Looking back (part eleven): home brewing

Home brewing was very big in the 1970s. Not because drinkers wanted to recreate exotic brews they'd tried on their travels, No. The reason was much more prosaic. Price. People just wanted cheap beer.

Despite what some might tell you, home brewing was never illegal in the UK. It just required a licence. It was pretty easy to avoid paying for a licence, if you put in a bit of effort. But, even as late as 1960, over 1,000 such licences were issued. In 1963 such licences were abolished, meaning home brewers no longer technically needed to buy a brewing licence.

"Until 1963 there were two kinds of brewers’ licences: that for a Brewer-for-Sale and that for Brewers other than Brewers-for-Sale, e.g., farmers brewing for their own and their employees’ consumption. The latter were abolished (with some small exceptions) in 1963."
"1971 Brewers' Almanack", page 64.

Of course, home brewers were included in this group, too. In some parts of the UK, notably the West Midlands, home brewing remained popular well into the 20th century. I wonder how many farmer were still brewing for their own use in the 1960s? Do any still brew today? This was a very long tradition and, at the start of the 19th century, such domestic brewers accounted for a considerable percentage of beer brewed in the UK. Particularly in England.

Me and my brother started brewing around 1972. We kicked off in the classic way: buying Geordie beer kits from Boots. I'm not sure why, but Boots was the main source of home brewing ingredients and kit. Any decent-sized branch had a section dedicated to home brewing.

We shifted through the gears quite quickly. Moving from kits to buying malt extract, hops and grains to steep. But malt extract always leaves a strange tang. The best extract beers we brewed were Stouts where the roast from steeped grains covered up the funny taste.

Soon we moved up another level. One of the classic pieces of kit for early all-grain brewers was a burco boiler. Intended for washing clothes, it was easily converted to use as a mash tun. With a plastic dustbin as fermenter, we were fully kitted out.

Initially, we bottled everything. In the old returnable half-pint and pint bottles. Onto which we hammered crown corks. Quite a lot of work. We were always careful to ferment all the way out in primary, then add sugar to each bottle for secondary fermentation.

The range of ingredients available was pretty limited. It wasn't too mad with malt. You could get pale, crystal, chocolate and black malt. Hops were much worse. Mostly not sold by variety, but just as generic "hops". From what I can recall, they seemed to be, logically enough, English types. Probably mostly Fuggles or similar.

The yeast sold at Boots was similarly vague in origin. But there was a way of getting commercial yeast. The simplest to acquire was Guinness, as it was bottle-conditioned at the time. Just drink most of the bottle, then top up the dregs with malt extract or sugar and a little water. Stick some cotton wool in the neck and leave it in the airing cupboard for a few days. Hey presto, lovely yeast for pitching.

And Guinness yeast was really good. It was easy to get a started going and it fermented really well. One of the best yeasts I've ever used.

Another source of commercial yeast was cask beer. All you needed was a lemonade bottle and a funnel. Buy a pint of cask beer in the pub, decant it into the pop bottle. When you get home, add half a teaspoon of sugar and wait a couple of days. When a layer of yeast sediment had developed and the beer was carbonated, you could drink the beer and then make a yeast starter from the dregs.

After a while, we got hold of a five gallon cider barrel. Off-licences often used to sell draught cider back in those days, served from such a small plastic barrel. It made life much easier, doing away with all that bottling mess. Though you needed to drink the beer fairly quickly. A week to ten days was about the longest it would last.

I can remember having a barrel of Mild my brother brought up to Leeds towards the end of my first year at university. The very hot summer of 1976. We sat drinking glasses of iced Mild on the balcony of my student flat in North Hill Court.

We also took advantage of Newark being a brewing and malting town. My brother got hold of a sack of pale and a sack of mild malt from one of the maltsers. And from Courage we bought half a dozen wooden firkins at some ludicrously knock-down price.

We were all kitted up, finally. We just had to drink nine gallons in a week or so. Not such a problem, as we brewed session-strength beers, mostly. 

Brewing licences 1881 - 1969
Year ending 31st March	Brewers for sale		Other brewers - not for sale	Total
	No.	Duty paid £
1881	16,798	16,798	71,876	88,674
1890	11,364	11,364	25,281	36,645
1900	6,447	6,447	12,734	19,181
1910	4,512	382,253	7,006	11,518
1920	2,914	226,745	2,999	5,913
1930	1,418	228,146	12,513	13,931
1932	1,286	205,291	11,139	12,425
1934	1,197	151,338	10,746	11,943
1935	1,144	161,461	10,170	11,314
1936	1,103	173,011	9,767	10,870
1937	1,027	177,319	8,345	9,372
1938	946	188,138	7,791	8,737
1939	885	194,751	7,081	7,966
1940	840	205,567	8,115	6,955
1941	810	198,952	5,349	6,159
1942	788	225,486	5,120	5,908
1943	757	237,040	4,234	4,991
1944	741	239,638	4,024	4,765
1945	703	249,637	3,734	4,437
1946	680	255,863	3,512	4,192
1947	648	248,690	3,224	3,872
1948	625	240,265	3,073	3,698
1949	602	229,913	2,998	3,600
1950	567	212,902	2,673	3,240
1951	539	201,909	2,406	2,945
1952	524	199,122	2,225	2,749
1953	501	199,893	2,015	2,516
1954	479	197,056	1,758	2,237
1955	460	192,395	1,523	1,983
1956	426	192,956	1,396	1,822
1957	416	192,387	1,412	1,828
1958	399	198,331	1,317	1,716
1959	378	191,053	1,189	1,567
1960	358	196,675	1,055	1,413
1961	336	208,378	1,029	1,365
1962	317	219,781	909	1,226
1963	304	218,711	901	1,205
1964	295	222,365	—	295
1965	274	232,469	—	274
1966	246	233,480	—	246
1967	243	237,954	—	243
1968	281	4,437	—	281
1969	210	3,321	—	210
Source:
1881 - 1960 "1962 Brewers' Almanack", page 67.
1961 - 1969 "1971 Brewers' Almanack", page 64.

Why did you start drinking Lager?

I didn't. Well, not until I first visited Prague. But that's a totally different story.

I asked this question on Twitter. Why? Because, in a comment on an earlier post about the price of Lager, someone mentioned that it was visiting the continent that gave them a taste for it. I'd heard the story before that it was foreign holidays that got drinkers onto Lager. And I'd been sceptical. Now someone said that had been the case for them.

I wanted to know how common this experience was. So I set up a Twitter Poll. Two polls, in fact, because four answers just wasn't enough. Winner was "all your mates drank it". Which is interesting. Basically, that's saying peer pressure.

It got me thinking. The UK way of drinking - taking turns to buy a round for the whole group - favours conformity. Especially with Lager, which was 50% more expensive than Mild. The people I drank with were either Bitter or Mild drinkers. There was only a small difference in price between them.

On the rare occasions when we had a Lager drinker amongst us, I wasn't happy at having to fork out considerably more for one drink in the round. But even worse would have been having two or three Lager drinkers in my circle. Inevitably, there was some pressure for everyone to order drinks of a similar price.

"Got a taste for it abroad", with over 10% of replies, did score reasonably well, coming fifth. Quite a long way behind "liked the taste". Which surprised me a little.

"Less bad than keg Ale" scored worse than I expected, with only five votes. Clearly not a major reason for opting for Lager. At least amongst my very unrepresentative sample. Trendy and advertising also scored very low. Though, in the case of advertising, if it was really effective, you wouldn't notice that it was prompting your choice at the bar. 

Why did you start drinking Lager?
answer	votes	%
all your mates drank it	42	28.77%
liked the taste	27	18.49%
none of the above	25	17.12%
lacked moral fibre	20	13.70%
Got a taste for it abroad	17	11.64%
less bad than keg Ales	5	3.42%
it was trendy and modern	5	3.42%
advertising	5	3.42%
total	146
Source:
My Twitter poll.

Let's Brew - 1946 Lees "C" Ale

Today it's a recipe from another forthcoming book, "Blitzkrieg!". Which is finished, really, other than a coat of polish.

Just after war’s end  Lees introduced that most intriguing of beers, a “C” Ale.

It’s a name which only seems to have been used by breweries in Greater Manchester and refers to a strong, dark beer. Roughly equivalent to a London Burton, “C” Ale was, however, an exclusively bottled product.

It wasn’t a very long-lived product. It was replaced in 1954 by a stronger beer, Golden Brew, with an OG of 1078º.

The grist bears more than a passing resemblance to Best Mild. It contains exactly the same five elements: Pale and black malt, flaked barley, glucose and invert sugar. Not totally sure which type of invert they were using. No. 3 seems a reasonable guess.

The logs are a little vague when it comes to hops. All I know is that they were English and from the 1944 and 1945 harvests. I’ve gone with a Fuggles and Goldings combination, as they were by far and away the two most grown varieties at the time. 

1946 Lees "C" Ale
pale malt	8.50 lb	74.73%
black malt	0.125 lb	1.10%
flaked barley	1.25 lb	10.99%
glucose	0.50 lb	4.40%
No. 3 invert sugar	1.00 lb	8.79%
Fuggles 105 mins	0.75 oz
Fuggles 60 mins	0.75 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	0.75 oz
Goldings dry hops	0.33 oz
OG	1052
FG	1012
ABV	5.29
Apparent attenuation	76.92%
IBU	27
SRM	13
Mash at	147º F
After underlet	150º F
Sparge at	170º F
Boil time	105 minutes
pitching temp	60º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1318 London ale III (Boddingtons)

Tetley cask Mild specifications (part five)

Just for a little variation, we're back with Tetley's beer specifications from 1982. Looking at the processes between the end of the boil and the start of fermentation.

Kicking off with the hop sparge. Which is, I suppose, intended to wash any wort that has been soaked up by the hops. For some reason the process isn't exactly the same as for the Bitter. Ever so slightly. Only 80 barrels go to the DeMarkus opposed to 85 barrels for Bitter.

10. HOP SEPARATION (SPARGE)
Whirlpool (Hop Back)	60 brls.
DeMarkus	80 brls.
Source:
Tetley Beer and Malt Specifications, 1985, beer page 9.

Next we have the water added before fermentation. For Bitter, only 100 barrels were added to the fermenter before the wort. For Mild, a lot more water was added: 150 barrels before the wort and 175 barrels after. I can understand adding more water to a weaker beer, but why in two lots?

11. BREAKDOWN WATER
a) Added to wort	To FV prior to wort: 150 brls. To FV after wort: 175 brls.
b) All water sterilised by steam in heat exchanger and cooled by Brewing/Chilled water.	30 secs, at 195 - 205°F.
Source:
Tetley Beer and Malt Specifications, 1985, beer page 9.

The same two-strain yeast was used. But a bit less of it than in the Bitter: 0.5 lbs per barrel rather than 0.625 lbs. Not sure why less yeast was needed. Because of the lower gravity? Maybe.

12. ADDITIONS BEFORE COLLECTION
a) Yeast - AB7/AB9	0.5 Ibs/brl. pressed yeast injected into wort main 30 mins, after start of 1st length.
b) Aeration	Compressed air after cooling stage in Paraflow to give D.O. of 6 - 8 ppm.
c) Zinc as ZnS04	0.10 mg/1 into FV prior water
Source:
Tetley Beer and Malt Specifications, 1985, beer page 9.

The collection gravity is, unsurprisingly, about the same as the target OG of 1032º.  

13. COLLECTION
a) Temperature (°F) (°C)	63/64 (17.2)
b) Gravity	1031.8
(Metric)	1031.5
Source:
Tetley Beer and Malt Specifications, 1985, beer page 9.

There will be more of this. When I can be arsed. Or run out of other stuff. Or I'm off travelling again.

On an Amsterdam canal

A fluffy flotilla floats serenely overhead. Aliens invade, fleet blurred into invisibility. Icy yellow tulips reach for the sky in surrender.  Cool.

But best get back to my Private Eye. And that can of brown beer. The sunlight: it plays tricks.

Looking back (part ten): pubs in the 1970s again

Another run through my memories of pubs in the 1970s.

Starting with pub locations. Today the majority of pubs in Newark are in the centre of town. There's always been a concentration of pubs there, but there used to be pubs scattered all around town, especially, but not exclusively, the parts built before WW II.

For example, when I was younger there were four pubs close to Northgate Railway Station: the Newark Arms, the Newcastle Arms, the Bowling Green and the Robin Hood and Little John. Only the Newcastle Arms remains. These pubs weren't weekend destinations, but locals. Pubs that lived off a slow and steady stream of regulars throughout the week.

On the other side of town, there were a couple of true backstreet locals, the Kings Arms of King Street and the King William IV on Parliament Street. Along with a couple pubs on Mill Gate: the Water Mill and the Old Castle. The only pub to have remained open in this part of town is Spring House. Which has a rather prominent position on the junction of Victoria Street and Mill Gate.

Those were all pubs built in the 19th century. There were also 20th-century pubs. Local brewer Warwick & Richardson built a few roadhouse-style pubs in the 1930s. There was the Broadway on the edge of the Hawtonville estate (and backing onto my secondary school playing fields), the Bridge Inn on Lincoln Road on the East edge of town and a pub halfway to Farndon on the West of town whose name I can't remember. All of these have closed.

There were two postwar estate pubs: the Cardinal's Hat to the West of town and the Maple Leaf to the East. Only the former is still open.

These changes, I'm sure, reflect a change in drinking habits. Pubs outside the town centre depended on those living in the immediate vicinity nipping in for the odd pint or two during the week. The sort of casual occasional drinking that now probably takes place at home with a couple of cans while watching the TV.

While town centre pubs, where drinkers go for a night out or pop into for a quick pint while shopping, have fared better. And while there have been closures in the town centre, there have also been new openings. But, overall, the distribution of pubs throughout the town has been changed forever.

 

Help me get to Argentina

It's complicated. My dream to visit Argentina might never come true.

Donate below to make all my dreams come true. In an Argeninaery sort of way.

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1953 Whitbread Extra Stout

I've been working hard on the recipes for my book "Stout!". I'm almost done with Whitbread. Once I've got them finished, I'm almost done. Just the last few Barclay Perkins and Truman ones to polish off. Around 250 recipes in total. I'm currently on recipe 192. This was recipe number 188.

Had the gravity of Extra Stout changed since 1948? Of course, it hasn’t, as it’s an export beer. No need to fiddle with the gravity of a beer outside the vicissitudes of UK tax and legislation.

This example was parti-gyled with Mackeson, though not the example above. They do have identical grists, however. Which means it has just shy of 16% roasted malt. Note how loyal Whitbread were to brown malt. Even at this late date, when most UK – and Irish, for that matter – brewers had long ago dropped it in favour of a grist of just pale and black malt.

What a surprise – the same old mashing scheme.

action	barrels	strike heat	time mashed	time stood	tap heat	gravity
mash 1	248	150º F	10	30
underlet	36	170º F		90	143º F	1071
sparge 1	310	170º F
mash 2					154º F	1031
sparge 2	176	165º F

Kent and Sussex hops again from the 1951 and 1952 harvests, respectively. Around two thirds of the former and a third of the latter.

1953 Whitbread Extra Stout
mild malt	9.00 lb	75.00%
brown malt	1.00 lb	8.33%
chocolate malt	1.00 lb	8.33%
No. 3 invert sugar	0.67 lb	5.58%
caramel 500 SRM	0.33 lb	2.75%
Fuggles 60 mins	1.50 oz
Fuggles 30 mins	1.50 oz
OG	1055
FG	1012
ABV	5.69
Apparent attenuation	78.18%
IBU	30
SRM	37
Mash at	147º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	60 minutes
pitching temp	64º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

 

 

Looking back (part nine): Draught beer prices in 1972

My final look at beer prices in the early 1970s. Where I compare and contrast the different styles.

I've created a combined table. Including the best and worst value of each style, along with the averages. I sorted the original tables on gravity points per penny rather than ABV. Why did I do that? Because the tax, at the time, was paid on the gravity. So the tax was directly related to the gravity. While with the ABV, the value was partly determined by the degree of attenuation.

This does make Lager look slightly worse, as its degree of attenuation, as you can see in the table, was higher than that of Bitter or Mild, at over 80%. An average Lager, with an OG of 1033.4º cost 17.8p. While Mild of just 1.5º lower gravity only cost 11.2p. And the best value Lager was worse than the worst value Mild.

Compared to Bitter, Lager was on average 4.1º lower in gravity, but 4.3p per pint more expensive. Why on earth did anyone drink the stuff? More expensive and weaker. It makes no sense. Though the best value Lager did just beat the worst value Bitter. While Bitter and Mild were very similar, on average, in terms of value. 

Draught beer prices in 1972
Brewer	Beer	Price	º gravity per p	% ABV per p	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation
Greenall Whitley	Grunhalle	16	2.33	0.24	1037.3	1007.3	3.90	80.43%
Tuborg	Lager	22	1.33	0.14	1029.3	1005.4	3.10	81.57%
Average Lager		17.8	1.91	0.20	1033.4	1006.3	3.51	81.15%
Batham	Mild	11	3.24	0.34	1035.6	1007.1	3.70	80.06%
Truman	Mild	13	2.38	0.23	1031	1007.9	3.00	74.52%
Average Mild		11.2	2.86	0.27	1031.9	1008.5	3.03	73.13%
Three Tuns	Bitter	12	3.42	0.35	1041	1008.7	4.20	78.78%
Truman	Titan	16	2.28	0.25	1036.5	1005.8	4.00	84.11%
Average Bitter		13.5	2.79	0.27	1037.5	1009.1	3.68	75.80%
Source:
Daily Mirror July 10th 1972, page 15

Looking back (part eight): Draught Lager prices in 1972

More early 1970s pricing fun. This time, it's the turn of Lager. How will this type turn out in terms of value for money?

Crap, obviously. Especially when compared with more traditional British styles. But we'll be getting back to that later.

At this point, most breweries were trying to brew their own Lager. Four of the ten examples come from regional breweries: Greenall Whitley, Vaux, Hall & Woodhouse and Youngs. Another four are international brands: Carling, Heineken, Carlsberg and Tuborg. Though two of those - Carling and Heineken were brewed under licence by Big Six brewers, namely Bass and Whitbread, respectively.

Harp is listed as being brewed by Guinness, but at this point it was also brewed by Courage. It was an odd period, as not all the Big Six owned their Lager brand. Something that was going to increase in importance as Lager slowly caught up with, and the surpassed, Bitter in popularity. All the weirder, given the amount of advertising effort they put into Lager.

Why were brewers so keen on Lager? Because the profit margins were larger. In theory, Lager cost more to brew than Bitter or Mild. That's if you brewed it the continental way and lagered it for a couple of months. But that wasn't how Lager was usually brewed in the UK. Harp, whose recipe was devised by a German brewer, was originally decocted, lagered for several weeks and "spundet" so that it conditioned naturally. Though I think all of that had been dropped by 1972.

The four Lagers from regional brewers won't have been decocted. And almost certainly weren't even bottom-fermented. They were just very pale and bland Ales.

The average price is almost 18p per pint. That's more than 50% greater than the average for Mild Ale, while being not much greater in strength. Which, along with being committed to cask, was why I never drank Lager myself. It was simply awful value for money. trying to think when I first drank Lager. It might well have been when I first visited the continent in 1979. When I drank Jupiler in Paris.

There's no correlation in this set between value for money and the size of the brewery. With Youngs Saxon second worst and Allied's Skol next to best. 

Draught Lager prices in 1972
Brewer	Beer	Price	º gravity per p	% ABV per p	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation
Greenall Whitley	Grunhalle	16	2.33	0.24	1037.3	1007.3	3.90	80.43%
Allied Breweries	Skol	15	2.21	0.23	1033.2	1007	3.40	78.92%
Vaux & Co	Norseman	16	2.21	0.23	1035.3	1007.6	3.60	78.47%
Carling	Black Label	18	2.17	0.24	1039.1	1006.1	4.30	84.40%
Guinness	Harp	17	1.93	0.19	1032.8	1006.6	3.30	79.88%
Heineken	Lager	17	1.93	0.21	1032.8	1005.9	3.50	82.01%
Hall & Woodhouse	Brock	18	1.83	0.19	1033	1006.8	3.40	79.39%
Carlsberg	Lager	18	1.64	0.17	1029.5	1005.6	3.10	81.02%
Young & Co	Saxon	21	1.50	0.17	1031.5	1004.6	3.50	85.40%
Tuborg	Lager	22	1.33	0.14	1029.3	1005.4	3.10	81.57%
Average		17.8	1.91	0.20	1033.4	1006.3	3.51	81.15%
Source:
Daily Mirror July 10th 1972, page 15