Branded IPA in 1953

Nope, wasn’t done. How could I have forgotten about IPA, everyone’s current favourite?

It’s not a huge set, then again it wasn’t that common for beers to be labelled IPA. And the term was used very loosely, covering very different beers. I’ll prove that in a moment. Why is that? Because, unlike today, people had no particular expectation about what an IPA would be like, other than being pale and reasonably hoppy. Hard to imagine such vague desires now.

Another problem is that the classic Burton IPAs weren’t always even called IPA. Often they were billed merely as “Pale Ale”, as was the case with Bass. Whose Red Triangle (trademark No. 1 in the UK) brand Pale Ale is a notable omission from the list. As is White Shield. Weird, that. I’d expect them to have been first on the list.

In table number two you can see for yourself how varied IPA was in terms of strength, ranging from 3% to 8% ABV. Pretty difficult to lump such dissimilar beers into a single description. Which is why I’m not going to bother. Most are, indeed, pretty pale. A colour below 20 is at the pale end of British Pale Ale’s colour spectrum. The one exception is from Vaux.

Sadly I only have analyses for two of the beers in the brand table, Brickwood’s Sunshine and Hope & Anchor’s Anchor. The former is a mid-strength example, the latter towards the limp end.

Branded IPA in 1953
Brewery	Brand	Type
Cheltenham & Hereford Breweries	Double Chelt	Bottled I.P.A.
Courage	Alton	I. P. A.
Abington Brewery	Double Ace	I.P.A.
Gibbs, Mew	Sarum Special	I.P.A.
Hope & Anchor	Anchor	I.P.A.
Vallances Brewery	Wessex	I.P.A.
Brickwood	Sunshine	I.P.A., bottled
Campbell, Praed	Cromwell Ale	I.P.A., bottled
Source:
Brewery Manual 1953-1954, pages 382 - 394.

Bottled IPA in the 1950's
Year	Brewer	Beer	Price per pint (d)	Acidity	OG	FG	ABV	App. Attenua- tion	colour
1956	Barclay Perkins	IPA	20	0.04	1030.5	1007.3	3.01	76.07%	19
1959	Usher	India Pale Ale	20	0.03	1032.3	1008.4	2.99	73.99%	18
1955	Vaux & Co	India Pale Ale	18	0.05	1032.9	1008.2	3.20	75.08%	30
1959	Greene King	India Pale Ale	20	0.04	1033.3	1010	3.02	69.97%	25
1956	Hope & Anchor	IPA	24	0.04	1036.6	1008	3.71	78.14%	18
1955	Hansons	IPA	22	0.04	1043.1	1007.8	4.60	81.90%	19
1955	Eldridge Pope	IPA	29	0.05	1044.1	1012.8	4.06	70.98%	20
1960	Brickwoods	Sunshine India Pale Ale	28	0.04	1044.7	1011.4	4.16	74.50%	25
1955	Flowers	IPA	28	0.05	1045.9	1009.7	4.71	78.87%	25
1957	McEwan	Export IPA	32.5	0.05	1046.4	1010.7	4.64	76.94%	22
1954	Courage	John Courage IPA	28	0.05	1050.4	1011.2	5.10	77.78%	20
1955	Bass	Pale Ale (Red Triangle)		0.04	1063.2	1009.6	7.02	84.81%	19
1955	Worthington	India Pale Ale (Green Shield)		0.05	1063.3	1009.4	7.06	85.15%	18
1955	Bass	Pale Ale (Blue Triangle)		0.07	1063.5	1003.1	7.96	95.12%	19
1955	Worthington	India Pale Ale (White Shield)		0.05	1063.7	1002.9	8.02	95.45%	18
	Average		24.5	0.05	1046.3	1008.7	4.88	79.65%	21.0
Sources:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.
T & J Bernard's brewing records held at the Scottish Brewing Archive

I may still be able to drag some more material from this. I’m sure I’ve not done every beer type yet.

Unions and carbonated beer

I thought this would make a nice follow-up to the photos of Marston's union set. It's a brewer, in 1940, recounting the changes over the 40 years he'd been brewing.

"Years ago most troubles were blamed on plant. Up to a point that was true. One remembers a particular brewery getting into most grave trouble largely because of worn-out plant, much of it old wood. They modernised the plant — but they also discarded some rules-of-thumb in exchange for laboratory control — and have long been happy again. There are instances, though, of successful brewing, under analytical control of materials, with plant that ought to be scrapped—success, that is, with running beers.

Fermentation has undergone changes. Nothing has produced a better draught beer than the Burton Union and the Yorkshire Square, though Edinburgh and some other centres have done admirably. But it seems reasonably certain that beers fermented in open vessels, all other things being equal, in most cases give a product more suitable for modern bottling owing to their more flattened condition. Scientific developments in pasteurisation may possibly alter this state of affairs. And some day a perfect pasteurisation may improve the keeping qualities on long ullage of draught ales, without detriment to flavour and character. One never knows. Some people think that draught ales will ultimately be wiped out. By your leave, never, if they have every ounce of skill, thought, scientific development, goodness of material and capital used in their production.

It is but 40 years since chilled and filtered beers were introduced. Now even Bass has found it necessary to present such beers to the public. (By the way, will Guinness ever be so bottled !) It is said that, in the long run, this great firm of Bass may find it essential to do all their bottled beers in this fashion. Not, to be hoped, while the present writer is alive. We may take comfort, a first-class naturally bottled pale ale won't die so easily. All the same, properly chilled, filtered and bottled, such ales have come to stay and to sell, Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis (not the writer). Price has a lot to do with the popularity of chilled beers, since they are generally lighter and sell cheaper."
"The Brewers' Journal 1940" page 55.

Worn-out plant. That's nothing new. Many breweries were still using clapped-out plant after WW II. Come to think of it, some carried on into the new millennium. Lack of investment - whether caused by external factors, such as the war, or the tight-fistedness of owners - was the root cause of the closure of many breweries in the 1950's and 1960's.

Open fermenters best for carbonated bottled beer? That's an interesting thought, if rather counter-intuitive. The praise for unions and Yorkshire squares is less unexpected.

"some day a perfect pasteurisation may improve the keeping qualities on long ullage of draught ales, without detriment to flavour and character" not happened yet, as far as I know. As for draught beer disappearing entirely - no-one would think that now. You have to put the authors remarks into context. There was a huge upsurge in bottled beer in the 1930's. One which fizzled out after the war as drinkers switched back to draught.

Will bottled Guinness ever be chilled and carbonated? Unfortunately yes. But not for another half century. One Pale Ale -White Shield - is still available naturally-conditioned. Just a shame there's no longer Bass Red Triangle

Floaters: the good kind

Natural-conditioning. I've always believed that's the best way to go. The general public doesn't seem to have been quite so convinced.

The majority of British bottled beers very quickly moved away from bottle-conditioning in the first decades of the 2oth century. Look at old adverts and you can see how it was sold to the public: no bits in your beer and you can drink every last drop in the bottle. It's surprising that anyone kept bottling with yeast.

Nowadays brewers are often perceived as the bad guys, trying to dumb down their products. But that naturally-conditioned bottled beers survived at all in Britain seems to have been due to the enthusiasm of brewers for this method. Guinness brewers were unenthusiastic about the flavour of pasteurised Stout. Worthington and Bass stuck with bottle-conditioning for their flagship Pale Ales (White Shield and Red Triangle) but introduced filtered versions (Green Shield and Blue Triangle) due to public demand.

But I still don't like things floating in my beer. I always leave the yeast in the bottle, if humanly possible. Even with Hefeweizen. Remembering to ask the barstaff, especially in Germany, not to pour in the yeast is vitally important. I often forget. Perhaps it's just psychological, but lots of yeast overpowers and dulls the flavour of a beer. At least that's how it seems to me.

What is a good floater? One that isn't there.

Bass bottled beers 1956 - 1967

I've started going through the Whitbread gravity book I photgraphed on Tuesday. For no particular reason, I've started with the entries for Bass bottled beers.

Oddly enough, the 1960's were the one decade of the 20th century for which I had no real hard facts. Brewing logs and the Truman Gravity book have provided information on all the earlier decades. From the 1970's onwards, the CAMRA Good Beer Guide provides gravities. Now, thanks to Whitbread's industrial espionage, I can fill in the missing decade.

What can we learn from these figures? That Bass No 1 barley Wine has always had a massive OG, for one thing. They also blow one of my pet theories out of the water - that Barley Wine had a Bitter-like colour. The gravity book gives its colour as 100 and 110 - about the same as their Brown Ale. It's far darker than the Pale Ales, which are around 20.

Talking of Pale Ales, Blue Triangle was a filtered and pasteurised beer, Red Label was bottle-conditioned. Red Triangle was later just relabelled Worthington White Shield and was eventually dropped. An sad fate for the beer that had been the most famous Pale Ale in the world (as painted by Monet on the Folies Bergeres bar). You'll notice that the FG of some samples of Red Triangle is very low - 1003 to 1004. I think we can assume it was pretty dry.

I was surpised at the strength of the beers; the weakest are just a tad under 5% ABV. Remember that at this time the average OG was about 1037 equivalent to an average ABV of 3.7%.

I've never heard of Gold Triangle or Gold Label (thet appears to be the same beer). If anyone can remember it, please let me know.