Thursday 13 March 2014

Whitbread Burton Ale quality 1922

And here we are, at the end of the Burton road, as little weary, but happy. Happy the bloody journey is over.

It end with a whimper. There are only three Whitbread Burton examples. Hardly a big enough sample to draw any conclusions. That's why I've thrown in some bonus tables.

But first some dull financial information:

"Whitbread and Co., Ltd., report for the year ended June 30th a net profit of £222,749, as compared with £226,270 for the previous year. After meeting debenture interest and dividends on Preference and Preferred Ordinary stocks, the directors recommend a final dividend upon the Ordinary shares of 8 per cent, making, with the interim dividend of 2 per cent., a total of 10 per cent., the same as for the previous year. A sum of £319,531 will remain to be carried forward, as compared with £289,580 carried forward a year ago."
"The Brewers' Journal, 1923", page 424.

This is exciting. I now know Whitbread's profit for 1922 and 1923. But do you know what other figures I have? Whitbread's output for the 1920's:

Whitbread KK output 1921 - 1929
barrels % of total total brewed
1921 32,481 4.81% 675,647
1922 35,060 6.09% 576,118
1923 34,553 6.84% 505,097
1924 43,707 7.92% 551,616
1925 46,480 8.80% 527,977
1926 44,912 8.76% 512,528
1927 46,218 10.00% 462,250
1928 47,567 9.74% 488,357
1929 56,258 12.67% 443,888
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers

Which means I can see what their profit per barrel was in those years: in 1922 7.73 shillings and in 1923 8.96 shillings. That doesn't seem an awful lot.

Now the beer. Fairly typical, but the attenuation is at the high end, as is as  a consequence the ABV, at just over 5.5%.

Here's the pathetically small table, more picnic than dining:

Whitbread Burton Ale quality 1922
Year Beer FG OG ABV App. Atten-uation Appearance Flavour score
1922 KK 1005 1052.2 6.13 89.66% cloudy fine 1
1922 KK 1016 1054 4.89 69.81% almost bright fair 1
1922 KK 1010 1053.5 5.67 81.31% bright good 2
Average  1011 1053.2 5.56 80.26% 1.33
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001

One in three bright - I think we can agree that's crap. All positive scores for flavour, leaving an impressive average of 1.33. Though the number of examples is ridiculously small

Next time I'll review all the Burtons.

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