Beer Guide to the 1970s (part forty-three)

Yippee! We're finally moving on to the final part of my guide to 1970s breweries: the Big Six. Who, at the time, operated a large number of plants. Especially Bass and Whitbread.

Bass owned breweries of massively differing size, ranging from the massive Runcorn plant to tiny operations such as Case and Highgate. There was a similar huge variation in the quality of the beer they brewed. Which was pretty much in reverse proportion to the size of the plant.

None of the three featured today brewed any cask beer.

Bass Charrington (Belfast)
Belfast,
Northern Ireland.
Founded:         1897
Closed:            2004
Tied houses:    

The former Caffrey’s plant in Belfast was the only brewery in Northern Ireland. It brewed exclusively for the local market.

Bass Charrington (Runcorn)
Runcorn,
Merseyside.
Founded:         1974
Closed:            1991
Tied houses:    

The infamous megakeggery, which was plagued by industrial action and production problems during its short life.

Bass Charrington (Hope & Anchor)
Sheffield,
South Yorkshire.
Founded:         1892
Closed:            1994
Tied houses:     

In 1960 merged with Hammonds United Breweries and John Jeffrey to form Northern Breweries. It didn’t brew any cask beer in the 1970s.

beer	style	format	OG	description
Jubilee Stout	Stout	bottled	1042.3	Sweet Stout

Bass Charrington

The company was formed in 1967 by the merger of Charrington United Breweries and Bass Mitchells & Butlers.  Creating the largest brewing group in the UK. A position it would retain until it eventually sold up.

They started the decade with a bewildering array of breweries, some quite small and many in close proximity to each other. For example, in the West Midlands and Northwest England. Heavy pruning ensued.

Who knows what Bass Charrington could have achieved, if they hadn’t been led by H Alan Walker, a domineering lunatic with no knowledge of the brewing industry? Despite his best efforts, the company became the biggest brewer in the UK and one of the largest in the world. In the hands of someone more competent, they could only have been more successful.

The chairman’s insane plan was to have just two breweries, Cape Hill in Birmingham and the new brewery in Runcorn serving the whole of the UK.  Which led them to closing most of their breweries. Though, when they discovered Runcorn couldn’t brew acceptable versions of some of their Northern brands, breweries such as Stones in Sheffield and the Tower Brewery in Tadcaster were reprieved.

They were one of the worst in terms of pub vandalism. When there was a pub swap in the 1980s, they took over the Little Park from Tetley. It was a lovely little pub, with two distinct rooms. Bass almost immediately fucked it up, knocking it through into a single room. Totally ruining the atmosphere.


Bass
The renowned Burton Pale Ale brewery of the 19th century, the glory days of Bass were well over after WW II. Once the largest brewery in England, its beers remained nationally available, making it a tempting target for the ambitious M&B. Even though their tied house estate was quite small.

Despite coming first in the company name, Bass had never been one of the driving forces of the conglomerate. Having lost their independence before the formation of Bass Charrington. Their name remained prominent on account of its historic resonance. Though the company could have promoted the brand better

Charrington
A classic London Ale brewery, Charrington’s directors seem to have been naïve about what joining the Bass Charrington collective entailed. Hoping for a shiny new plant just outside London, they were greatly disappointed when the replacement for their East End brewery was Cape Hill in Birmingham.

Cape Hill
The original Mitchell & Butler brewery in Birmingham. And, for a while, the largest cask brewery in the world. I can’t say I was that keen on their cask beer. Brew XI was a crap, sweet excuse of a Bitter. The Mild was OK. But no better than that. When in Birmingham, I much preferred Ansells Mild.

Springfield
One of the group’s three breweries in the West Midlands. They brewed Dunkirk Pale Ale and Springfield Bitter. Both lovely, delicate Bitters. Way better than Brew XI. So, obviously, it was closed and the beers discontinued, though Springfield Bitter was brewed at Cape Hill for a while.

Highgate
Bass Charrington had a weird variation in the size of their breweries. Highgate in Walsall being very much at the small end. And even weirder, as their only product was a Mild Ale.

It had been scheduled for closure around the start of WW II, but was kept open as each brewery was allocated a certain quantity of materials based on their pre-war usage. Had the brewery closed, M & B would have missed out on the ingredients. In the end, it outlasted all the other former M & B breweries, including Cape Hill.

Tadcaster
It’s really odd how all three Tadcaster breweries have managed to survive. There were three substantial breweries in the town in the 1970s. And there are still three now. Back then, they were Sam Smiths, John Smiths and what was the former Tower Brewery, owned by Bass.

I can’t say that I cared for its beers. What was the Bitter? Brew X? Yes, that was it. Can’t ever remember trying it. I usually stuck to Mild, which came in the form of XXXX. A bit thin and insipid. Not a patch on Tetley Mild.

Stones
William Stones was a successful Sheffield Brewery, but owing to the large spread in ownership of their shares, they feared a hostile takeover. For a while they managed to play their two potential suitors – Charrington United and Bass M & B – off against each other. Until the two merged in 1967 to form Bass Charrington. And gobbled up Stones.

Their Bitter, which was very pale, along the lines of Boddington, had a strong local following and was a pretty decent pint. At least in the early years. It caused the company lots of problems. They wanted to close it, but attempts to replicate it at Runcorn were a dismal failure and the Sheffield brewery had to stay open.

Hope & Anchor
Another Sheffield brewery, but one which played a weird role in the formation of Bass Charrington.

In the 1950s, they were trying to market their Jubilee Stout to Canada. They came to an agreement with Canadian brewery owner Eddie Taylor. He would brew Jubilee Stout and in return Hope & Anchor would brew Black Label in the UK.   It was a deal which, eventually, gifted one of the UK’s most popular Lagers to Bass Charrington.

This transaction prompted Taylor to take a closer look at the UK brewing industry. And soon he was in the UK trying to put together a national brewery group. Just as he had done in Canada. And eventually led to the creation of the UK’s largest brewing company, Bass Charrington.

In 1960, it merged with Hammonds United Breweries and had started on one of the paths which would lead to Bass Charrington. Surprisingly, given the company’s rigorous pruning of its breweries, it didn’t close until 1994.

Tennent
Home of Glasgow’s – and Scotland’s – favourite Lager. Tennent got into the Lager game very early, in 1885, importing Germans to build them a suitable brew house, which opened in 1889. Unlike most who got into the Lager game in the 19th century, they were able to make a fist of it.

The brewery was lucky that Lager took off much earlier in Scotland than in England. Despite only being available in Scotland and Northern Ireland, by 1970 Tennents was one of the best-selling Lagers in the UK. Only Harp, a cooperative beer of several large brewers, outsold it.

Welsh Brewers
Formerly Hancock, which was a major player in South Wales before falling into Bass Charrington’s hands.

Allied Breweries

Unlike the other large brewing groups, which had mostly coalesced around one large brewery, Allied was more like a merger of equals. Those parties being Tetley Walker, Ind Coope and Ansells, which joined together in 1961.  And, to some extent, they kept their regional identity. Other than Double Diamond and Skol, they didn’t really have national draught brands.

The grouping made a lot of sense. Tetley Walker was active mostly in the North, Ansells in the Midlands and Ind Coope in the South. Combined, they covered most of the country.

Allied didn’t go for a standard livery across the group, as most of the Big Six did. Well, not quite. The whole group had yellow signboards with brown lettering in a standard font. However, this was accompanied by the trademark of one of the constituent breweries

In the 1980s, this uniform look was dropped and the constituent breweries reverted to something like the livery they had before they grouped together.

In 1973, the group owned eight breweries, split amongst the three original companies. The relatively low number of breweries meant that Allied closed fewer breweries during the 1970s than most of the Big Six.

They also owned two breweries in Holland: Oranjeboom in Rotterdam and Drie Hoefijzers in Breda.

Let’s look at the three members of the group in detail.

Ansells
Founded in 1857, Ansells grew to be one of the largest breweries in Birmingham.  In 1973, it operated two breweries in Birmingham: the original Ansells plant in Aston and the former Holts brewery. The latter had been acquired in 1934 and remained active until 1974.

In 1973, the brewery served 1,890 pubs. Which was less than a third of the 8,000 or so pubs controlled by Allied.

The Ansells brewery in Birmingham was the scene of much industrial unrest. Which led to its closure in 1981, with the Ansells beers being moved to other breweries in the group. Mainly the Ind Coope brewery in Burton.  Though the pubs retained their Ansells branding.

Ind Coope
Based in Romford, just outside London, Ind Coope moved into the big boy leagues in 1934 by merging with Allsopp. Whose brewery in Burton they continued to operate in the 1970s.

Romford
Two cask beers were brewed in the Romford plant, a Light Mild called KK (1031º) and Bitter (1037º). I can’t remember ever drinking either. Though I might have tried the Mild at a beer festival.

Burton
In the mid-1970s, Burton Ale, a cask version of Double Diamond, was introduced. Taken by CAMRA as a reassuring sign of a Big Six brewer taking cask seriously. Despite its confusing name. It being a Burton Pale Ale and not a Burton Ale. Which is a completely different style. At a gravity of 1047.5º, it was amongst the stronger Bitters brewed in the UK. And an excellent beer, when in good condition.

The only other cask beer from Burton was a fairly bland Bitter of 1037º.

Double Diamond, which had been a premium bottled Pale Ale, was first sold in keg form in 1962. It was a big success, becoming the best-selling keg beer in the UK. It was exclusively brewed in the Burton plant.

Tetley Walker
This arm of Allied operated two breweries, the former Walker plant in Warrington and Tetley in Leeds. Each serving one side of the Pennines.

Leeds
In Yorkshire, Tetley was much better than most of the Big Six. They didn’t mess their pubs around and were happy for most of them to sell cask beer. It’s a brewery I had a lot of affection for. Obviously, it’s now closed.

Warrington
The Tetley brewery West of the Pennines was a little schizophrenic. It brewed versions of the Leeds Mild and Bitter, but also Walkers Bitter, named after the original firm. They later also introduced a Walkers Mild.

Alloa
Of the many breweries that once graced Alloa, in the 1970s just two remained: this and Maclay.

Formerly known as Arrols, this was one of handful of brewers making Lager between the wars. When Allsopp went bust just before WW I and John Calder was called in to sort the mess out, the extremely expensive Lager kit was moved from Burton to Alloa.

That kit was the reason this was the group’s principal source of Skol, their main Lager. A beer which had started life between the wars as an Arrol’s beer called Graham’s Golden Lager, with the name being changed to the more Germanic Skol in the 1950s.  

Wrexham Lager Brewery
It’s really strange that two of the six breweries producing Lager between the war, two ended up in the hands of Allied.

Wrexham was one of the specialist Lager breweries in the late 19th century. But, unlike most such breweries, it didn’t go bust after a few years.
 

Running Bass Charrington (part two)

More in the inimitable management style of H Alan Walker (HAW). When Bass M & B merged with Charrington United Breweries in 1967, Walker became its managing director and chairman, roles he had held at Bass M & B. The two halves of the new company had very different management approaches.

It led to a clash of cultures, in which authoritarianism easily triumphed under the leadership of HAW; all at M&B, and later BM&B [Bass M & B], including his fellow directors, had become used to his absolute authority and commanding style and offered no opposition. HAW once said "The smaller the brewery, the bigger the prima donna", in reference to the human problems arising when taking over companies. It was a comment too upon himself, as to his perception of those problems; his strength was also his weakness.
"The Brewing Industry 1950 - 1990", by Anthony Avis, 1997, page 103.

Walker sounds like a crazed narcissist in this next section.

Those present at the meeting were familiar with his views on the qualities of leadership, the principles of organisation, the ability to make and take the right decisions, and so on, as from time to time HAW put his thoughts into print and circulated them to senior employees as advised reading, and to others as recommended study; not bound up in little red covers, of course, but handed out on single sheets (see Appendix C). He referred to these and then began in earnest.

He outlined the essentials of his master plan - only two breweries, a London depot, overnight shuttle trains, the new brewery itself. He spoke of the benefits to be derived from his plan, in the manner of one conferring a privilege. He dismissed the fears of those about to lose their own regional beers, as having the petty-mindedness of provincials, men of limited faith and small vision.
"The Brewing Industry 1950 - 1990", by Anthony Avis, 1997, pages 107 - 108.

All sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it?

The Runcorn project was already becoming a graven image. He went on about the advantages of huge production in new breweries, the advance of technology, the necessity for all present to get out into the market place and sell the beers. He announced the formation of a committee, made up of the company enthusiasts for his ideas, to be called the 1984 Committee, which would attempt to predict the manufacturing position of BC at that date, and in the meantime would organise to attain the decided goals. He wound up by saying there had been enough discussion within BC on the plan and the bellyaching had got to stop, as it would go ahead. He took a dim view of any more objection. He then asked if anybody had anything to say. They had not; the front row of his fellow directors was as silent as the grave whilst the rest of us were trying to memorise and digest what had been said. No note-taking had been allowed. Discretion kept us quiet; burgeoning anxieties were making us thoughtful.
"The Brewing Industry 1950 - 1990", by Anthony Avis, 1997, page 108.

"1984 Committee"? How creepy can you get? Was that deliberate or just ignorant? I suspect the latter. I mean, he doesn't sound like the sort of man you'd point out an error to. An error of his own, I mean.

Running Bass Charrington

Today I'm going to publish some excerpts from Anthony Avis's wonderful memoir: "The Brewing Industry 1950 - 1990"

They all concern H Alan Walker (HAW), the first chairman of Bass Charrington. And someone with a rather creepily dictatorial management style. The scheme in question here is the new brewery in Runcorn.

In the run up to the introduction of this scheme. HAW had called a three line whip type of meeting at his London headquarters for all senior executives, to give his explanation of the grand scheme, and to reiterate his threat to sack personally anyone who queried it. The MD of BCN, Vernon Parker, could not attend, as he was ill, so I went in his place. I am not certain to this day if he was really ill or chose not to go, as he was in disfavour, quite unfairly, for raising profits but not volume barrelage, just when the flavour of the month with HAW was barrelage. Those who had been called assembled on the first floor of the Grosvenor Gardens house, sitting in rows, awaiting the arrival of the Great Man, like nervous schoolchildren. His habit was to make dramatic, stage effect, entries to this sort of meeting. His headquarters staff of young men having suitably corralled those attending, and warmed them up, television audience style, then stood around the edges of the room like ushers or warders. Those of the main board working directors involved in the brewery operations were also there, in the front seats, waiting - no question of them entering with the Great Man in a show of unity. Silence having descended on the meeting, there was a signal from the personal assistant by the staircase, and HAW descended from his second floor rooms, preceded by his butler who saw him seated, and then left. We all waited expectantly and nervously; if the intention had been to create such an atmosphere it had succeeded.
"The Brewing Industry 1950 - 1990", by Anthony Avis, 1997, page 107.

He sounds like a right twat. Who gets seated by their butler at a business meeting? It's clear that Mr. Walker was showing, through the whole forma=t of the meeting, that no dissent was going to be allowed.

This is really the way to get people to open up and give you their honest opinion.

He began by strictly warning all present that nothing was to be spoken outside as to what was said inside the meeting, and with that he glared round the room. This gesture could be unnerving, as he had an aggressive manner, his rubicund face topped with scanty white hair, projecting itself like a dart at the listener; to meet his gaze was to be reminded of the fate of those who looked into the eyes of Medusa. He had protruding eyes. He rarely laughed, but occasionally smiled thinly; his voice had a guttural quality. Conviviality was not what he set out to achieve when dealing with management, staff and employees.
"The Brewing Industry 1950 - 1990", by Anthony Avis, 1997, page 107.

Sounds like a terrible boss to work for. Unless you were a total sycophant. In which case, it would have been great.

Courage

I have very mixed feelings about Courage. Having ended up owning both of the brewers in my hometown of Newark, they owned almost all the pubs. All but one of which sold no cask beer. On the other hand, they brewed Russian Stout.

On the other hand, my first job after school was working in their Newark plant, the former Holes brewery. Filling kegs. It was so much fun. Not really. It was very heavy work. Which my 18-year-old body could cope with. Then there was all that free beer.

In the North and Midlands, Courage produced no cask beer at either their Tadcaster or Newark breweries. Drinkers in the South were luckier, with the London and Bristol plants producing some cask. Though Worton Grange, the replacement for the former Simmonds brewery in Reading, produced only keg beer.

London
Horselydown, the original Courage brewery on the South bank of the Thames opposite the Tower of London, was open all through the 1970s, not closing until 1982.

It produced at least some cask right up until its closure. Though it wasn’t always easy to tell which of their breweries the beer had been brewed in.

Reading
The former Simonds brewery in Reading was one of the constituent parts of the original group, Courage Barclay Simonds.

Having a good reputation for their beer, there was quite a bit of consumer resistance to its closure, orchestrated by CAMRA. Of course, this had no effect and the brewery closed in 1979 anyway.

Worton Grange
Opened in 1980 as the replacement for Reading, it was a massive brewery, with a capacity of six million barrels. Designed as a keg beer plant, it never brewed any cask beer. It was never greatly loved and closed in 2010.

It was one of the megakeggeries built in the 1970s when brewers assumed that beer consumption would continue to rise and that extra capacity would be needed. When consumption started to fall in the 1980s, the industry was left with considerable overcapacity.

Bristol
The former George’s plant in Bristol had a long history and a good reputation. After the closure of Reading, it became home of Courage Bitter and Directors.

It was founded in 1781 and had grown to a decent size. When Courage bought it in 1961 it had almost 1,000 tied houses, which would have made it one of the largest independent brewers. It finally closed in 1999.

I’m pretty sure that I drank both Courage Bitter and Directors which had been brewed in Bristol. Perfectly serviceable beers, if not particularly exciting by that date.

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 Dark Mild, was top class.

Carlsberg vs the Big Six

It may be hard to believe now, but the Big Six, in their prime during the 1970s, were some of the largest brewing groups in the world. But, while large breweries on the continent, such as Carlsberg and Heineken have continued to grow, the UK's biggest breweries all fell by the wayside.

When Watney Mann were making deals with Carlsberg in the early 1970s, they were by far the larger brewery of the two. At least in terms of the quantity of beer produced.

The figures are from slightly different dates, Carlsberg being for 1969 and Watney and Bass Charrington from 1976. Even Watney, one of the smallest of the Big Six, produced more than double as much as Carlsberg. Which must have had an impact on the relations between the two. I've included Bass Charrington, the largest of the Big Six, for comparison.

So where did it go wrong for the big UK brewers? They didn't expand internationally. Or at least not as much and not as successfully. Obviously, there wasn't quite the incentive for this as there was for brewers like Carlsberg and Heineken, whose home markets were much smaller. 

Carlsberg vs the Big Six
	hl	barrels
Denmark consumption	4,830,000	2,951,256
Total Carlsberg	3,571,000	2,181,974
Carlsberg exports	825,000	504,096
Carlsberg domestic	2,746,000	1,677,877
% Carlsberg domestic	56.85%
Bass	12,831,060	7,840,111
Watney	7,698,636	4,704,067
Source:
Brewers' Guardian, Volume 99, April 1970, page 75.
“The Brewing Industry, a Guide to Historical Records” by Lesley Hammons & Alison Turton.

Courage in the 1970s

I have very mixed feelings about Courage. Having ended up owning both of my hometown of Newark’s brewers, they owned almost all the pubs. All but one of which sold no cask beer. On the other hand, they brewed Russian Stout.

On the other hand, my first job after school was working in their Newark plant, the former Holes brewery. Filling kegs. It was so much fun. Not really. It was very heavy work. Which my 18-year-old body could cope with. Then there was all that free beer.

In the North and Midlands, Courage produced no cask beer at either their Tadcaster or Newark breweries. Drinkers in the South were luckier, with the London and Bristol plants producing some cask. Though Worton Grange, the replacement for the former Simmonds brewery in Reading, produced only keg beer.


London
Horselydown, the original Courage brewery on the South bank of the Thames opposite the Tower of London, was open all through the 1970s, not closing until 1982.

It produced at least some cask right up until its closure. Though it wasn’t always easy to tell which of their breweries the beer had been brewed in.

Reading
The former Simonds brewery in Reading was one of the constituent parts of the original group, Courage Barclay Simonds.

Having a good reputation for their beer, there was quite a bit of consumer resistance to its closure, orchestrated by CAMRA. Of course, this had no effect on the decision to close it.

Worton Grange
The replacement for Reading was a massive brewery, with a capacity of six million barrels. Designed as a keg beer plant, it never brewed any cask beer. It was never greatly loved and closed in 2010.

It was one of the megakeggeries built in the 1970s when brewers assumed that beer consumption would continue to rise and that extra capacity would be needed. When consumption started to fall in the 1980s, the industry was left with considerable overcapacity.

Bristol
The former George’s plant in Bristol had a long history and a good reputation. After the closure of Reading, it became home of Courage Bitter and Directors.

It was founded in 1781 and had grown to a decent size. When Courage bought it in 1961 it had almost 1,000 tied houses, which would have made it one of the largest independent brewers. It finally closed in 1999.

I’m pretty sure that I drank both Courage Bitter and Directors which had been brewed in Bristol. Perfectly serviceable beers, if not particularly exciting by that date.

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.

Fellow Newark exile John Clarke recalls of Holes AK:

After Holes had been closed I went on a CAMRA trip to Simpkiss whose head brewer at the time was the former head brewer at Holes up to closure. He told us that AK was only very rough filtered, so rough in fact that it was sometimes sold under its own pressure. How true that is, I don't know, but I definitely recall him telling me that.

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.

UK breweries after WW II

In the 1950s the first truly national brewing companies began to form. As the coalescing groups bought more rivals, it inevitably whittled down the number of active breweries. Purchasers were rarely interested in the brewery itself, only the pubs that it owned. With new licenses almost impossible to obtain, about the only way to expand the number of outlets was to buy another brewery.

The process of amalgamation was kicked off by Canadian Eddie Taylor, who had already built a national brewing group in his homeland. Using Yorkshire brewer Hammonds at its core, he embarked on a buying frenzy across the North of England and Scotland.

By the late 1960s, seven brewing groups dominated the industry: Allied Breweries, Bass Charrington, Courage, Watney Mann, Whitbread, Scottish & Newcastle and Guinness. They were usually referred to as the Big Six, Guinness being left out because it owned no pubs. 

No. of UK breweries
Year	No.
1945	708
1946	680
1947	648
1948	625
1949	602
1950	567
1951	539
1952	524
1953	501
1954	479
1955	460
1956	426
1957	416
1958	399
1959	378
1960	358
1964	295
1965	274
Sources:
Brewers' Almanack 1955, p.68
Brewers' Almanack 1962, p.67
BBPA Statistical Handbook 2003, p. 92

Amalgamation was often a complex affair. Bass Charrington was formed by the merger of Charrington United Breweries and Bass, Mitchells & Butlers. The former itself the result of a merger between Hammonds United Breweries and Charrington. The latter, created when Bass and M & B merged. Hammonds United Breweries was itself the result of a series of takeovers.

Between them, the Big Six controlled over half the UK’s pubs. As most beer was consumed in pubs and those pubs could only sell beer from the brewery that owned them, that gave the big brewers a stranglehold on the beer trade.

Ironically, this hold started to be broken in the 1980s when supermarkets started to shift large quantities of beer. It’s ironic because the big brewers dumped beer at ridiculously low prices to the supermarkets to gain market share. All the really did was devalue their pubs as assets.

The Big Seven 1963 - 1967
	1963			1967
Company	Tied estate	Nominal capital	Market value	Company	Tied estate	Nominal capital	Market value
		£m	£m			£m	£m
Allied	9,300	90.4	177.3	Bass Charr	10,230	80.7	243.2
Watney Mann	5,500	43.8	103.5	Allied	8,250	128.1	234.7
Charr Utd	5,000	43.1	92.7	Whitbread	7,376	104.8	127.8
CB&S	4,800	45.3	76.3	Watney Mann	6,667	84.8	144.7
BM&B	4,100	33	96	CB&S	4,418	57.1	94.4
Whitbread	3,500	40.6	95.2	S&N	2,076	64.8	127
S&N	1,700	44.9	92.1	Guinness	2	26.5	102.2
Guinness	2	19.5	94
Total	33,902				39,019
Total pubs	67,450				66,373
* Guinness's tied estate = Castle Inn, Bodiam and Guinness Club House, Park Royal.
Key:
BM&B Bass, Mitchells & Butlers
Bass Charr Bass Charrington
CB&S Courage, Barclay & Simonds
Charr Utd Charrington United
S&N Scottish & Newcastle
Source:
The British Brewing Industry 1830 - 1980 by T.R. Gourvish and R.G. Wilson, 1994, page 472.

There was also consolidation on a regional level, where breweries like Greene King, Greenall Whitley and Marstons bought up rivals for their pubs and closed their breweries.

At a much smaller level, most of the remaining home brew pubs closed between 1945 and 1965. There had still been around 2,500 publican brewers at the outbreak of WW I, but large numbers gave up in the interwar period. By 1965 they were just a handful. 

This is an excerptfrom from my overly detailed look at post-war UK brewing, Austerity!

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/austerity/23181344

Whatever happened to the Big Six?

In the 1970s, the Big Six totally dominated UK brewing. Yet by 2000, only Scottish Courage really remained, the rest having been gobbled up by foreign conglomerates.

Bass led the pack in market share as well as pub ownership. And were considerably larger than most of their rivals, having more than double the share of Courage.

The first cracks started to show in 1990, when Courage took over Grand Metropolitan’s breweries, the company which owned Watney and Truman. Which catapulted Courage to be only just behind Bass.

Carlsberg bought what was left of Allied breweries in 1992 and renamed themselves Carlsberg-Tetley.

In 1995, Scottish & Newcastle bought Courage to form Scottish Courage. Bringing their market share to over 25%. Not that the new company was around for long, being purchased by Heineken and Carlsberg in 2008.

Bass was purchased by Interbrew in 2000 then sold on to Molson Coors in 2002.  A year later, in 2001, Whitbread sold all its brewing assets to Interbrew as well.

In a period of just 10 years, the Big Six faded away into nothing. And left the majority of UK brewing foreign-owned. 

Big Six market share (%) 1976 - 2000
Brewery	1976	1985	1989	1990	1991	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000
Grand Met	13	12	11
Courage	9	9	9	19	19
S & N	11	10	10	10	11
Scottish Courage						27.8	26.7	25.6	26	25.6
Bass	20	22	22	22	22	21.9	23	22	23.4
Whitbread	13	11	12	12	12	13.5	13.8	14.2	14.5
Interbrew										32.3
Allied	17	13	12	12	13
Carlsberg			1	1	1
Carlsberg-Tetley						15.4	14.6	13.2	11.8	11.7
Guinness						6	5.7	5.7	5.6	5.5
Total Big Six	83	77	77	76	78	84.6	83.8	80.70	81.3	75.1
Source:
BLRA and breweries

The Big Six (part four)

My final part on the Big Six, this time covering numbers 5, 6 and 7.

Watney
The most hated of breweries amongst the CAMRA faithful. For the simple reason that they had moved aggressively into keg beer. Some of their breweries still produced a little cask, but they were deeply committed to keg.

In the 1890s, hey leapfrogged into first place in London after taking part in the first big brewing merger. The result was Watney Combe Reid. A company that was producing over 1 million barrels a year.

They owned several breweries in different regions: Norwich, Webster (Halifax), Wilsons (Manchester), Usher (Cheltenham) and Drybrough (Edinburgh). Some producing cask, others not. Webster’s beers were OK in cask form, but nothing special. Wilsons beers, even though often in cask form, I never cared for.

Whitbread
Very crafty, is how you could describe Whitbread’s route to the Big Six. Under the Whitbread umbrella scheme, they bought minority stakes in smaller brewers. The idea was to make them immune to hostile takeovers by other large companies. In reality, this was often just a first step to Whitbread taking total control.

Initially, many of the breweries gobbled up continued much as before, other than branding their Bitter as Trophy. There were some excellent beers. Wethereds springs to mind. A brewery in the Thames Valley that brewed outstanding beers. Of course, Whitbread fucked it up, but it was good while it lasted.

Guinness
The seventh member of the Big Six. Somehow excluded from their club, Guinness wasn’t seen as one of the big brewers, because they owned no pubs. Ironically, it was Guinness who brought down the tied house system with a complaint which eventually led to the Beer Orders in the 1980s.

Because they owned no pubs and had a bottle-conditioned beer in every pub, Guinness mostly escaped the ire of CAMRA. And weren’t considered part of the evil Big Six, despite having a market share as large as that of Courage.

The Big Six (part three)

More stuff on the demons of 1970s brewing. How evil they were. The ones who supped at the devils hosepipe. Two more Big Six members.

Courage
I have very mixed feelings about Courage. Having ended up owning both of my hometown of Newark’s brewers, they owned almost all the pubs. All but one of which sold no cask beer. On the other hand, they brewed Russian Stout.

On the other hand, my first job after school was working in their Newark plant, the former Holes brewery. Filling kegs. It was so much fun. Not really. It was very heavy work. Which my 18-iear-old body could cope with. Then there was all that free beer.

In the North and Midlands, Courage produced no cask beer at either their Tadcaster or Newark breweries. Drinkers in the South were luckier, with the London and Bristol plants producing some cask. Though Worton Grange, the replacement for the former Simmonds brewery in Reading, produced only keg beer.

Scottish & Newcastle
Due to the way the pub trade worked in Scotland, where loan ties rather than outright brewery ownership were the norm, Scottish & Newcastle looked by far the smallest of the Big Six.

Many “free houses” had some sort of loan tie to S & N. Often just for draught beer, rather than everything.

With not many more than the maximum number of brewery-owned pubs, S & N was the least affected by the Beer Orders.

Their cask beers offerings were patchy. Younger’s 70/- and 80/- appeared in natural form reasonably frequently. With the latter being called IPA in England. Just to confuse thing up.

The best-known beer of Newcastle Breweries was their Brown Ale, along with Exhibition. There was also an Anber Ale, which one of the two constituent parts of Newcastle Brown.

The Big Six (part two)

Today we're going to look at a couple of the Big Six members. Specifically Allied Breweries and Bass Charrington.

Allied Breweries
Unlike the other large brewing groups, which had mostly coalesced around one large brewery, Allied was more like a merger of equals. Those parties being Tetley Walker, Ind Coope and Ansells. And, to some extent, they kept their regional identity. Other than Double Diamond and Skol, they didn’t really have national draught brands.

In Yorkshire, Tetley was much better than most of the Big Six. They didn’t mess their pubs around and were happy for most of them to sell cask beer. It’s a brewery I had a lot of affection for. Obviously, it’s now closed.

The Ansells brewery in Birmingham was the scene of much industrial unrest. Which led to its closure, with the Ansells beers being moved to other breweries in the group.

Bass Charrington
Who knows what Bass Charrington could have achieved, if they hadn’t been led by a lunatic with no knowledge of the brewing industry. Despite his best efforts, the company became the biggest in the UK and one of the largest in the world. In the hands of someone more competent, they could only have been more successful.

The chairman’s insane plan was to have just two breweries, Cape Hill in Birmingham and the new brewery in Runcorn serving the whole of the UK. Which led them to closing most of their breweries. Though, when they discovered Runcorn couldn’t brew acceptable versions of some of their Northern brands, breweries such as Stones in Sheffield and the Tower Brewery in Tadcaster were reprieved.

They were one of the worst in terms of pub vandalism. When there was a pub swap in the 1980s, they took over the Little Park from Tetley. It was a Leeds little lovely pub, with two distinct rooms. Bass almost immediately fucked it up, knocking it through into a single room. Totally ruining the atmosphere.

The Big Six

The buying spree initiated by Eddie Taylor in the 1950s and 1960s came to an end in the 1970s, when the Labour government stopped further takeovers by the large brewing groups. Effectively freezing the six as they were. Any expansion had to come from off sales or adventures abroad.

In the 1970s, those UK large breweries were amongst the largest in the world. But with domestic possibilities extremely limited, what could they do?

At a time when most beer was consumed in pubs, the number of them you controlled determined how much beer you could sell. Roughly. Which is why they had gobbled up ramshackle breweries, purely for the pubs that they owned.

This is also when the Big Six started to rationalise their production Through closing multiple older breweries and replacing them with new more “rational” plants. Which were mostly a total disaster.

The most insane proposals came from Bass Charrington, whose chairman came from outside the brewing industry.  He wanted to concentrate brewing in just two plants: the M & B brewery in Cape Hill, Birmingham and Runcorn in Lancashire. It didn’t end well.

Large numbers of regional breweries were closed. Replaced with massive keg plants that never operated to capacity. The Courage brewery that replaced Simonds Reading brewery is a good example. It never brewed the full six million barrels it was capable of. That would have been about 17% of the UK's total output. And has closed.

When beer consumption began to fall, the UK was left with serious overcapacity. Assuming demand would continue to rise, big brewers had invested in massive plants to expand capacity.

The new “megakeggeries”, as CAMRA called them, were no great success. Whitbread’s plant in Luton and Bass Charrington’s in Runcorn were plagued with technical problems and industrial unrest. Both closed. Poor labour relations were rare amongst family brewers with their more paternalistic approach.

Big brewery tied houses in 1970
Bass Charrington	9,450
Whitbread	8,280
Allied	8,250
Watney Mann	6,135
Courage	6,000
S&N	1,700
Guinness	2
Total	39,817
Source:
Investors' Chronicle, 13 November 1970.