Money, money, money

What a great band ABBA were. I saw Bjorn Again once. A life-changing experience.

Dancing Queen, that was my favourite. It takes me back to resitting my first-year Chinese exams. After a hard day's studying in my student flat (alledgedly a copy of a Swedish prison) I would relax with a half or two of Tetley's Mild in the Pack Horse. On stripped-down summer student dole, a couple of halves was all I could afford. Dancing Queen was one of the most popular jukebox selections in the Pack Horse that summer.

Iced Mild. I'd been drinking that while failing my first year Chinese exams. My brother had brewed it. The summer of 1976 was scorching hot. A drought that started in May broke the end of my September resits. I blame global warming. With the Ramones blasting out, Pete, Tym and I sipped on my brother's Mild (around 1040º, if I remember correctly) when we should have been studying. That's what they pretended. Those bastards had been swotting away behind my back. It's a lesson I've never forgotten; don't trust your friends.

That's the introduction over. What came next? Hang on . . . . it's something to do with the title. I chose that for a reason. Money . . . . money . . . . MONEY. . . . No. Shouting the word doesn't bring it back. I used to think that shouting could solve any problem. Uhhh. Stupiddd. Shouting only works on Thursday.

Money. That's what I want. Well, if it's good enough for John Lennon it's good enough for me. Unless he was being ironic. In which case, call me Mr. Irony.

I'll remember eventually what the point of this post was. I know that it had something to do with money. And me. Me and money. What a perfect couple. Why not try to bring them together?

Brewing sugar

Just a quick question. Does anyone have idea what the characteristics were of pre-WW II brewing sugars? I keep finding Garton's No. 1 and Garton's No. 3 in brewing logs but don't know what the difference was between the two.

German beer sales by type and state

I get worried about boring you when I bang on about something for too long. So just for a change today's topic is beer styles. Damn, that's been the subject of most of my posts recently. OK, maybe I am sticking with the same general theme, but I have switched country and period.

Germany has easily the most regional beer market in Europe. Take Pils, for example. In Niedersachsen and Bremen it makes up 75.5% of sales, in Bavaria just 25.8%. This is a good demonstration of the North/South divide. In the two southernmost states - Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg - far more Weizen and far less Pils is drunk than elsewhere. But there's also a difference between the former Western and Eastern parts of the country. In the East more Export and Schwarzbier are consumed and very little Weizen. In Nordrhein-Westfalen, the local styles Koelsch and Alt together account for nearly 20% of sales. Neighbouring Rheinland-Pfalz is the only other state where they get above 1% combined.

Whitbread Ales 1881

Back to the London Metropolitan Archive. More specifically, Whitbread Ales from the brewing year July 1880 to July 1881.

The overwhelming majority of beer brewed - some 80% of the total - was X. None of the other Ales could manage more than 6%. If you're wondering why there's no figure for the amount of KK brewed, it's because they seem to have lumped XX and KK together. For some reason FA is completely absent from the production figures. That one I can't explain.

The hopping rates (if you look at the pounds per quarter of malt figure) fall into two groups: the lightly-hopped X and XL (approx. 7.5 pounds per quarter) and FA, XX, KK, KKK and PA all hopped at between 12.5 and 15 pounds per quarter.

All of the beers must have been light-coloured as only pale malt and sugar were used. The sugar percentages are quite weird, with X and XL containing the least (around 5%) and PA and FA the most (over 25%). I would have expected it to be the other way around.



If you compare the strengths with those of Whitbread's beers in 1933, you'll notice that FA, the weakest beer in 1881 at 5.5% ABV, is stronger than the strongest beer from 50 years later (DB at just 5.09% ABV).

How different if we compare 1881 and 1911. In 1911 FA was 1048º, X 1057º, PA 1061º, KK 1071º and KKK 1077º - that is around 4º weaker than in 1881, except for KKK which was 8º weaker.

Lager in the 1930's

In Alkmaar there's a small brewery museum. I went around it earlier this year with my son Andrew. It isn't huge, but the staff are friendly and enthusiastic. The location - the former De Kroon brewery - is both aposite and convenient, being pretty much in the centre of town.

This post isn't a travel report. What particularly caught my eye was a browned, paper-covered book entitled "Van Brouwerij tot Bierglas" ("From Brewery to Beer Glass"). Not the most inspiring title, nor one that promises much in the way of hard information. But you never know what you're going to find in a book until you open it up and have a look.

Blow me if there wasn't a table of analyses of lagers from the 1930's. Something I've never seen before. I had a fair amount of stuff about pre-1914 lagers, but nothing for the interwar years.

It worries me how poorly the history of British beer styles is documented. But for lager styles the situation is far, far worse. There's almost nothing sensible been written on the topic. That's why I'm always happy to find any new information. Luckily this happened before the book-buying moratorium and I was able to pick up a copy on Abebooks.

Here's my transcription of the data:


Source:
"Van Brouwerij tot Bierglas" by F. Kurris, Doetinchem, 1948, pages 26-27.
Notes:
colour in cc 0.1 n. iodine
ABV my calculation


Should you the museum inspire a thirst, there's a pub in the basement that offers around 30 beers. It opens at midday every day.

These are the detail of the museum.

Biermuseum De Boom
Houttil 1,
1811 JL Alkmaar.
Tel: 072 - 511 3801
info@biermuseum.nl
http://www.biermuseum.nl/
Opening times: Tue - Fri 13:00 - 17.00,
Sat 13:00 - 16.00,
Sunday and Monday closed

Biting the carpet

Numbers, numbers, numbers. There have been more than enough of those this week. I like to think that I'm multifaceted. Schizophrenia is a more accurate diagnosis.

Deathly dull statistics, foaming at the mouth. Those are supposed to be the twin themes of this blog. One or the other is bound to piss off just about anyone. Guess which I have planned for today?

There's no real challenge in finding something that to give me that fashionable rabid dog look. A browse of any beer forum will provide a surfeit of stimuli.

Made up beer styles. That was the theme I'd chosen. Used to be a definite Soviet flag to the bull of my anger. But I've mellowed. My relationship with beer forums has traversed several phases: anger, disbelief, despair and, finally, amusement.

But it's a shame to let a theme go. So here is a selection of made up beer styles. What's a made up beer style? I would tell you, but I've already explained it in a response to a comment. You're just getting a list here:

Robust Porter
Dry Stout
Bohemian Pilsner
Flemish Red
Quadrupel
Imperial anything (except Stout)

Feel free to contribute suggestions of your own.

Danish brewing statistics 1899 - 1959

Variety is the price of life, they say. So today I'm giving the Whitbread gravity book a rest. I'm sure the snappy title of this post will have ensnared many of you. How do I think them up?

Until the recent moratorium on book-buying imposed by my wife, I'd been building up a good collection of Swedish titles (mostly by Samuel E. Bring). My Abebook searches for "bryggeri" also popped out a couple of Danish books. Already getting warnings from Dolores, I bought only one: "Bryggerne og de tre store udforgringer" ("Brewers and the three great challenges", if I remember my Danish correctly), an oddly-titled history of the Danish brewers' association.

Brewers' associations are very good at compiling statistics. (Much better than they are a protecting their smaller members' interests.) They're some of my best sources. The Brewers' Almanack, issued annually by the Brewers' Society in Britain is brimming with essential facts. The Deutscher Brauer Bund website is my main reference for modern German statistics. I've already admitted my numbers dependency. These provide my fix.

When I ordered the book, I was hoping that it would have a few numbers in it. It sort of does. Unfortunately in the form of graphs. The numbers below I had to work out with a ruler. The ones for the number of breweries I could get spot on. The hectolitre figures are more imprecise. They could be 50,000 hl out. Or so.

Ballantine's bottled beers 1939

Only a short post today. The Whitbread gravity book has sections dedicated to most of the larger London brewers. But there's also a part lumping together those without pages of their own entitled "Sundry Brewers". It features an odd collection of brewers, not only from Britain but from abroad, too. I was susprised to find analyses of five of American brewer Ballantine's ales. I thought you might like to see them.

I'm not sure how Whitbread got hold of them. I can't imagine Ballantine were exporting to the UK at the time. It's especially surprising as the analyses were carried out in October 1939 - just after the outbreak of WW II.

Compared to British ales they look quite old-fashioned. Their specs are more like those of pre-WW I British beers. The weakest has a gravity of 1056. They ales are much paler than their British counterparts, and almost as pale as a Pilsener. (Carlsberg and Tuborg Pilseners on the same page have colours of 9 and 8 respectively. The two samples of Ballantine XXX Ale have colours of 9 and 11.)

Worthington bottled beers 1944 - 1967

Just for variety, today it's Worthington's turn. But don't worry: I'll get back to Whitbread soon.

For a change, one of the beers listed here is still avaialble - White Shield. Like Bass with their Red and Green Triangle, Worthington had a filtered (Green Shield) and unfiltered (White Shield) version of the IPA. In the book there's a comment saying that the Export Stout was naturally-conditioned. Perhaps the Imperial Stout, also called White Shield, was bottle-conditioned, too.

Bass and Worthington were widely available in the pubs of other breweries, who often bottled them. They seem to have been about the only companies still producing much over 4% ABV. That could explain the wider distribution of their beers.

Note the extremely high degree of attenuation of some of the IPAs - over 90% in some cases.

More Whitbread 1933

The Whitbread fun just won't end. That's a promise. It won't end. I'll be keeping this up for weeks. The material is there. My butterfly brain will doubtless flutter off to another flower before it's exhausted. Expect exhaustion yourself sooner.

Start with the most unfashionable years possible was my first idea, but I forgot to photograph early 1970's logs. The thirties are a good second choice. Weak beers, lots of sugar, three year old hops. Perfect for the extreme beer crowd.

I like the look of the Whitbread beers. What I'm about to say feels like disloyalty. But it needs to be said. Whitbread's seem honest beers. They may use sugar, but they aren't full of rice or maize like some others brewed in London. You know who I'm talking about . . . but I'm not going to spell it out . . . . my fingers won't type the words.

Any of you homebrewers? A couple of the beers described below I would love to try. Not brew, just drink. My attempts at brewing clearly demonstrated which aspect of beer suited me best. It wasn't production. Filling kegs is the highest I can aspire to.

Should you brew one of these beers, I would be delighted. Even more so if you gave me a bottle. I hope there's another Lachlan out there. (Lachlan brewed a killer version of Barclay Perkins 1856 Imperial Brown Stout. I'm lucky enough to still have one bottle.)

Whitbread bottled beers 1940 - 1965

I seem to be posting an awful lot about Whitbread. Tell me when you start to get bored.

Today it's a table of their bottled beers. You'll notice that many are the same as those brewed in 1933. A couple of words of explanation. What's listed as PA is in fact their IPA. EMS I'm pretty sure stands for "Export Mackeson Stout". Noteworthy is the presence of two very dfferent Brown Ales: Forest Brown and the much stronger and more highly-attenuated Double Brown.

You can see how popular Mackeson Stout was in the 1950's by the fact that there are analyses from four different Whitbread breweries: Hythe (the original Mackeson brewery), Chiswell Street (Whitbread's original home in London), Kirkstall (Leeds) and Stockport. All have been closed for a couple of decades at, least.

Whitbread beers in 1933

It's always worth looking at the inside covers of brewing logs. They often contain some dead handy bits of additional information.

The Ale log for the years 1932-1936 is a good example. Glued to the inside front cover are two price lists. One from before the lowering of beer duty in April 1933, the other after. They are an absolute goldmine of information, especially as they relate directly to the beers in the logs.

Take a look for yourself:



I've combined the information in the price list with details from the logs to come up with this table:



You'll notice how slim the publican's profit was - just 25% to 30%. That's much less than today.

Something that is only apparent by looking at both the price list and the logs together is the nature of Whitbread's Light Ale. Just looking at the price list I would have assumed it was a pale beer. Having seen the log, I know that not only was it dark but that it was party-gyled with the X. It's not what is usually known at Light Ale (bottled ordinary Bitter), but is in fact a low-gravity bottled Mild. Only looking at the log, I would have assumed it was a draught beer.

It has been argued that Pale Ale and Bitter are not synonyms but two distinct styles. This price list shows that, for Whitbread at least, they were exactly the same thing. The name Pale Ale was used within the brewery, Bitter in the pub.

As a special bonus, I've produced a detailed breakdown of the ingredients and brewing process (as much as I can understand it). It may be of interest to homebrewers. Sorry about the lack of final gravities - they aren't in the log. The ones quoted in the table above come from 1940 (courtesy of the Whitbread gravity book). If there's any interest, I may do some more. It takes lots of my valuable time (I could be watching Hollyoaks). Tell me if I should continue. Oh yes, you may need to scale down the quantities a bit.

Guinness 1896 - 1982

I used to enjoy the occasional bottle of Guinness, when it was still bottle-conditioned. A cracking beer, though I never realised how short a time it had been brewed to that strength, 1042.

This may be starting to sound like a broken record, but before WW I Guinness was a very different beer. At least the Extra Stout was. Foreign Extra Stout is still brewed to much the same gravity as 150 years ago. Few today realise that Extra Stout and Foreign Extra Stout used to be basically the same beer. The only difference was that the Foreign version was more heavily hopped and matured for longer, which meant that it was more attenuated and slightly stronger.

Two world wars have transformed the standard Stout into a totally different beer, while, in many respects, time has stood still for Foreign Extra Stout.

Modern style-obsessives classify standard Guinness as a "Dry Stout". But how long has Guinness fitted that profile? I suggest not very long. If you look at the table below, you'll see that there was a significant change in the degree of attenuation in 1950. Before that date it was in the range 72-75%. After 1950, it increased to between 81% and 86%. That must have had an impact on the character of the finished beer.



The normal story goes that English breweries made Sweet Stouts while Guinness and other Irish breweries brewed the stylistically different Dry Stout. Yet, if we look at English examples from the 1940's, some have a similar degree of attenuation to pre-1950 Guinness.

So is Dry Stout just another invented style? Probably.

Whitbread output 1911 and 1933

Hi there. Here's a quick update on my table of Whitbread output. I've added 1933. There's a reason I picked 1933 - I have the figures for both the Porter and Ale breweries.

It's a lot harder than you might imagine getting figures for the same years. The Porter logs don't have the same numbers as given in the catalogue. It makes getting the logs for any particular year a mtter of trial and error.

Let's explain the beers a little. LA was Light Ale, DB a Double Brown Ale, LS London Stout, ES Extras Stout and 33 a sort of Strong Ale. If you're lucky, I may fish out some more details about the composition of the beers today. Though I usually fall asleep in front of the television around this time on a Sunday.

It's your lucky day. I didn't drop off during Tatort tonight, as I normally do. Perhaps because the episode was about the Oktoberfest. Here are the basic specs of the beers in the table.

1911
FA 1048º, 2.28 lbs hops/barrel
X 1057º, 1.29 lb hops/barrel
IPA 1050º, 2.36 lbs hops/barrel
2PA 1054º, 2.12 lbs hops/barrel
PA 1061º, 2.17 lbs hops/barrel
KK 1071º, 3.8 lbs hops/barrel, 2% brown malt
2KKK 1077º, 3.8 lbs hops/barrel, 2% brown malt


1933
LA 1028.5º, 1 lb hops/barrel, colour 8 + 40, 14% crystal malt
X 1036.1º, 1.12 lbs hops/barrel, colour 17 + 40, 14% crystal malt
PA 1048.8º, 1.62 lbs hops/barrel, colour 26-28, 4.5% crystal malt
XXX 1048º, 1.57 lbs hops/barrel, colour 18 + 40, 9% chocolate malt
DB 1055.2º, 2.3 lbs hops/barrel, colour 17 + 40, 2% chocolate malt
IPA 1037.7º, 1.75 lbs hops/barrel, colour 22-24, 6% crystal malt
P 1027.4º, 1 lb hops/barrel, 5% chocolate malt, 5% brown malt
LS 1044.2º, 1.26 lbs hops/barrel, 5% chocolate malt, 5% brown malt
ES 1055.5º, 1.26 lbs hops/barrel, 5% chocolate malt, 5% brown malt

All other malt, other than that specified, was pale. All beers contained a proprtion of sugar.

Watney Draught Beers 1939 - 1968

More Whitbread gravity book madness today. This time it's the turn of ale-lovers' arch-enemy Watney.



After 1943, Watney's Mild doesn't really count as an intoxicating drink. At only around 2.5% ABV, you would have needed to be a very determined man to get even slightly pissed.


This is the start of Watney's keg romance. Notice what crap value Red Barrel was - weaker yet more 2d a pint more expensive than Special Bitter. No wonder they advertised it like crazy. Of course, in those days no-one knew how strong beers were. Apart from the breweries, but they were keeping it to themselves.


Nice to see the Watney's Party Four get a mention. No susrpise that the beer in it was piss weak.

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.

Whitbread Ale Output Year ending July 1911

Remember the handy weekly summaries at the back of the Whitbread brewing logs I was telling you about yesterday? Here's what I found at the back of the 1911 edition.

The table below shows the amounts produced of all the Whitbread Ales in the brewing year ending July 1911.

X is Mild: FA, I guess,stands for Family Ale: PA and IPA are pretty self-explanatory; KK and KKK are strong Ales. Give me a few days and I'll dig out the logs and tell you exactly how strong they all were. And hopefully be able to give you some idea of their colour.

Beer	hl	%
X	476,165	54.06
FA	125,919	14.30
PA	11,394	1.29
IPA	183,421	20.82
2PA	62,558	7.10
KK	11,826	1.34
KKK	4,013	0.46
2KKK	5,535	0.63
Total	880,829	100

Source:
Document LMA/4453/D/01/076 in the London Metropolitan Archive

Inspiration and punctuation

We all have our influences. Some of us wear them on our sleeves. Others in our hats. A few crazies try to use them as shoes - pffff! What a mad bunch people are, eh?

One step further. I sound like some self-improvement guru. How can I put that better? Dissimulation. I want to avoid it.

(I've just spent several valuable minutes of my life fiddling with the punctuation in the preceding paragraph. Was it worth it? You'll be able to voice your opinion in my next quiz.)

One step beyond. I did have a point when I started this. Making loads of crap jokes? No, that wasn't it. . . . . . I remember. Telling you who I copy . . . . . whom I copy.

(Punctuation is much neglected. Mine may be eccentric, but it serves its purpose: to refelect the finer emotional nuances that, in the spoken language, would be conveyed by inflection of the voice.)

Two authors are to blame for how I write. Here's a clue to the names of my "inspirations": both are in the format name-initial-name.

I'm not a patch on either. But I try.

If anyone can guess both names, I may award a prize. Or maybe not. It depends on my mood. What about "S:t Eriks bryggeri på Åsögatan" by Samuel E. Bring as a prize? I have two copies because a Swedish bookshop mistakenly sent me it rather than the "S:t Eriks bryggeri på Kungsholmen" by Samuel E. Bring that I had ordered. How could they confuse the two?

Back from the archive

What a succesful harvest at the archive, yesterday. This time I concentrated on Whitbread, specifically Porter logs for the years 1914-1915, 1917-1919, 1928, 1932-34. and 1952-54.

I only glanced at the material, but a couple of things stood out. Whitbread brewed Porter right through WW I, using large amounts of brown malt and chocolate malt, to a very reasonable gravity of 1036-38º. But by the 1930's it was down to 1029º - I wonder what happened? Most styles had their nadir - strengthwise - in 1918.

Also under my scrutiny were Whitbread's Ale logs for 1880-1911 and 1922-1940. There's lots of stuff to digest. I took 350 photos in 3 hours - that's a shot every 30 seconds.

Not forgetting the Whitbread gravity book, which lists the OG, FG and colour for their competitors beers in the period 1939-1968. Fascinating stuff. You'll be hearing more, oh so much more, on this topic,

Swedish beers 1868-1892

I bet you haven't been able to sleep, have you, waiting for the next installment on late 19th century Swedish brewing? Today's your lucky day.

Wiener Bryggeriet
First we'll take a look at Wiener Bryggeriet of Skockholm in the period 1868-1882. In 1868, output was 65% Svensköl and 33% Bayerskt öl. By the next year Svensköl had dropped to just 7.5% and Bayerskt öl risen to 90%. In 1882, it was 2% Svensköl and 96% Bayerskt öl. The brewery also produced four other beer types: Svagdricka, Iskällerdricka, Skänköl and Farsköl. Together, these never accounted for more than 2% of total production. In 1868 the brewery experimented with Kulmbacher and Viener style beer, but never put them into production. Brewing of Pilsner on a very small scale began in 1881.

Their Bayerskt öl had an OG varying between 15.3º and 18º Balling, with a final gravity of 7 to 9º Balling, though was sometimes as low as 5º Balling. The finished beer was approximately 5.5% ABW (6.9% ABV) and was lagered for 2 to 3 months.

Their Svensköl had an OG of 12º Balling, was dark, top-fermenting, brewed using an infusion mash and stored for 2 to 3 weeks before sale.

Their Iskällerdricka was a bottom-fermenting beer with an OG of 9º Balling. It was only brewed 2 to 5 times a year.

Until 1875 their Svagdricka was top-fermented using and infusion mash. After that date, a decoction mash and a bottom-fermenting yeast were used. It was only brewed 3 to 8 times a year.

Hopping rates:
Bayerskt öl - 600 g hops per 100 kg malt
Pilsner - 1 kg hops per 100 kg malt
Svensköl - 700-850 g hops per 100 kg malt
Svagdricka - 600 g hops per 100 kg malt

Hops from Bavaria and Brunswick were used for the Bayerskt öl, Swedish hops for the Svensköl and Svagdricka.

(Source: "Grönwalls bryggeri, Nürnbergs bryggeri och Wienerbryggeri" by Samuel E. Bring, pages 252 - 260)


Swedish beer strengths in 1892
Analyses of beer from different breweries, performed in 1892.

Beer type - average OG - max OG - min OG
Porter 18.5º - 23º - 14.8º
Bayerst öl 13.9º - 18.4º - 10.5º
Pilsner-öl 11.9º - 14.3º - 7.4º
Iskallerdricka 8.5º - 11.4º - 5.3º
Svensk-öl 12.3º - 18.4º - 6.7º
Svadricka:
early 6.3º - 8.8º - 4.2º
later 5º - 7.4º - 3º

As you can see, there was considerable variation between different samples.

(Source: "Svenska Bryggareföreningen 75 år", by Bertil Nordenfelt)