Watney Pale Ale quality 1922 - 1925

I continue to stumble on in the dark, hoping I'm not going to bang my shin on the furniture. Yes, we're at letter W.  Oddly quite common as the first letter of London breweries.

The W's start with Watney, probably the most notorious of the capital's breweries. In the 1920's it was one of Britain's largest breweries. The company in its then form had been created in 1898, when Watney merged with Combe and Reid. It was the first big brewery merger I can recall. The Combe and Reid breweries closed pretty much immediately with production being concentrated at Watney's Stag Brewery close to Victoria station.

Watney's fondness for cask keg in the 1960's and 1970's made them a hate figure for CAMRA. Whose constant mockery eventually poisoned the Watney brand. Their name got so bad that they removed from the outside of their pubs.

One of the biggest mistakes when looking at the past is to project the present onto it. To assume that little has changed. What am I leading up to? It would be easy to assume Watney's beers had always been shit. Their Mild placed second of seventeen, with an average score of 1.25. Their Burton was only ninth of fourteen, but still had a decent average score of 0.77. How will their Bitter do? We'll see in a minute.

Let's look at this particular beer first. It's a 9d/8d Best Bitter and is about bang on spec-wise for this type of beer: 1054 OG, 5.5% ABV, 80% apparent attenuation..

Here's how it scored:

Watney Pale Ale quality 1922 - 1925
Year	Beer	FG	OG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	Appearance	Flavour	score	Price
1922	PA	1011.2	1054.2	5.60	79.34%	brilliant	v good	3	9d
1922	PA	1010.5	1052.5	5.47	80.00%	brilliant	v good	3	9d
1922	PA	1011.4	1053.9	5.54	78.85%	hazy	good	2	9d
1922	PA	1007.2	1052.5	5.92	86.29%	bright	v good	3	9d
1923	PA	1012	1055	5.60	78.18%	bright	good	2	9d
1923	PA	1012	1055.5	5.67	78.38%	brilliant	good	2	9d
1923	PA	1012	1056	5.73	78.57%	brilliant	good	2	9d
1923	PA	1011.6	1053.1	5.40	78.15%	grey	good	2	9d
1923	PA	1011.6	1053.6	5.47	78.36%	brilliant	good	2	9d
1923	PA	1012.8	1053.8	5.33	76.21%	bright	good	2	8d
1923	PA	1012.8	1053.8	5.33	76.21%	fairly bright	v fair	2	8d
1924	PA		1053.2			hazy	v fair	2	8d
1925	PA	1011.2	1054.2	5.60	79.34%	fairly bright	v fair	2	8d
1925	PA	1011.6	1052.4	5.31	77.86%	bright	good	2	8d
Average		1011.4	1053.8	5.54	78.90%			2.21
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001

That's damn impressive. The lowest score is a two. Nine of fourteen samples were bright, which, if you've been paying attention, you'll realise isn't bad. Only two of those sound like they had real problems. But look at those flavour scores. No surprise that the average score is a very high 2.21.

This feels really weird, but it's my genuine advice: seek out Watneys pubs next time you're visiting 1920's London.