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Beer history Blogging and writing

Pinning down the Big Six

Window with the Bass logo, Kennington, South London.

We’ve been grappling with a problem this weekend: commentary on the British beer industry makes frequent reference to the Big Six, a set of colossal brewing companies emerging from the takeover mania of the nineteen-fifties and sixties. Sometimes, though, it’s the Big Five, the Big Seven, or even the Big Eight; and the companies making up the Big Six in 1960 merge with others, grow and change names, which makes it hard to keep track.

In trying to tell a story, this is a pain.

Should we explain every name change as it happens, possibly confusing the reader and slowing down the narrative? Rely on footnotes? Or, as we’ve seen people do when writing about, say, the Royal Air Force, or Archibald ‘Cary Grant’ Leach, refer to them throughout by one name for the sake of clarity at the expense of accuracy? (With an explanatory note, of course.) We’re inclined towards the latter approach, but still thinking.

Anyway, for your information, in the oh-so-2002 Schott’s Miscellany style, here’s our best attempt to explain the Big Six.

UPDATED: Tandleman highlighted that we’d picked a bad source for our 1960 list, so we’ve found a better one from 1959 and changed the first section below.

UPDATED AGAIN: based on Martyn’s suggestions below. (We’ll also try to identify newspaper sources for each of the mergers/changes.)

The Big Six in 1959#
Ind Coope and Taylor Walker, Watney Mann, Courage and Barclay, Bass Ratcliffe Gretton, Whitbread, Scottish Brewers.
 
Brewery mergers/takeovers 1960-67
Courage Barclay + Simonds = Courage Barclay & Simonds (1960)
Scottish Brewers + Newcastle Breweries = Scottish and Newcastle (1960)
Bass + Mitchells & Butlers = Bass Mitchells & Butlers (1961)
Ind Coope/Taylor Walker + Ansells+Tetley Walker = Ind Coope Tetley Ansell (1961)
Ind Coope Tetley Ansell = Allied Breweries (1963)
Charrington United + Bass Mitchells & Butlers = Bass Charrington (1967)
 
The Big Six in 1967##
Bass Charrington, Allied Breweries, Whitbread, Watney Mann, Scottish and Newcastle, Courage Barclay & Simonds.
 
Brewery mergers/takeovers/name changes after 1967
Courage Barclay & Simonds = Courage (1970)
Watney Mann + Truman Hanbury & Buxton (owned by Grand Metropolitan Hotels) = Watney Mann & Truman (part of Grand Metropolitan) (1973)
Allied + J. Lyons = Allied Lyons (1978)
Bass Charrington = Bass (1983)
 
The Big Six in 1989###
Allied, Bass, Courage, Grand Metropolitan, Scottish & Newcastle, Whitbread.
 
The Big Seven
As above, but with Guinness.
 
  • # ‘Towards Larger Units in the Brewery Trade’, The Times, 19 February 1960, p.17. ‘What the Brewery Merger Means’, The Financial Times, 4 June 1959, p.11.
  • ## Beer: a report on the supply of beer, Monopolies Commission, 1969, table IV, p.5.
  • ### The Suppply of Beer, Monopolies and Mergers Commission, March 1989, Appendix 2.3, p.238.
Categories
Beer history

The Lost Runcorn Mega Brewery

Screenshot from A Round of Bass

The collection of documentaries about pubs from the British Film Institute we’ve been eagerly awaiting for some time has finally arrived, and our copy turned up this week. (We bought it with our own money, for the record.)

Quite apart from the aching nostalgia for an age before we born provoked by the faded films, there are lots of nuggets which demand further research.

For example, there’s the Runcorn mega brewery mentioned in A Round of Bass (dir. Geoffrey Reeve, 1972). We’ve been to Runcorn several times and never noticed any sign of the ‘most modern beer producing plant in Europe’. A quick Google turned up this academic paper (PDF) by David W Gutzke which summarises the story as follows:

Built by Bass Charrington, Britain’s pre-eminent brewery in the 1960s and 1970s, Runcorn was conceived as becoming western Europe’s largest brewery. Even before it opened in 1974, however, Runcorn was struck with paralysing labour disruptions, technological problems, and managerial miscalculations that would plague its history until its closure until 1991. What gave Runcorn broader significance was its role in reflecting the pervasive, but misplaced, assumptions about a new corporate culture, new technologies, the emergence of national brands, and advertising as a vehicle for replacing local consumer tastes with national markets.

The paper is an interesting beer-focused companion piece to Andy Beckett’s When the Lights Went Out and answers the riddle of why we didn’t spot any sign of a monstrously huge brewery on our trips to Cheshire:

Soon the entire brewery plant was dismantled and sold, with some of it shipped to Romania; Bass even disposed of the empty brewing site. Nothing remained to remind the company of a scheme so grandiose but so calamitous that its true nature was expunged from Bass’s official histories.

Categories
design real ale

The Big Red Triangle

Bass is better regarded as an icon of graphic design than as a beer.

It’s usually found in pubs that seem stuck in a timewarp and, in our experience at least, is rarely drinkable, from either keg or cask. We’ve found it sour and stale everywhere from grotty pubs with sticky carpets to gaudily wallpapered ‘style bars’ in south London.

A couple of weeks ago, however, we had a pint that was in tip-top condition and were reminded that at its best, Bass is a complex beer which carries some intentional ‘off flavours’ with aplomb. The sulphurous aroma, the hint of cider-apple and a final chalkiness, are not repellent but absolutely harmonious. It is reminiscent of, and better than, recent bottles of Worthington White Shield.

Until it tastes this way more often, however, while we won’t give up on it, it’ll have to remain on our list of beers of last resort.

Simon ‘Reluctant Scooper’ Johnson seems to know where to find Bass in reliably good nick; and those who like to try to find the breaking point of the term craft beer will find Bass a useful bit of ammo.

Categories
Beer history london marketing

Yet more pub livery photos

All of the bits and pieces of brewery and pub marketing below were spotted in East or South London. I wonder if people in 50 years time will find remnants of Wetherspoons branding so evocative? Probably.

A window in Kennington advertising Bass beer on draught

A pub in Vauxhall advertising fine ales and stout

A pub in Vauxhall advertising Courage fine ales

Old pub livery: Truman's Noted Burton Brewed Ales

Truman beers and ales sign, at Chrisp Street Market, Poplar

Categories
Beer history bottled beer marketing

Great stuff this Bass

We found this advert for Bass in a magazine from 1955. There’s something in the argument they give for their filtered blue triangle beer as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried to take bottle-conditioned beer to a picnic…

An advert for Bass beer from 1955 -- red triangle is bottle conditioned, but blue triangle is better for taking to cricket matches!

Here’s an old post with another vintage beer advert.