Categories
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.

 

Categories
Beer styles

Hot Pub Time Machine

Sign outside a Plymouth pub advertising Courage Dark Mild

Wandering through Plymouth’s Altstadt, aka the Barbican, we stopped dead at the site of the sign outside the Queen’s Arms:

Special….. Courage “Dark Mild” sold here.

Courage Dark Mild? Really? We had to see for ourselves and, at any rate, needed a post fish-and-chips pint, so in we went.

We found ourselves in a clean, tidy pub which looked very like the one Bailey’s parents ran in Exeter in the early 1980s: velvet seat covers, dark wood, pickled eggs and high Victorian ceilings. The landlady greeted us cheerfully; the grizzled regulars at the end of the bar (possibly pirates) eyed us with suspicion.

We ordered Courage Dark Mild which was, indeed, on offer, albeit in keg form, alongside cask Bass and keg Courage Best Bitter. The antique pumpclips suggesting that someone put in a recurring order for those beers in about 1988 which has been magically fulfiled ever since.

You might be surprised to hear that it tasted pretty bloody good. As others have pointed out, mild benefits from cask conditioning perhaps even more than many other types of ale but, even so, this keg variant was fruity, dark and (being served pretty cold) very refreshing. It’s by no means complex but the darkness was from something other than a slug of caramel: there was a burned, roasted edge which made us want another.

How much Courage Dark Mild is actually being brewed? And are any other pubs in the country selling it?

 

Notes

1. This isn’t the first time capsule pub we’ve come across.

2. the pub wasn’t hot – a bit chilly if anything – but the truth cannot get in the way of a punning post title.

Categories
pubs

Porter in the pub

porters

I wish more British pubs had a porter on tap, at least between September and March. More as in all.

I’ve been weaning my brown-beer-loving Dad onto dark beer for a few months now. He was bowled over by Sam Smith’s Taddy Porter at his birthday dinner; loved their Imperial Stout when he tried it in London; and had his socks knocked off by a particularly impressive bottle of Meantime’s London Porter on Christmas Day.

On Boxing Day, he sighed and said: “I might go to the pub if they had a nice porter on, but they won’t, will they?”

Knowing the pubs in my home town, I had to agree that the chances were slim of finding a dark beer other than Guinness.

It was with some excitement, then, that he reported his discovery of a pub in Plymouth (the Thistle Park Inn, where his band were playing) which was serving Sutton’s Plymouth Porter. It sounds delicious — Dad said treacle; Adrian Tierney Jones suggests it’s made with Cascade and/or Bramling Cross hops. It made my Dad’s day.