Courage (part two)

Yet more stuff about Courage. Now I think about it, their tied estate was a bit patchy. Very strong in the South, but pretty well absent in the West Midlands and Scotland.

Newark
The former Holes plant has a special place in my memories, being the only brewery I’ve ever been employed in.

Bought by Courage in 1967, it continued in much the same way as before. Except that, as the other Newark brewery (Warwick & Richardson) had also ended up in the hands of Courage and been closed, they went from serving half the pubs in Newark to virtually all of them.

It continued to brew the former Holes beers such as AK and Mild. But also brewed one Warwick & Richardson beer, IPA. One thing had changed, however: none of the beer was cask. It was all bright beer, filled into 50 and 100 litre kegs and served by electric diaphragm pump.

The beers weren’t terrible, not being heavily pasteurised. Definitely better than keg beer. But not a patch on decently-kept cask.

Tadcaster
The former John Smiths brewery is the only Courage plant still in operation. In the early 1970s they phased out cask beer. And didn’t brew any again until the early 1980s. Which was frustrating, because, in cask form, their beer was pretty decent.

The Bitter was quite dark, dry and reasonably Bitter. Magnet was similar, but stronger. For a while, quite a few Courage pubs in Newark had cask again. And fairly good cask. Then John Smiths Smooth came along and fucked everything up again.

Barnsley
A much-beloved brewery, famous for its Bitter. Which was the first good beer I ever tasted. Having taken over Warwick & Richardson before being gobbled up themselves by John Smith.

A few pubs in Newark still served Barnsley Bitter when I started drinking in the early 1970s. But, as the Barnsley brewery was scheduled for closure, most had swapped over to beer from Newark.

When the brewery closed in 1976, only one pub in Newark, the Wing Tavern, was still selling Barnsley Bitter.

Plymouth
This was one of Courage’s latest acquisitions, happening in December 1970. The brewery soldiered on for a reasonable length of time, not closing until 1983.

I remember coming across their beer at the Great British Beer Festival. They were unusual in using cast iron casks which weighed an absolute ton. Heavy, their Mild, was top class.