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31-03-2013, 08:28
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I collect so much material that I often forget to use some. Like this rather good chapter about beer in George Dodd's "Food of London". I was so surprised that I'd not used it that I checked the blog a couple of times. Just in case I'd written something and forgotten about it (that does happen). No. Unless my searching skills are shot, I've never mentioned the book, save as a source for some numbers.

Time to put that right with a series of posts. Starting with some general bumpf about the big London breweries. And a few numbers.


"The great brewing firms have become almost 'household words' in London. A few of the breweries are carried on by descendants of the same families which established them in the last century. The following table presents the trade of these great houses in a curious light: the trade of a brewer being measured by the quantity of malt used by him, the following were the quantities, in quarters, supplied to fifteen of the principal brewers in the metropolis in three different years, at intervals of ten years apart: —




1831
1841
1851



qtrs
qtrs
qtrs


Barclay & Co.
97,198
106,345
115,542


Truman & Co.
50,724
88,132
105,022


Whitbread & Co.
49,713
51,842
51,800


Reid & Co.
43,380
47,980
56,640


Combe & Co.
34,684
36,460
43,282


Calvert & Co.
30,525
30,615
28,638


Meux & Co.
24,339
39,583
59,617


Hoare & Co.
24,102
29,450
35,000


Elliott & Co.
19,444
25,275
29,558


Taylor & Co.
21,845
37,300
15,870


Goding & Co.
16,307
14,631
13,064


Charrington & Co.
10,530
18,328
21,016


Courage & Co.
8,116
11,532
14,469


Thorne & Co.
1,445
20,846
22,022


Mann & Co.
1,302
11,654
24,030


"The food of London" by George Dodd, 1856, pages 462 - 463.
Multiply the number of quarters by four and you get something close to the number of barrels that represents. Alternatively, here some actual numbers in barrels:



Output (barrels) of large London breweries



1831
1841
1851


Barclay & Co.
330,528
382,047
419,430


Whitbread & Co.
191,040
185,084
173,311


Truman & Co.
199,486
314,474
401,863


Reid & Co.
154,631
187,722
215,255


Mann & Co.


101,899


Sources:


“The British Brewing Industry 1830-1980”. T R Gourvish & R G Wilson, 1994, pages 610-612


Whitbread brewing log, document LMA/4453/D/09/024




There's one thing those numbers show - the rise of London's Ale brewers. The top nine were all still Porter brewers, but Charrington and Mann, both Ale brewers, were starting to move up the rankings and overtake some of the second division Porter brewers like Courage. By the 1870's Mann had almost caught the third largest Porter brewer, Whitbread, who themselves trailed quite a way behind Barclay Perkins and Truman*.


"When it is considered that two of the great breweries consume more than a hundred thousand quarters of malt each in a year, it may well be conceived that the working operations must be on a gigantic scale. These two are Barclay and Perkins's in Southwark, and Truman and Hanbury's in Spitalfields. The malt, the water, the hops, the fuel, the vessels — all are vast. For instance, Barclay's premises cover an area of ten or twelve acres, and have a boundary nearly a third of a mile in circuit; they require a hundred thousand gallons of water per day ; they have twenty or thirty malt-bins, each as large as a moderately-sized house; they have a porter-brewing room or brewhouse very little smaller than Westminster Hall; they have five copper boilers, each of which will contain twelve thousand gallons of wort or malt extract; they require six or seven hundred tons of coals in a year; they have many thousand square feet of flooring, on which the beer is cooled ; they have several square wooden vessels for the fermenting process, each of which will contain fifteen hundred barrels of beer; there is a tank, for containing the beer before barrelling, that, when full, would float a large barge; there are nearly two hundred store vats, the average capacity of which is thirty thousand gallons, and of some of them more than a hundred thousand — a quantity that reduces the celebrated Heidelberg tun to insignificance; they have seventythousand butts and barrels and other vessels, wherein the beer and ale are conveyed from the establishment; and lastly, they have two hundred of the finest horses in the world, to drag the clumsy butts upon the clumsy drays through the streets of the metropolis — horses, draymen, butts, and drays, being worthy of each other. If the working details at Truman and Hanbury's, or at Reid's or Meux's, were similarly noticed, we should probably find some of the items still more extraordinary than those here given. Messrs. Truman are said to possess four vats that will contain 80,000 gallons each, and store-vats altogether for 3,500,000 gallons. The store in spring has even reached 4,000,000 gallons at one of these vast establishments."
"The food of London" by George Dodd, 1856, pages 464 - 465.
London brewing was performed on a massive scale in the 1850's. But it's just when that scale was ceasing to be unique to London. Burton's largest - Burton and Allsopp - were rapidly approaching the size of the biggest the capital could offer. Neither would those massive Porter vats be around much longer. The mid-1850's is when Whitbread's output of Keeping Porter - the stuff - aged in vats - fell into steep decline. It dropped from 53 brews in 1851 to just 13 in 1859, or 30% of all Porter brewed to 6%**. They brewed their last Keeping Porter in 1870 and the Porter vats were ripped out.


"'Thirsty Soul,' and other writers to the editor of the 'Times,' maintained an animated controversy in 1853 concerning the price of London porter. Malt was plentiful and cheap, and yet the great brewers charged as highly for their beverages as in less favourable years. It was obviously a departure from the ordinary laws that regulate price; and there can be little doubt that it resulted from the enormous power possessed by about a dozen firms which monopolise the trade. The London masses will have London porter; the London porter is associated with the names of only a small number of brewers; and thus the brewers have a formidable hold on the beer-drinkers. It offers a curious example — analogous to that of the 'Times' itself — of the growth of a mighty power, something akin to monopoly in aspect, yet all the time open to the influence of Free Trade."
"The food of London" by George Dodd, 1856, pages 466 - 467.
The big London breweries - whether Ale or Porter was their main trade - continued to dominate London pubs until the 1980's, when the Big Six - three of which (Whitbread, Watney and Courage) bore the names of London brewers - dissolved into mist

I was intrigued by this "Thirsty Soul". It seems he was a frequent writer of letters to the press in the 1850's. I've managed to unearth some in the newspaper archive. Doubtless I'll reproduce some of them soon.





* "The British Brewing Industry, 1830-1980" T. R. Gourvish & R.G. Wilson, pages 610-611.
** Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/09/044 and LMA/4453/D/09/052.

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