Tag: ind coope

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Beer history

The Strange Death of Ronny Fincham

'Romford Brewery Control Panel' c.1982 by and copyright John Law, via Flickr.

In December 1989, 60-year-old, 20-stone Ronald Henry Fincham stripped naked and climbed into a vat of beer at the brewery in Romford, where he drowned.

He was celebrating 25-years service at the brewery and, according to one not-entirely-reliable source, The Weekly World News, had been out on the town with colleagues but crept back into the brewery after kicking out time, climbed a six foot ladder and slipped into 35,000 pints of beer that had been returned from pubs.

His wife, the WWN said, reported him missing the next morning and his clothes were found next to the vat. Under police orders, the tank was drained and Mr Fincham’s body was found at the bottom.

Walthamstow Coroner Dr. Harold Price recorded a verdict of death from natural causes. He didn’t think Mr Fincham’s death could be blamed on alcohol because Ron ‘was known as a man who could take his drink’, though he did observe that a few beers might have made him less cautious than usual.

This story still crops up from time to time in ‘It’s a Wacky World!’-type filler features and we assumed it was an urban legend until we found it recorded in the Guardian. Poor old Ron.

Sources: The London Drinker, April 1990; ‘News in Brief’, Guardian, 20/12/1989; ‘Vat’s All Folks: Boozed-up brewery worker drowns in huge tub of beer’, Weekly World News, 29/12/1989; ‘News Diary’, The Age, 22/12/1989. Record of Mr Fincham’s death and full name from public records via Ancestry.co.uk. Main photo: ‘glc – control panel ind coope brewery romford 82 JL’ by and © John Law, via Flickr.

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Beer history real ale

RIP Draught Burton Ale

Draught Burton Ale ad from the CAMRA East London & City Beer Guide, 1986.

Roger Protz confirmed yesterday that Ind Coope Draught Burton Ale, launched by Allied Breweries in 1976, and for some time lately brewed under contract by J.W. Lees in Manchester, is no more.

This seems a fitting moment, then, to share an extract from our 09/04/2013 interview with Richard Harvey, who worked as a PR man at Allied when the beer was launched. Some nuggets of what he told us made it into chapter six of Brew Britannia, entitled ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, but here’s the section on DBA, unedited:

In the spring of 1976, the Marketing Director, Peter Bonham-Carter, came to me and said: ‘Richard, we’re going to be launching a new cask-conditioned beer. It’s going to be national, and we want to adopt the black cat approach.’ The black cat was the logo of Craven A cigarettes which they’d used in very subtle adverts – ‘black cats are coming’ and the logo. Similar to Silk Cut, with the famous slashed purple fabric. ‘Look,’ said Peter, ‘if we start taking big hoardings with “Draught Burton Ale” on them, CAMRA will say “Here’s a big brewery trying to force their latest product down people’s throats.”’ So, we used purely PR, no ads, emphasising the heritage of brewing in Burton-upon-Trent, initially targeting the south of England.

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Beer history Beer styles london quotes

Innocuous Fluid, 1856

“The respectable man of the lower order is a clerk undoubtedly… He lives in a small, eight-roomed house, in a terrace with a high-sounding name, ‘Adeliza’ or ‘Navarino’, in Camden-town or Dalston. He lets the drawing-room floor to a single gentleman… Pewter pots are never seen hanging on the area rails; for, in his respectability, he looks upon public-houses as the favourite baits of the devil, and has a four and a half-gallon cask of the mildest and cheapest bitter beer from the Romford brewery always on tap in his coal-cellar. It is with this innocuous fluid that the single gentleman and his friends are occasionally supplied, and charged at the rate of fourpence per pint.”

From ‘Respectable People’ by Edmund H Yates, The Train magazine, 1856.

(We think he’s describing what we’re beginning to suspect was the original AK, brewed by Ind Coope in the mid-1840s.)

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Beer history

Things have changed

ushers

Egon Ronay’s 1990 guide to pub and bar food is a fascinating read, having become something of a historical document.

For each pub he includes, he lists the beer available, and many of the brands have now disappeared: Ind Coope, Watneys, Charrington, Usher’s and Eldridge Pope crop up repeatedly.  And whatever happened to Fuller’s K2 lager?

One the whole, things seemt to have improved. Even the best pubs in the 1990 edition seem to be there largely because they offered two real ales rather than one, and there was a lot of Webster’s Yorkshire Bitter on offer. The White Horse was rated as the best pub in London but, by current standards, sounds pretty run-of-the-mill.

But this passage from the introduction still rings true:

Have you ever walked into a pub full of people and immediately felt totally isolated? This can happen when most of the clientele already know each other and may have unwittingly sat in old Joe’s favourite chair by the fire. Fine if you are a member of the ‘club’ but not so pleasant if you are a stranger… On their travels, our inspectors are invariably strangers and gauge a pub on how well they are received and looked after as such. There is no point in recommending an otherwise lovely old inn somewhere in the wilds if visitors to the area are not going to feel welcome once inside.