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Beer history Beer styles marketing

No Marketing Budget in Post-war Devon

Pale "A" Ale -- the Best Bitter in the West of England -- Brewed only by the Plymouth Breweries Ltd.
We found the above on the flyleaf of a The Homeland Guide to Dartmoor (undated but c.1947). It’s hard to imagine a plainer advertisement or, indeed, a plainer name for a flagship product. Post-war austerity and all that, we suppose.

On a related note, we also know from our recent nosing in their brewing records that, for the duration of World War II, St Austell produced nothing but “PA” (pale ale).

It must have been hard to get anything but bitter in the West Country in the 1940s.

 

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Beer history pubs

Time Was Never Called

The Valiant Soldier -- the pub where time was never called.

In 1965, the landlord and landlady of the Valiant Soldier in Buckfastleigh, Devon, shut the doors and retired to the flat above the pub. They left ashtrays full and unfinished pints on the bar, and never went back. Thirty years later, when the landlady died, the pub was rediscovered — a perfect, dusty time capsule of post-war drinking culture.

We visited on Friday afternoon. It was raining — thundering, in fact — and we had the place to ourselves. Walking across the bare, creaking flooboards of the bar with the archive sounds of the Light Programme drifting in from another room, we felt the hairs on our necks stand up. It was as if, at any moment, a long dead landlord was going to appear behind the bar and take our order.

We were reminded of the Shining or this episode of Sapphire and Steel.

The walls are covered with vintage advertisements for the Exeter City Brewery. The board over the fire place listed prices for bitter, best bitter, BB, HB, PA, XXX, mild, pale, brown and imperial ales. Two beers — Tun and Watney’s Red Barrel — were advertised as coming from a ‘container’. On the tables, half-finished games of dominoes and cards, cigarette packets and ticket stubs.

Interior of the Valiant Soldier pub.

That was the bar, of course; the lounge, with its flowery wallpaper and cushioned chairs, was altogether more genteel. The ladies seemed to have stepped outside, just for a moment…

In fact, the pub isn’t quite as it was found in 1996: it was emptied, cleaned and put back together, and there are some anachronisms where things found in the attic or cupboards were too good not to have on display.

Sadly, thanks to a vintage restrictive covenant imposed by Whitbread, no booze can be served on the premises. It would have been lovely to enjoy a couple of pints of mild in that bar.

The museum is open Monday to Friday from April onwards. There are buses to Buckfastleigh from Exeter but, for the full experience, why not get a steam train from Totnes?

Categories
Beer history

Memorable Beers #11: Pale Ale for POWs

By Bailey

During World War II, my grandfather was taken prisoner at Dunkirk, and spent most of the next few years at Stalag VIIIb in what is now Lambinowice in Poland, but was then called Lamsdorf.

I decided to visit the site of the camp and badgered Boak into using her Polish to make arrangements. As a result, I was greeted on site by an English speaking student from the University of Opole, who showed us what little remained of the camp and escorted us around an exhibition building.

There were three camps, she explained, and the “Britische Lager” was by far the most civilised. The Russian camp was hellish; the Polish one not much better; but the British soldiers benefited from lip-service to the Geneva Convention.

She pointed to a photograph: “They even had one bottle of beer a week from packages sent by the Red Cross.” There it was, the familiar shape of an English ale bottle, with what I thought was the Big Red Triangle on the label.

It must have tasted great after a day labouring on the construction of an Autobahn; the fact that it was a little piece of home must have made it all the sweeter.

Categories
Beer history Beer styles

Beer Labels are not History Lessons

We’ve talked before about how certain beer descriptors have more than one equally correct meaning depending on context. Most recently, the issue arose again in a conversation about old ale and barley wine.

Those two styles, says Martyn Cornell, are not all that easily distinguished. One contributor thought he’d cracked it, however, when he pointed out that Adnams Old Ale (dark, 4.1%) bears no resemblance whatsoever to, say, Fuller’s Golden Pride (dark amber, 8.5%).

The problem is that Adnams Old Ale is the exact opposite: a mild.

Brewers can call their beers whatever they like. What’s written on the label or pumpclip of a beer today is rarely any help in understanding a beer bearing the same descriptor a hundred years ago. In fact, they can be downright confusing.

Historical (19th c.) Common understanding (what it’s come to mean) US homebrew judging guidance
Old Ale
The aged version of a beer also sold fresh (mild). Possibly strong, but not necessarily (see above): something a bit special; “warming”. Sherry/port flavours, usually dark, 6-9% abv.
Categories
Beer history

The Ghost of Whitbread

It was once a dominant force in British brewing but Whitbread, as a brewery, no longer exists. The company runs hotels and coffee shops, but doesn’t have anything to do with beer.

Nonetheless, the name, and its connection with beer, lingers on.

A handful of the brands are still in production by various companies, under license from InBev who now own the rights. We’ve seen 275ml bottles of Light Ale in a convenience store in Clapton; bitter on the bar at an old pub in the East End of London; and, of course, supermarket four-packs of bitter and mild every now and then.

In Devon last year we saw a rusting advert for NEW Whitbread Tankard on the side of a boarded-up country pub.

And, on Saturday night, when someone nearby ordered a pint of bitter, as it was rung through the till, the word WHITBREAD appeared on its screen in glowing green letters for just a few seconds. Was it a ghost in the machine? No, sure enough, there on the bar, next to the lemonade, was a faded and chipped font for Trophy Bitter, which someone is evidently still making.

Whitbread’s other great legacy would appear to be its yeast: a kind of ‘stud’ which begat many of those currently in use by breweries all over Britain today. Wouldn’t it be nice to see someone brewing Whitbread’s long lost cask beers with it and bringing the name back from this odd form of suspended animation?