It's a bunch of Lagers from regional English brewers. Mostly from the North, with just a couple from the Southwest. The brewers vary in size quite a bit. Greenhall Whitley and Vaux being the largest, Palmer the smallest.
Given the nature of these breweries, I doubt very much any of them had the plant required to brew a Lager properly. Perhaps a couple of largest. But there's no way brewers like Hydes or Palmer had the necessary equipment.
There's quite a variation in both the price and the strength. Federation, unsurprisingly, being by far the cheapest. I'm surprised how many top 4%. My impression of Lager at the time was that it was pretty watery stuff. Though those ABVs are the result of very high degrees of attenuation. Which would also explain my watery impression.
There's a real dichotomy in their names. Some go for Germanic or Nordic names, while the others are resolutely English.
| UK pseudo-Lager in 1978 | ||||||
| Brewer | Beer | Price per pint (p) | OG | FG | ABV | App. Atten-uation |
| Cameron | Icegold | 33 | 1038.4 | 1005 | 4.35 | 86.98% |
| Federation | Ace of Clubs | 27 | 1034.9 | 1007.2 | 3.60 | 79.37% |
| Hull | Top Score | 38 | 1037.9 | 1005 | 4.29 | 86.81% |
| Vaux | Norseman | 34 | 1038.7 | 1005.9 | 4.27 | 84.75% |
| Greenall Whitley | Grunhalle | 33 | 1036.7 | 1005.4 | 4.08 | 85.29% |
| Hydes | Amboss | 35 | 1034.7 | 1008.55 | 3.39 | 75.36% |
| Lees | Gold Medal | 36 | 1033.7 | 1002.7 | 4.04 | 91.99% |
| Matthew Brown | Slalom | 30 | 1037.2 | 1004.75 | 4.23 | 87.23% |
| Oldham Brewery | Rheingold | 30 | 1035 | 1007 | 3.64 | 80.00% |
| Robinson | Einhorn | 34 | 1035.9 | 1004.1 | 4.14 | 88.58% |
| Thwaites | Stein | 37 | 1034.6 | 1007.8 | 3.48 | 77.46% |
| Hall & Woodhouse | Brock | 36 | 1032.4 | 1005.5 | 3.50 | 83.02% |
| Palmer | Shilthorn | 40 | 1041.4 | 1004.7 | 4.79 | 88.65% |
| Average | 34.1 | 1036.3 | 1005.7 | 3.98 | 84.27% | |
| Source: | ||||||
| Sunday Mirror - Sunday 08 October 1978, page 4. | ||||||
My video on pseudo-Lager:
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When Robinson's in Stockport still brewed at the Unicorn Brewery, their traditional tower building in the town centre, you could go on tours round it and the guides always laughed if anyone mentioned Einhorn (German for unicorn) and said that no one who worked there ever drank it because it was so awful. They eventually dropped it and started selling Veltins in their pubs, but in the last decade or so have brewed a Helles and a Pilsner, first on a computerised brewing kit, which they bought from Germany and installed on site, and now at their new out of town brewery which opened last year. I haven't tried either, and from what other people have said they're not very exciting beers, but unlike Einhorn they are probably lagers rather than a kegged and chilled golden ale.
It’s adorable the way some of the brewers just translated their own names into German. Not just Einhorn and Grünhalle, but Hyde’s Amboss (anvil) and Hall & Woodhouse’s Brock (badger).
Is there any reason to suppose that these pseudo-lagers tasted any worse than the watery lagers being made at the time by brewers who did have the right kit for it?
Were any of these passable or were they all pretty much rubbish? I just wondered if they fooled anyone.
Norseman and Icegold from our local North East breweries were quite a strongish pair compared to many of the others, and far tastier and stronger than the appalling Harp in the Scottish and Newcastle pubs back in the 1970s.
Looking at the ABVs they lacked a lot of flavour but were almost up there with the likes of TT Landlord, Camerons Strongarm etc in strength.
I've no idea, as I never drank any of them.
There probably wasn't much difference.
I remember drinking a pseudo-lager fairly recently. One of Caledonian's seasonal beers, shortly before it closed. Having drunk oceans of Deuchars over the years, I recognised the flavour of their house ale yeast in it.
Steam beer in the US was a west coast hybrid originated in the late 19th century, a lager yeast brew fermented without refrigeration. Maytag's Anchor (probably 4.5% abv or a bit more) in the 70s used Northern Brewer hops. It tasted to me pretty similar to a lager, and it tasted very good. I'm guessing that the generally poor British results were due in part to low strength and inappropriate ingredients.
Norseman wasn't too bad on a hot day.
Those days weren't really some lost golden age of glorious ales - In Newcastle we only had one real ale pub. One.
It sold one real ale, Samuel Smith's Old Brewery bitter.
The vast majority of pub beers were tank, so the lagers were often a refreshing change from the often 'meh' ales on offer.
On the Robbie's website it says Helles is brewed with a "a specially selected premium lager yeast". It's been going since 2019 so they must be doing something right with it. I've had it once or twice. It's fine.
Their attempts at the 4% lager market have been mixed. In 2022 they introduced Brüh which was a "Kolsch-style of beer" which makes me wonder if they used their ale yeast for that. When they moved to the new brewery, Brüh was replaced by Brew House described only as a "lager".
I wonder how long Robinsons brewed Einhorn for. You could still see it in some Robinsons pubs in the late 90s when I first started visiting their pubs.
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