Pubs and work

Two things which nowadays may have little connection – unless you work in hospitality – but back in the 1970s were often quite closely entwined. Especially on Fridays.

Even when I worked in the brewery, I nipped out for a pint a couple of times. Even though I had free beer on tap in the “cellar”. Why? To meet up with my mate Henry and have a couple of pints in the Wing Tavern. Oh, why pay for beer? Because it was Barnsley Bitter. Nectar of the gods.

Obviously, most days I got stuck into the free Mild. But not too enthusiastically. No more than a couple of pints. I was so responsible back then. And wasn’t too keen on crippling myself with the heavy machinery I was operating.

While I was briefly working in an arms factory close to Old Street in London, there were some excellent lunchtime boozing options. Like the George and Vulture, a Fullers pub. For a few pints of London Pride. Before getting back to the heavy machinery.

Oddly enough, one of my best memories, is of a Fullers beer, but not in one of their pubs. But in the Carpenter’s Arms, a real ale pub. Where one lunchtime, they had Fullers Hock in amazing condition. So good, I knocked back five pints. But it was only Mild. And the machinery wasn’t that heavy.

Next job, sweeping the floor of a bus garage in Leeds, had one pub moment: straight after we were handed our pay packets on midday Friday. Over the Kirkstall Road to the Highland Laddie. A little, lovely Tetley pub. With a more than decent pint of Mild. I gained the grudging respect of my colleagues by knocking back four pints in half an hour.

Overtime was always on offer. Two hours. Which delayed knocking off time until 18:00. Meaning that the Cardigan Arms, only a few hundred yards away, was open. For a few resuscitating pints of Mild.

Stout in the 1970s

In the 1970s, draught Stout meant one thing: Guinness. In most of the UK, draught Stout died out between the wars. The exceptions were Northern Ireland and London. In the capital, it managed to hang on until sometime in the 1950s.

A large percentage of brewers were still producing a Stout at the start of the 1970s. Mostly, these were pretty low gravity, sometimes as low as 1030º. Coupled with a low degree of attenuation, it left these beers with less than 3% ABV.

Let’s take a look at some of the Stouts being brewed at the time.

UK Stout 1969 - 1973
Year	Brewer	Beer	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	colour
1969	Fremlin	Special Stout	1039.2	1016.7	2.98	57.40%	4.11	0.65
1970	Adnams	Double Stout	1037.0	1009.0	3.70	75.68%	5.54	0.86
1973	Whitbread	Mackeson	1038.8	1010.0	3.81	74.23%	6.31	1.01	300
1973	Whitbread	Extra Stout	1055.7	1013.7	5.56	75.40%	6.31	1.45	375
1971	Boddington	WSS	1030.5	1009.0	2.84	70.49%	5.75	0.74	300
1969	Truman	Stout	1030.7	1012.7	2.38	58.56%	4.48	0.57
1969	Elgood	Stout	1030.0	1011.1	2.50	63.07%	3.56	0.48
	Average		1037.4	1011.7	3.40	67.83%	5.15	0.82	325
Sources:
Fremlin brewing record held at the Kent Archives, document number U3555/2/F/Bx2/1/93.
Adnams brewing record held at the brewery
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/141.
Boddington brewing record held at Manchester Central Library, document number M693/405/134.
Truman Ale book held by Derek Prentice.
Elgood brewing record held at the brewery

Quite a variation in gravity there. But the outlier – Extra Stout – differs from the others in being purely an export beer. All the others are in the 1030ºs.

The rates of attenuation are all over the place. The Whitbread and Adnams Stout have a normal 75%. (Though it should be borne in mind that the Mackeson in the table is before the addition of lactose.) While the Truman and Fremlin examples are both under 60%.

It’s no surprise, then, four of the seven examples are below 3% ABV. Truman’s is even under 2.5% ABV. Lovely and watery with no kick of alcohol. Yum.

There’s also quite a spread in the hopping rates. Ranging from 3.5 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt to almost 6.5 lbs. That’s quite a difference.

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1969 Fremlin Light Ale

Another recipe from my book "Keg!". Which, if I can contain my enthusiasms, should be finished in a few months. Well, that's the plan.

At the bottom end of the Pale Ales is, as you would expect, Light Ale. Though it isn’t so typical.

The colour is quite dark, though, as a lot of it depends on crystal malt, a paler type of crystal would reduce the colour quite a bit. Other than that bit of crystal, there’s only base malt. There’s also some flaked barley and sugar. The latter being WSI again. Which I’ve guessed is something like No. 2 invert.

Of course, this was only sold in bottled form. Light Ale being one of those bottled beers which was consumed in some volume in pubs. Most often mixed with draught Bitter. Though, with the advent of keg beer, fewer and fewer drinkers saw the need to mix bottled and draught.

No idea what the hops were. Fuggles seem a pretty safe bet.
 

1969 Fremlin Light Ale
pale malt	5.50 lb	77.57%
crystal malt 120 L	0.33 lb	4.65%
flaked barley	0.50 lb	7.05%
No. 2 invert sugar	0.75 lb	10.58%
caramel 500 SRM	0.01 lb	0.14%
Fuggles 90 mins	1.50 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	1.50 oz
OG	1033
FG	1007
ABV	3.44
Apparent attenuation	78.79%
IBU	38
SRM	8.5
Mash at	150º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	60º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

 

 

Courage (part two)

Yet more stuff about Courage. Now I think about it, their tied estate was a bit patchy. Very strong in the South, but pretty well absent in the West Midlands and Scotland.

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 Mild, was top class.

Courage

I've been digging into the Big Six recently. If you're writing about the 1970s, it's pretty difficult to ignore them.

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-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.

Brewery visits

Oddly, the first time I ever entered a brewery was to work, not to have a look around. Ever since, it’s been as a visitor. Not usually on a tour, but still a visitor. Though the particular smell of a brewery - that mixture of fermentation and disinfectant - always takes me right back to my time at Holes.

The CAMRA brewery trips I went on were pretty boozy affairs.

At Bateman they put on a lovely cold spread, along with as much Bitter and Mild as you wanted. We got to chat with the brewer and everyone was dead friendly. Then back to the brewery-owned hotel for some more pints.

As we were guests at the hotel, the pints didn’t need to stop at closing time. When I was young, opportunities for pints after 11 PM were as rare as flamingos in Leeds. I never passed them up. Which is a problem when you’ve paced yourself to end at “normal” closing time.

I wasn’t feeling great when I rose after far too few hours’ sleep. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me eating the full English that I’d paid for.

On the way back to Newark, we stopped at a Kimberley pub for a few pints. I was a bit overenthusiastic, as I rarely got to drink their beer. I was already feeling a bit unwell when we picked up the hitchhiker. About 10 minutes later I really needed to spew. Being considerate, I pushed past the hitcher, opened the rear door and puked on the road. What a hero I was.

For some reason, the hitcher decided to get off at the next roundabout. 

Anyone else have memories of boozy brewery trips in the 1970s? Let me know.

Let's Brew - 1969 Truman Ben Truman

As a change from recipes vainly trying to push my published books, here's a recipe from one that isn't finished yet, "Keg!". If you're reading this post in six months' time, please buy a copy.

P1 B was a Burton Pale Ale with a long pedigree, having been brewed since 1877. It was Truman’s equivalent of Bass Red Triangle and, originally, was exclusively a bottled beer. Sometime in the late 1950s and early 1960s it was introduced in keg form, playing the role of Truman’s premium Keg Bitter.

I’m not sure why they were brewing it on Brick Lane while their Burton brewery was still open. Maybe they were just preparing for closure by shifting some brands to London.

The recipe is very different from the other Pale Ales. There’s no crystal malt and no flaked barley. But, in addition to the cane sugar, there was another sugar called WSI.

There were two types of Kent hops from the 1968 harvest, plus another of English hops pf unspecified vintage. The hopping is very light at just 4 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt. That’s the same as the Mild and 1.4 lbs per quarter less than in the other Pale Ales.

I remember the shiny font for this beer, with a portrait of Ben, just like on the label. Being totally brainwashed by the Trots at CAMRA  HQ, I never foe a second considered trying it.

1969 Truman Ben Truman
pale malt	9.25 lb	86.05%
pearl barley	1.00 lb	9.30%
cane sugar	0.50 lb	4.65%
Fuggles 90 mins	0.50 oz
Fuggles 60 mins	0.50 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	0.50 oz
OG	1047
FG	1010
ABV	4.89
Apparent attenuation	78.72%
IBU	18
SRM	4
Mash at	153º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	64º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread ale

 

You could always buy some of my older books. I guarantee they are dead good.

 

Whitbread hops in 1973

As a few of you masochists have claimed to enjoy this type of post, I'm going to soldier on with them.

You've probably guessed that this  is material which will make its way into "Keg!", the book I'm writing on 1970s brewing. It's coming along rather nicely. The manuscript is currently about 200 pages. But I haven't put in many of the personal recollections yet. My guess is about 400 pages when I'm done.

On with the excerpt.

What next? All we have left are the hops. And there were plenty of those.

Every beer except the Export Pale Ale includes hop extract. Which was the equivalent of 25%-30% of hops.

Other than a few Styrian hops, they were all English. Most from Kent and Worcester, with one example from Hampshire. With the English hop industry still reasonably healthy, there was little need to import hops.

And why let those samples go to waste? It makes sense to throw them into a brew. There weren’t enough to make much difference. Just a couple of dozen pounds out of several hundred. Not enough to make any difference in flavour. Especially when there were already a couple of different kinds of hops.

Whitbread hops in 1973
Beer	Style	hop 1	hop 2	hop 3	hop 4	hop 5	hop 6
Best Mild	Mild	Worcs (1971)	Worcs (1972)	hop extract
Trophy	Pale Ale	Kent (1972)	Kent (1972)	Worcs (1972)	hop extract
Tankard	Pale Ale	Kent (1972)	Kent (1972)	Worcs (1972)	hop extract
Export Pale Ale	Pale Ale	Styrian (1970)	EK (1970)	Hants (1970)
Mackeson	Stout	Worcs (1972)	Worcs (1972)	samples (1972)	hop extract
Extra Stout	Stout	Worcs (1972)	Worcs (1972)	samples (1972)	hop extract
Final Selection	Strong Ale	EK hops (1972)	EK hops  (1972)	hop extract
Gold Label	Barley Wine	Styrian (1971)	Styrian (1971)	MK (1972)	EK (1971)	Worcs (1972)	hop extract
Source:
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/141.

Retiring

Who would have thought it was so fucking complicated? Get to the required age then having your pension paid? Like for my mother's generation? No such luck.

My busiest days since waving a tearful farewell to work, have been filling in stupid forms and digging out decades-old payslips.

OK, it's partly my fault for not getting a job after leaving school and staying there until retirement. Or just staying in the UK. Both options would have made life simpler.

Brain Trawling and archive dredging for my work history, brought back so many memories. What was the name of that company when I had six pints of Mild at lunch? Or the one where I rarely went home without a couple of pints in the pub around the corner? Which one had the licensed bar in the canteen?

Then there was the one where I left two hours early most days so I could have a couple of beers in the pub before picking up the kids. So many happy memories.

And how could I forget my first job in Holland? After the interview, which must have gone pretty well, my putative boss asked: "Would you like lunch?"

I wasn't going to piss off my new boss. Or turn down a free meal. At a really nice restaurant, he kicked off with a kopstoot: a pils and a jenever. Which he continued to knock back during the meal. No way I was going to turn down this job. And I was right. Every company event was a huge pissup.

It's funny what you remember. The dates? No idea. I would use my CV for the information. But that's not 100% accurate. That's where the old payslips come in.

I thought searching beer sources could be boring. Compared to looking through financial stuff, it's like Disneyland on acid.

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1867 Reid Keeping Double Stout

Time for another Stout recipe. From one of the lesser-known big Porter brewers, Reid.

Like Single Stout, Double Stout has lost 4º of gravity since the 1840s. Nothing too disastrous, as it’s still a weighty 8% ABV.

Unlike Single Stout, there’s no amber malt in the mix. Not sure why that might be. Double Stout has a very similar grist, except that the 24% amber malt is replaced by more base malt. The grist is also very similar to what it was in 1845.

A more complicated mashing scheme has been introduced. One which looks remarkably like the one employed by Single Stout. Three mashes and a sparge, while in 1845 there were just two mashes.

Mash number	barrels	strike heat	tap heat
1	576	166º F	149º F
2	471	178º F	158º F
3	1038	172º F	154º F
sparge	250	166º F

The same blend of English hops of different vintages were used. From the reasonable 1865 and 1866 harvests and the ridiculous 1855. 

1867 Reid Keeping Double Stout
pale malt	17.00 lb	86.43%
brown malt	2.00 lb	10.17%
black malt	0.67 lb	3.41%
Goldings 150 min	2.50 oz
Goldings 60 min	2.50 oz
Goldings 30 min	2.50 oz
Goldings dry hops	1.00 oz
OG	1083
FG	1022
ABV	8.07
Apparent attenuation	73.49%
IBU	82
SRM	29
Mash at	153º F
Sparge at	166º F
Boil time	150 minutes
pitching temp	58º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

This is one of the 277 recipes in my new book on London Stout. Get your copy now!

Whitbread adjuncts and sugar in 1973

I'm just getting the mixture right between water and dirt to let me have a good old wallow in nostalgia. Or at least, casting a glance back at the past. And hoping no-one is returning my gaze.

We were looking at Whitbread's 1973 set of beers. Time now for the other fermentables: adjuncts and sugar.

What should be remembered here is that Whitbread had long been a holdout in the use of adjuncts. Only starting to use them in 1965. Much later than most of their rival brewers. Other than wartime, of course, when they had no choice but to.

I assume that the flaked maize in Gold Label is to lighten the body. Along with all that sugar. Od a type which only appears in the other beer seeking paleness, Export Pale Ale.

Torrefied barley turns up in the Mild and Stouts. My guess is for head retention. The same beers also include CDM (Caramelised Dextro Maltose). Which would have added both body and colour.

I’ve no idea what LPS and SLS were. Other than some sort of syrup. Given the beers it’s in, SLS must be pale. LPS, probably not, as it pops up in the dark Best Mild and Final Selection.

Whitbread adjuncts and sugar in 1973
Beer	Style	flaked maize	torrefied barley	total adjuncts	CDM	LPS	SLS	total sugar
Best Mild	Mild		9.45%	9.45%	1.45%	6.55%		8.00%
Trophy	Pale Ale			0.00%		15.09%		15.09%
Tankard	Pale Ale			0.00%		15.09%		15.09%
Export Pale Ale	Pale Ale			0.00%			10.26%	10.26%
Mackeson	Stout		9.88%	9.88%	3.13%			3.13%
Extra Stout	Stout		9.88%	9.88%	3.13%			3.13%
Final Selection	Strong Ale			0.00%		9.30%		9.30%
Gold Label	Barley Wine	9.01%		9.01%			21.71%	21.71%
Source:
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/141.

I do wonder who likes posts like these. They're exactly what I'd like to read. But I'm a bit strange.

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

Whitbread grists in 1973

Time for a deeper dive into Whitbread's beers. Let’s take a look at the grists. That’ll be fun, won’t it? Kicking off with the malts.

Five malts were employed in total. Including two base malts, pale and lager. The latter was used for beers they wanted to keep really pale: Export Pale Ale and Gold Label. Logically enough, neither of those included crystal malt. Nor did Final Selection. All the other beers did.

Brown malt, as you expect, is limited to the two Stouts. Whitbread, as a London brewer was very faithful to brown malt. Not so with black malt, which they replaced with chocolate malt in the 1920s. Which also showed up in the other two dark beers, Best Mild and Final Selection.

For most of the beers the malt content was fairly high, averaging about 85%. The exception being Gold Label, where it was just a shade under 70%.

Whitbread grists in 1973
Beer	Style	pale malt	brown malt	choc. Malt	crystal malt	lager malt	total malt
Best Mild	Mild	70.55%		3.27%	8.73%		82.55%
Trophy	Pale Ale	78.54%			6.37%		84.91%
Tankard	Pale Ale	78.54%			6.37%		84.91%
Export Pale Ale	Pale Ale					89.74%	89.74%
Mackeson	Stout	70.18%	4.70%	8.40%	3.71%		86.99%
Extra Stout	Stout	70.18%	4.70%	8.40%	3.71%		86.99%
Final Selection	Strong Ale	87.44%		3.26%			90.70%
Gold Label	Barley Wine					69.28%	69.28%
Source:
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/141.