Simonds Dark Ales 1948 – 1960

I seem to have accidentally started writing a history of the Big Six. How on earth did that happen?

Tracing exactly how they formed is fascinating. Like watching the solar system assemble itself. You can see that takeover targets weren’t random, but were chosen carefully. You didn’t want to get too much overlap in pub estates. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t choices.

J W Green and Simonds covered much of the same territory. It’s quite possible that Whitbread could have bought Simonds and Courage J W Green. Would that have made any difference in the long term? Probably not. But it would have made the 1970’s and 1980’s somewhat different. 

I’d love to know if they would have made the same brewery decisions. Meaning, would Courage have built a new brewery in Luton? Would Whitbread have replaced Simonds brewery with one outside Reading? Maybe Courage would have closed J W Green’s Luton brewery and kept open Flowers Stratford one.

Apologies for rather wandering off topic there. I’m supposed to be telling you about the Dark Ales of H & G Simonds. It shouldn’t take too long. It better hadn’t. I’ve things to do, beer to drink, mindless TV to watch.

We’re starting with Brown Ale. The table also has a Strong Ale randomly included. For no reason other than I didn’t know where else to put it. There’s something quite unusual about the first couple of Brown Ales in the table. See if you can spot it.

Simonds Brown Ale and bottled Strong Ale 1948 - 1960
Year	Beer	Style	Price per pint d	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	colour
1948	Brown Ale	Brown Ale	15	1026.3	1006.7	2.54	74.52%	40 + 8.5
1949	Brown Ale	Brown Ale	15	1026.1	1008	2.34	69.35%	23 + 40
1950	Berry Brown Ale	Brown Ale	15	1029.5	1007.3	2.88	75.25%	10 + 40
1951	Brown Ale	Brown Ale	18	1029.2	1009.6	2.53	67.12%	19 + 40
1952	Berry Brown Ale	Brown Ale	19	1032	1005.5	3.44	82.81%	5 + 40
1952	Brown Ale	Brown Ale	18	1029.9	1009.7	2.61	67.56%	17 + 40
1956	Berry Brown Ale	Brown Ale	16	1031.9	1011.9	2.58	62.70%	85
1960	Berry Brown Ale	Brown Ale	20	1035.1	1015.7	2.50	55.27%
1953	Old Berkshire Strong Ale	Strong Ale	43.5	1076.7	1033.2	5.61	56.71%	16 + 40
Sources:
Which Beer Report, 1960, pages 171 - 173.
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.

What’s odd? They have an OG below 1027º. That’s a very cost-ineffective way to brew. Because a beer under 1027º paid tax as if it were 1027º. Simonds paid more tax than they needed to on those beers. I suspect that they’d aimed for 1027º, but undershot.

I’m pretty sure that they’re all the same Brown Ale, despite the two names. Which makes it odd how variable they are in terms of attenuation and colour. You can see that the gravity rose between 1948 and 1960, but ironically the ABV didn’t. Very strange.

All I’ll say about the Strong Ale is that because of the crap attenuation, it wasn’t really all that strong.

Now it’s the turn of Mild Ale.

Simonds draught Mild Ale 1950 - 1951
Year	Beer	Style	Price per pint d	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	colour
1950	Ale	Mild	12	1030.4				56
1951	Mild Ale	Mild	14	1032	1005.5	3.44	82.81%	80
1951	Mild Dark Sweet	Mild	14	1031.5	1005.7	3.35	81.90%	80
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.

Only three examples this time. The one from 1950 isn’t properly dark. But dark enough to be easily distinguished from Bitter. The other two have quite a high ABV for their gravity, due to the high degree of attenuation. I can’t really see how the last one could be that sweet.

Pale Ales next.