Looking back (part three): 1970s bottled beer

More about the beers of the 1970s. Starting with bottled beers.

The popularity of bottled beer had declined by the time I first hit the pub. In 1960, the split had been 64% draught, 36% bottled. By 1970, it was 73% to 27%. But the bottled figures also included off sales. Which at the time were about 10% of the total.

Why had bottled beer sales fallen? One the answers is keg beer. One of the reasons for drinking bottled beer or mixed bottled and draught was the variable quality of cask beer. Keg beer, which though more expensive than cask, was still cheaper than bottled beer. And offered a similar level of consistency.

Also, some styles of bottled beer were going out of fashion. Milk Stout is a great example. Hugely popular in the 1950s, by the 1970s it had become associated with grannies. Who wants to drink what their Nan is drinking? No-one under fifty. Some breweries still made one, but Mackeson was by far the most common.

Most breweries produced a range of bottled beers. Light Ale, Brown Ale, Pale Ale, Stout and some sort of Strong Ale. That was about it, usually. With quite modest bottled sales, few brewers bothered to make beers just for bottling. Light Ale was bottled Ordinary Bitter, Brown Ale the Mild, and Pale Ale the Best Bitter. Stout and Strong Ale were usually just bottled products, though sometimes a Strong Ale might be sold on draught during the Winter.

There were a couple of very strong bottled beers, like Whitbread Gold Label or Bass No. 1, which were 9%-10% ABV and sold in nip bottles. And in London, Courage Russian Stout. It was unavailable in Newark, despite all the pubs being owned by Courage. The northern part of Courage operated quite separately. None of the beers from Courage's southern breweries were distributed in the Midlands and North.

I can tell you very little about these beers. Because I never drank most of them. I can remember trying Bass No. 1 once. I couldn't even tell you now what colour it was. If I'd known its significance, I'd have paid more attention. And maybe tried it more than once.

Sometimes I did drink bottled beer. When a pub sold no cask beer, there was always an alternative for the real ale fan: bottled Guinness. Sold in every pub and bottle conditioned. It's hard to convey the magnificence of this beer. Dry, roastily bitter and with a distinct lactic tang. One of the greatest beers of the day. With so much more complexity and depth of flavour than the travesty of a Stout that is Draught Guinness. It was a sad day when they stopped bottle conditioning.

The other bottled option was Worthington White Shield. Another one of the handful of bottle-conditioned beers. Unfortunately, it was mostly only available in Bass Charrington pubs, so I didn't get to drink it often. It was bone dry, very highly carbonated and quite heavily hopped. Very pale in colour, too. Another excellent beer. Though you needed to be careful pouring it, as the sediment was easily disturbed. Most barmen wisely left the pouring to the customer.

Bottled beer in the 1950’s – the main types

It time to take a look at the three main different types of bottled beer, each of which had its own specific characteristics and process of manufacture.

We start with the most common type: filtered, artificially carbonated bottled beer.

“1. Carbonated and filtered bright beers; light ale and brown ale, together with stronger special ales. These are usually conditioned in bulk and carbonated. Fine filtration is usually relied upon to give a product which although not always completely sterile has a reasonable shelf life. In some cases the beer is pasteurized as an additional safeguard against biological haze, but this may have the effect of accelerating the onset of non-biological haze.”
"Brewing Theory and Practice" by E. J. Jeffery, 1956, page 331.

You’ll note that they specifically mention two of the most popular bottled beers down the pub – Light Ale and Brown Ale. There may have been stronger Brown Ales that were bottle-conditioned at some point, but I’m pretty sure Light Ale was always filtered and carbonated. I’m surprised that these beers weren’t always pasteurised by the 1950’s. Though bottled beers sold through pubs weren’t in a very long supply chain and wouldn’t have needed a shelf life measured in months.

Next is a fairly similar type:

“2. Stouts produced in a similar way to the above, that is conditioned in bulk and carbonated. These will either not be filtered at all or will be only roughly filtered, so that they will contain yeast and possibly other organisms. If they are of the non-sweet variety they may have a reasonable shelf life without pasteurizing, but there is always the liability for yeast growth to cause excessive condition, or growth of bacteria to affect the soundness. Sweet stouts, however, almost invariably need pasteurizing, as otherwise fermentation will occur in bottle, giving excess condition.”
"Brewing Theory and Practice" by E. J. Jeffery, 1956, pages 330 - 331.

Much the same as type one, except not filtered so much. It’s pretty obvious why this would be dangerous in a Sweet Stout – it was likely to start fermenting again in the bottle. A good way to produce bottle bombs. Interesting that this is mentioned as being a method specifically for Stout. In an opaque beer like Stout, there wasn’t the same need for cosmetic filtering as in a pale beer.

And finally the proper way of making bottled beer:

“3. Naturally conditioned ales and stouts. These are first matured in cask or in bulk, or first in cask followed by further maturation in bulk, then bottled off with sufficient yeast and enough slowly fermentable matter to give some further fermentation in bottle, thus producing the necessary condition. These require further cellar storage of from three to four weeks after bottling and they require careful handling to ensure that they reach the consumer in satisfactory condition. As already mentioned, relatively few breweries produce their own beers of this category, preferring to bottle well-known brands. We shall deal with the three categories in order.”
"Brewing Theory and Practice" by E. J. Jeffery, 1956, page 332.

This method was already becoming limited to a few specific brands. By the time I started drinking in the early 1970’s just six naturally-conditioned bottled beers remained: Guinness Extra Stout, Worthington White Shield, Eldridge Pope Hardy Ale, Gale’s Prize Old Ale, Bass Red Triangle (actually the same beer as White Shield) and Own Ale, a beer from the first new brewery for decades, brewed on pretty much a homebrew scale. Amazing to see how much of a comeback this type has made. I’m sure it would have surprised Jeffery.

The process he describes - maturation in casks, then bottling with live yeast and allowing the beer to carbonate naturally – is much the same method as employed by Bass from the mid-19th century onwards.

Next we’ll be looking at artificially-carbonated beer in more detail.

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