Looking back (part seven): Draught Bitter prices in 1972

After looking at draught Mild the next logical step is to take a gander at Bitter. King of the public bar, at the time.

I'm using the same Daily Mirror article as a source. It's hard to convey just how secret beer strengths were in the past. That's why brewers like Whitbread spent so much effort analysing their rivals' beers. It was the only way of finding out how strong they were. For ordinary drinker? Well, it was just bad luck. Short of analysing beers yourself, you could only guess.

Did brewers take advantage of their customers' ignorance? Of course they fucking did. In the table their are beers called "Best Bitter" with gravities that are very much ordinary. I'd expect a Best to be at least 1040º and 4% ABV.

I drank far fewer of the Bitters than the Milds. Just because I was essentially a Mild drinker. Bathams, Vaux Sampson, Adnams, Courage Best, Theakson and Jennings are the only ones I'm pretty certain that I tried. It was, after all, a very long time ago.

There was a considerable difference in value for money. Three Tuns Bitter was 55% better value than Truman Titan, in terms of gravity. Irinic as Three Tuns was a homebrew pub and so one of the smallest breweries in the country. Blue Anchor, another homebrew house, is third in terms of value for money. And at number two is Bathams, a brewery with just a handful of pubs.

This time the worst value isn't momopolised by Big Six breweries. True, there a lot of them there. This time, eleven of the twelve worst value were keg beers. The only exception being the watery Devenish Bitter, which was a mere 2.7% ABV.

In general, keg Bitter was 1p per pint more expensive than the cask version. You can see this clearly in the table where both are represented. Devenish, for example has Bitter at 11.5p and Saxon, which looks like the same beer kegged, was 12,5p. Greenall Whitley have Bitter at 13p and Festival at 15p. Again, they look like the same beer. Hall & Woodhouse: Badger Best 13p and Forum 14p.

Note that keg beers tended to be named, while cask versions were often simply called Bitter or Best Bitter. 

Draught Bitter prices in 1972
Brewer	Beer	Price per pint (p)	º gravity per p	% ABV per p	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation
Three Tuns	Bitter	12	3.42	0.35	1041	1008.7	4.20	78.78%
Batham	Bitter	13	3.32	0.36	1043.2	1007.1	4.70	83.56%
Blue Anchor	Spingo	16	3.24	0.26	1051.9	1019.4	4.20	62.62%
Vaux & Co	Sampson	13	3.17	0.30	1041.2	1011.1	3.90	73.06%
Hall & Woodhouse	Badger Best	13	3.12	0.31	1040.5	1009.7	4.00	76.05%
Courage	Best Bitter	13	3.02	0.32	1039.3	1007.8	4.10	80.15%
Adnam	Best Bitter	12	3.02	0.29	1036.2	1009.2	3.50	74.59%
Blue Anchor	Ordinary	12	2.98	0.23	1035.8	1014.1	2.80	60.61%
Hall & Woodhouse	Forum	14	2.92	0.28	1040.9	1010.8	3.90	73.59%
Banks	Bitter	13	2.91	0.29	1037.8	1009.3	3.80	75.40%
Watney	Special	12.5	2.90	0.27	1036.2	1010	3.40	72.38%
Jennings	Castle	12	2.87	0.31	1034.4	1006	3.70	82.56%
Theakston	Best Bitter	13	2.83	0.28	1036.8	1009.1	3.60	75.27%
Vaux & Co	Gold Tankard	14	2.81	0.26	1039.4	1011.6	3.60	70.56%
Ind Coope	Best Bitter	13	2.81	0.26	1036.5	1010.3	3.40	71.78%
Young & Co	Ordinary Bitter	13	2.73	0.27	1035.5	1008.5	3.50	76.06%
Greenall Whitley	Bitter	13	2.72	0.30	1035.4	1005.4	3.90	84.75%
Whitbread	Trophy	13	2.70	0.28	1035.1	1006.6	3.70	81.20%
Ind Coope	Double Diamond	14	2.69	0.24	1037.6	1011.4	3.40	69.68%
Courage	Tavern	14	2.66	0.26	1037.3	1008.8	3.70	76.41%
Watney	Red	14	2.66	0.26	1037.2	1009.5	3.60	74.46%
Greene King	King Keg	14	2.64	0.23	1037	1008.5	3.20	77.03%
Whitbread	Tankard	14.5	2.59	0.27	1037.6	1007.6	3.90	79.79%
Devenish	Bitter	11.5	2.57	0.23	1029.6	1008.8	2.70	70.27%
Younger, Wm.	Tartan	14	2.56	0.26	1035.9	1007.4	3.70	79.39%
Devenish	Saxon	12.5	2.47	0.22	1030.9	1010	2.70	67.64%
Bass, Burton	Worthington E	15.5	2.44	0.26	1037.8	1007.1	4.00	81.22%
Greenall Whitley	Festival	15	2.40	0.24	1036	1008.3	3.60	76.94%
Truman	Special	15	2.38	0.26	1035.7	1005.7	3.90	84.03%
Truman	Titan	16	2.28	0.25	1036.5	1005.8	4.00	84.11%
Average		13.5	2.79	0.27	1037.5	1009.1	3.68	75.80%
Source:
Daily Mirror July 10th 1972, page 15

Let's Brew - 1884 Mew Langton 4d

This beer is probably called 4d because of the retail price. Though, like Four Ale Bar, it must refer to the price per quart. No-one was paying 4d per pint for a Mild in the 1880s. Odd, because after WW I 4d Ale (which really did retail at 4d per pint) was a watery Mild of 3% ABV, if you were lucky.

Like most 19th-century beers, there’s little complication to the recipe. Two types of pale malt, both English, and raw sugar. Hard to get much simpler than that. This being before Mild started going dark, the colour is pretty pale.

For outside London, this is a pretty high-gravity beer for a base-level Mild. By this point many standard Milds were below 1050º in rural areas.

Three types of hops, all pretty fresh being from the 1883 season. Kent, American and Bavarian are their origins.

1884 Mew Langton 4d
pale malt	10.00 lb	85.11%
brown sugar	1.75 lb	14.89%
Cluster 90 mins	0.75 oz
Hallertau 90 mins	0.50 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	1.25 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.25 oz
OG	1056
FG	1009
ABV	6.22
Apparent attenuation	83.93%
IBU	33
SRM	10
Mash at	150º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	65º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1275 Thames Valley ale

 

 

Looking back (part six): draught Mild prices in 1972

You seemed to like my post on beer prices in the 1970s. And how they increased scarily. Time for a deeper dive into prices in a single year. Starting with my drink of choice in the 1970s, Mild Ale.

The numbers are taken from an article in the Daily Mirror. I was really happy to come across this set of analyses, as they fill in a gap between the last entries in the Whitbread Gravity Book (late 1960s) and the Good Beer Guide (late 1970s). Especially handy as they include the price as well as the gravity. Perfect for my purposes today.

On a personal note, I drank most of these beers. All except Truman, Youngs and Youngers. The quality varied quite a bit. I never cared for Greenall Whitley or Wilsons Mild. Even cask versions never tasted any good to me. I remember on my first visit to Manchester struggling to find anything other than Greenalls and Wilsons pubs. Very frustrating.

Most of the examples cost the same: 11p. But, as there were quite large differences in gravity and ABV, there was considerable variation in value for money.

Best value, and also the strongest, was Batham's Mild. Also a cracking beer. A year or two later, I drank quite a bit of it in the Swan in n Chaddesley Corbett. Note that most of the stronger examples were from the West Midlands. Batham, Banks, Ansell, M & B. No real surprise, as the region was a stronghold of Mild.

Of the five worst value beers, four were from Big Six breweries: Wilsons, Younger, Whitbread and Truman. No shock there, either. Despite brewing on a larger scale, their beer was more expensive than that from smaller operations. Why was that? Logically, they should have been able to produce beer more cheaply. Where was the extra money going?

The alcohol content varies from 2.5% to 3.7% ABV. Almost half the examples - seven of fifteen - were below 3% ABV. Not beer that was going to get you drunk very quickly. If at all. Not that drinkers were aware of this. Only one brewery - Federation - printed the gravity of their beer on labels. Otherwise, the strength of beer was very much a mystery. All drinkers could go on was the type of beer and the price. 

Draught Mild prices in 1972
Brewer	Beer	Price per pint (p)	º gravity per p	% ABV per p	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation
Batham	Mild	11	3.24	0.34	1035.6	1007.1	3.70	80.06%
Three Tuns	Mild	10	3.21	0.34	1032.1	1006	3.40	81.31%
Banks	Mild	11	3.21	0.33	1035.3	1008.3	3.60	76.49%
Ansell	Mild	11	3.08	0.27	1033.9	1010.7	3.00	68.44%
Jennings	Mild	11	2.97	0.29	1032.7	1008	3.20	75.54%
Mitchell & Butler	Mild	12	2.88	0.27	1034.5	1009.8	3.20	71.59%
Courage	Mild	11	2.84	0.26	1031.2	1008.8	2.90	71.79%
Adnams	Mild	11	2.81	0.23	1030.9	1011.6	2.50	62.46%
Greenall Whitley	Mild	11	2.76	0.26	1030.4	1008	2.90	73.68%
Theakston	Mild	11	2.75	0.25	1030.2	1008.6	2.80	71.52%
Wilsons	Mild	11	2.74	0.28	1030.1	1006.2	3.10	79.40%
Young & Co	Best Malt Ale	11	2.74	0.25	1030.1	1008.5	2.80	71.76%
Younger, Wm.	Tartan Mild	11	2.69	0.25	1029.6	1008	2.80	72.97%
Whitbread	Best Mild	12	2.56	0.22	1030.7	1010.6	2.60	65.47%
Truman	Mild	13	2.38	0.23	1031	1007.9	3.00	74.52%
Average		11.2	2.86	0.27	1031.9	1008.5	3.03	73.13%
Source:
Daily Mirror July 10th 1972, page 15

Looking back (part five): 1970s Pubs

The first pub I ever entered was the Mermaid Inn. On the site where we had a caravan in Mablethorpe.

It was a Tennant's house when we first got a caravan there. There was a big red illuminated sign on the roof telling me that.

Initially, it had an outdoor patio - roof but no walls - where kids were dumped. Later they wrapped walls around it to make an enclosed room. Not having a bar in it, there was no problem kids inhabiting it. But what parent would want to drink in that barren space? The moon was atmospheric in comparison.

Then they started letting kids into the lounge. Only older, well-behaved ones. Totally against the law, obviously. This was 1969 and 1970. The pub had two rooms of equal dimensions: public bar and lounge bar. The lounge wasn't particularly flash. I'm not sure it even had a carpet.

The beer was Tennant's. From Sheffield and already in the hands of Whitbread. Whose branding it would later adopt. It might still have sold cask when we first got our caravan. By the the time I squeaking inside, it was most likely bright beer. Served through those electric pump glass cylinders. Pretty sure my Dad was drinking Bitter.

Even though I visited our caravan plenty of times after hitting drinking age, I can't recall ever having an alcoholic drink in the Mermaid. Well, they didn't sell cask, did they? And Mablethorpe had a couple of perfectly serviceable Home Ales pubs. With cheap cask. Why would I go anywhere else? 

The Mermaid Inn
Seaholme Rd,
Mablethorpe LN12 2NX,
United Kingdom

(No longer open.)

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1940 Drybrough Burns Ale

Today we've a preview recipe from my soon to be published book on brewing in WW II. I really should get my finger out because, other than one small section, the book is complete. Or rather, books, as it's too big to fit into a single volume.

One of my biggest disappointments, beer-wise, at least, was discovering how deathly dull Scottish brewing was. Learning how everything was just a parti-gyle of the same basic brew. And that often the vast majority – up to 85% – of a brewery’s output could be a single, low-gravity Pale Ale. Drybrough is a prime example.

The only relief in the tedium of page after page of the same beer is occasionally tripping over the one interesting arrow in a Scottish brewery’s quiver: a Strong Ale. Or Scotch Ale. Whichever you prefer, as the names were used interchangeably. With an OG over 1080º, strong is certainly an appropriate description.

There is one interesting feature of Drybrough’s Strong Ale: it was a named beer. Something which wasn’t that common until recently. Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet, seems an appropriate choice. He did like a beer himself, by all accounts.

The grist has the same elements as pre-war: mostly pale malt, with tiny amounts of malt extract, enzymic malt and black malt. Not very exciting. Plus a cocktail of sugars: Fison,  Avona and invert, which I’ve lumped together and replaced by No. 2 invert.

The hops were all English and from the 1939 harvest. Pretty fresh, then, as this example was brewed in January 1940. 

1940 Drybrough Burns Ale
pale malt	16.50 lb	89.19%
enzymic malt	0.25 lb	1.35%
black malt	0.125 lb	0.68%
malt extract	0.125 lb	0.68%
No. 2 invert sugar	1.50 lb	8.11%
Fuggles 135 mins	1.50 oz
Fuggles 90 mins	1.50 oz
Goldings 30 mins	1.00 oz
OG	1083
FG	1026
ABV	7.54
Apparent attenuation	68.67%
IBU	42
SRM	13
Mash at	152º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	135 minutes
pitching temp	59.5º F
Yeast	WLP028 Edinburgh Ale

Tetley cask Mild specifications (part four): boiling

No, I hadn't forgotten about this. Just been a little distracted by memories. And I wanted to give you some rest. Too much of this type of post in a row gets boring. Well, more boring than its already inherent tedium. 

Boiling. A pretty important process. But one which Tetley seems to have standardised. At least amongst its cask beers. The table below is identical to that of Bitter save in one respect. The casting gravity of the first copper is 1080º rather than 1084º. Not exactly a huge difference.

Looking back to 1945, the boiling times were longer: two hours for both the first and second copper. The gravities of the wort at the end of the boil were also quite different, at 1095º for the first copper and 1016º for the second.

A little more Irish moss was added in 1945: 12 oz per quarter of malt. Which works out to 81 oz per 100 barrels, compared to 78 oz per barrel in 1985.

As you would expect, all the sugar went into the second wort. Other than the caramel, which for some reason went in the first.

9. BOILING
	1st Copper (270 brls)	2nd Copper (270 brls)	Type	When Added
a) Addition Sugar	NONE	ALL	Liquid or Crystallised	Copper 2/3 full
Caramel	ALL	NONE	Caramel AB Tintose 1A(1045	Before Boil
Hops	50%	50%	alpha Acid Target to each Copper	After Sugar
Irish Moss	42oz/100 brls.	36oz/100 brls.	Dry Granulated	30 mins before casting
Casting gravity	80°	30°	-	-
b) Boiling Time (mins)	90	90	-	-
c) Evaporation (%)	10	10	-	-
Source:
Tetley Beer and Malt Specifications, 1985, beer page 9.

Looking back (part four): 1970s beer prices

Something more prosaic amongst my memories today. Prices.

The 1970s were a time of high inflation. Not knowing any better, I soon got used to pub prices increasing not once, but three, four or more times a year. It's just the way things were.

How different from the forty years leading up to WW I, where the price of beer didn't change. Can you imagine that? What must it have been like for older drinkers when the price of beer doubled in the space of a year or two? It must have seemed like the world was coming to an end.

Older drinkers must have felt something similar in the 1970s. Because from 1947 to 1962, there was no change in the average price of draught Bitter. The price rose steadily in the late 1960s, but went crazy in the mid-1970s.

When I first ventured into pubs, there was quite a difference in prices between different breweries. I happened to grow up in one of the cheapest regions, the East Midlands. Where there were strong regional breweries who kept prices down. Beer from the Nottingham breweries was 1p or 2p cheaper than beer from the Big Six breweries. Which was quite a large percentage when a pint cost 13p or 14p.

Talking of different prices, inflation really eroded the differential pricing for styles and rooms. When beer was 13p per pint, Bitter cost 1p more than Mild and cost 1p more in the lounge than in the public bar. That remained the same, even when the price of beer had doubled.

One of the reasons I was never even vaguely tempted by Lager was that it was such poor value. Most were the same strength as Mild or maybe Ordinary Bitter, but cost 25-30% more. Keg Bitter was more expensive than cask, too. Though the difference was smaller, usually 1p per pint.

More than just memories today. I've also some numbers. Where you can see that the price of Bitter trebled in the 1970a.

Average draught beer prices 1970 - 1979
Year	Bitter	Lager
1970	10.7
1971	12
1972	12.5
1973	13	17
1974	15	19
1975	20	23
1976	23	28
1977	27	32
1978	29	35
1979	34	40
Source:
"Statistical Handbook of the British Beer & Pub Association 2003", p. 44.

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.

Let's Brew - 1885 William Younger XXXX

Thankfully, we’ve come to the end of another set of Younger’s beers, the Xs. Not many breweries went beyond XXXX. You occasionally find a XXXXX, but they were the exception rather than the rule.

For some reason, in my spreadsheet I have this listed as a Stock Ale. I’m not sure why. True, the hopping rate is higher than for XXX, which I list as a Mild Ale. But not a massive amount more. And, at around 7.5 lbs per quarter (336 lbs) of malt, not really hopped like a beer intended for long ageing.

Is the recipe any more interesting than the other X Ales? No. Just base malt and nothing else. Two types, mind you. One is described as “Sy” the other as “Hg”, Syrian and Hungarian, perhaps? Not totally sure about that. But I am that neither was made from Scottish barley.

Five different types of hops, all coming from the 1884 harvest: American, Californian, Württemberg, Spalt and Kent. Nice of them to throw in a few UK hops. They might well have been the only domestically-sourced ingredient, other than the water and yeast. 

1885 William Younger XXXX
pale malt	18.50 lb	100.00%
Cluster 120 min	2.00 oz
Spalt 60 min	2.00 oz
Fuggles 30 min	2.00 oz
Goldings dry hops	1.25 oz
OG	1080
FG	1024
ABV	7.41
Apparent attenuation	70.00%
IBU	75
SRM	6
Mash at	152º F
Sparge at	163º F
Boil time	120 minutes
pitching temp	56º F
Yeast	WLP028 Edinburgh Ale