When I started my, still unfinished, drinking career back in the 1970s, Manchester was renowned for its cheap beer. Something which might have been related to the survival of many regional and small breweries.
So let's start with the prices. Which average out to 12.4p per pint. Exactly the same in the Northeast. Which sounds pretty good. Except that the average OG is 1.6º lower. Though a higher degree of attenuation leaves the average ABV only a little lower.
Which segues nicely into a look at value for money. From what we've already learnt, it should be expected that in terms of OG, this set scores worse than the Northeast. And that in terms of ABV, it's roughly similar.
Once again, the Carlisle State Brewery is the cheapest pint and the best value at 10.5p for a beer of 1036º. You just can't beat nationalised breweries for price. I like that both the cask and keg version of the beer are included. It demonstrates just what bad value most keg beers were. 2p more per pint in this case. For a beer which probably tasted worse. Though it's still better value than three of the other beers in the set.
Crappiest value is another keg beer, Greenall's Festival Keg. Again, the cask version is also in the table. This time a full 4p per pint more expensive. One of the reasons I was never tempted by keg beers as a youngster was the terrible value they represented.
Not that many in this bunch that I drank. Threlfalls and Duttons were still brewing when I started drinking. But I completely ignored them as they produced no cask beer. In common with all Whitbread's northern breweries, other than Castle Eden. Note that the two versions of Trophy are clearly different beers.
I drank Wilsons and Greenalls. Not sure if I had their Bitters, as I mostly stuck to Mild. The same is true of Tetley Walker. Drank in their pubs a few times, but almost certainly only drank the Mild. Boddies Bitter I definitely tried. As you can see a very dry and surprisingly strong beer, given its modest gravity.
| Northwestern Bitter in 1971 | ||||||||
| Brewer | Beer | Price per pint (p) | º gravity per p | % ABV per p | OG | FG | ABV | App. Atten-uation |
| Whitbread (Duttons) | Trophy | 12 | 2.92 | 0.28 | 1035.1 | 1009 | 3.38 | 74.36% |
| Whitbread (Threllfalls) | Trophy | 13 | 2.58 | 0.28 | 1033.6 | 1005.8 | 3.62 | 82.89% |
| Carlisle State Brewery | Bitter | 10.5 | 3.46 | 0.35 | 1036.3 | 1008.2 | 3.65 | 77.41% |
| Carlisle State Brewery | Keg Bitter | 12.5 | 2.93 | 0.27 | 1036.6 | 1010.2 | 3.42 | 72.13% |
| Wilson | Bitter | 12.5 | 2.86 | 0.29 | 1035.8 | 1007.5 | 3.68 | 79.05% |
| Tetley Walker | Bitter | 12.5 | 2.86 | 0.29 | 1035.8 | 1007.5 | 3.68 | 79.05% |
| Greenall Whitley | Bitter | 11.5 | 3.13 | 0.33 | 1036 | 1007 | 3.77 | 80.56% |
| Greenall Whitley | Festival Keg | 15.5 | 2.37 | 0.24 | 1036.8 | 1007.6 | 3.79 | 79.35% |
| Boddington | Bitter | 12 | 2.99 | 0.33 | 1035.9 | 1005.1 | 4.01 | 85.79% |
| Average | 12.4 | 2.90 | 0.30 | 1035.8 | 1007.5 | 3.67 | 78.95% | |
| Source: | ||||||||
| Sunday Mirror - Sunday 21 March 1971, page 25. | ||||||||
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4 comments:
I drank most of these in the early 70s: the main exception was Carlisle Bitter, as the brewery closed a few months before my first visit to Carlisle in 1973. Boddington’s Bitter was still a superb beer at that time, and I drank a fair bit of Wilson’s Bitter, another pale beer (though not as pale as Boddington’s) which was a pleasant pint that slipped down very easily, though it didn’t taste particularly distinctive. Of the others, I certainly sampled Greenall Whitley Bitter and Tetley Walker Bitter, as well as cask Whitbread Trophy from the former Threlfall’s brewery (and possibly the Dutton’s version) – nothing wrong with any of them, though nothing really memorable to note.
I wonder if Socialism was to happen would nationalisation of brewers improve the beer and prices.
Oscar
I know I visited Carlisle a couple of times in the early 70's but I've no memory of ever drinking in a Carlisle pub at that time. The pubs were sold off, and about a third each went to Greenall's, John Smiths and Youngers. Jennings got a couple. The brewery was sold to Theakston's, and when S&N bought out Theakston's, that became available in a few Carlisle pubs. But outside of the Jennings and Theakston pubs, cask was pretty thin on the ground.
Boddingtons...
I had a couple of friends, one also from Bradford and one from Blackburn, and we used to go mountain hiking in the Lake District. On one occasion Blackburn guy took us on a bit of a detour on the way back to Blackburn, and we went to Chipping, which lies just below the Forest of Bowland, somewhere to the north-east of Preston. Must have been 1975 or thereabouts. So well outside Boddingtons normal distribution area. But Chipping had two Boddingtons pubs which was why he took us there. There was also a Whitbread pub but we didn't bother with that.
Well at this point I'd never even heard of Boddingtons. Three pints of bitter please, well when I saw it it was by far the palest bitter I'd ever seen, I'd seen lagers the weren't so pale. But the second surprise was when I tasted it, if it looked like lager it certainly didn't taste like it. Once I'd got over the feeling of having my throat lining ripped off, I realised I quite liked it. Liked it a lot in fact.
I guess this was during Boddingtons glory years, a few years later I went to live in Manchester for a few years (1980-83) and of course renewed my acquaintance with Boddies. People said it wasn't the same as it used to be - I wasn't sure, maybe I had just got used to it. But at that time the go to very bitter beer was Holts.
Then Boddingtons started to be available all over the place. Having moved back to Bradford, it even became available at my local pub. IT definitely wasn't the same by this time, perfectly pleasant, still very pale, still a decent level of bitterness but it seemed to have been tamed. Funny thing though, the other bitter that this pub sold was Stones. Somebody must have had a thing about very pale bitters.
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