LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
I SEE that Mr. W. Wilson, the Coventry M.P., has now received the answer to his beer gravity question. I can tell Mr. Wilson that the gravity of beer has changed very little in say 20 years. If it is as weak as those he represents would have us believe how do they account for the number of people before the courts daily for being drunk and disorderly?
As to whether beer comes from barrels, cans or casks. I can assure him that very little beer comes from "the wood" today as the wooden barrels are lined the same as metal casks, as recommended by the health authorities.
I have a cellar about 300 years old and it is cut out of sandstone, but Mr. Wilson or any customers can at any reasonable time see where the beer comes from and how it is piped to the dispenser units in the bars.
I find that the majority of people are satisfied with their beer - still the cheapest pint in the world - and I would like Bill Wilson to come and talk about the "gravity" of more important things, like old age pension, Northern Ireland and industrial relations.
Good health, Bill!
Tommy Quinney)
Rainbow Inn,
Allesley.
Coventry Evening Telegraph - Monday 07 August 1972, page 6.
He is right that the strength of beer hadn't changed in the previous 20 years. Average OG had been 1037 since the early 1950s.
But that outrageous claim. That beer in the UK was the cheapest in the world. My response is a single word: Czechoslovakia.
As it happened, in '72 I was on a car trip from Cardiff to Italy and couldn't believe the price of beer in supermarkets where a half litre of 5% Birra Dreher or Peroni was usually around the same price as Coca Cola. I particularly remember the coin operated beer machines in Germany, where a half litre bottle of a good robust Export style would pop out.
ReplyDeleteAt petrol stations.
However WRT gravities, in South Wales, Brain's SA was referred to as "Skull Attack" however while it was certainly stronger than the 3.7% norm it was, and is, around the same strength as Bud Light at just over 4% and is almost identical in strength to the low gravity "three two" beers that were the only ones allowed in the US when Prohibition ended.