	0.04	1012.4	1033.4	135	2.71	62.87%
1964	Brown Ale	22d	pint	bottled	0.04	1013	1033.4	115	2.63	61.08%
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.
Truman Gravity Book document B/THB/C/252 held at the London Metropolitan Archives