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10-01-2014, 08:10
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Random beer from a random brewer again. This time everyone's favourite: Watney.

Bizarrely, I now feel sort of sorry for Watney. Unloved and unmourned, unlike most defunct breweries. Then again, they did try pretty hard to bugger up British beer and British pubs. Not that I ever went into one of their pubs, unless dragged. Even when they did start selling something drinkable, I still wasn't keen on their pubs. They were kings of the tasteless tarting up, ripping out the character and replacing it with bland, cheap tat.

The company I remember with so little fondness was the product of the first big brewery merger. Now here's an irony. When Watney, Combe and Reid merged in 1898, the latter two breweries closed and production was transferred to Watney's Stag Brewery. The irony? There's not a brick left standing of that brewery, while there's a substantial chunk of Combe's brewery in Long Acre left. Until last week I'd thought that Reid's Griffin Brewery had completely demolished. Then I found a large-scale OS map of London online. Which shows that the brewery was on both sides of Leather Lane. Only the part to the West was knocked down.

Back to Watney. They kept the Reid and Combe names alive until WW II. The former for Stout, latter for Brown Ale. Though there were also Stout and Brown Ale sold under the Watney brand. Given the similarity of the specs, I suspect there were the same beers differently labelled.

I'm going to indulge in some wild speculation now. What was the relationship, if any, between Watney's Mild Ale and their Brown Ale? Without any brewing books, this is a tricky one. All I can go by are the gravities I have from analyses. The Brown Ales from Barclay Perkins and Whitbread were most definitely not versions of their Mild before WW II. They were single-gyle beers with their own distinctive grists. And different gravities from their Milds. Whitbread's Double Brown had a much higher gravity than their Milds.

In the case of the first three examples in the table, the gravity is suspiciously close to the 1043º of their X Ale. But after 1931, it gets more complicated. 1931, if you remember, was the year of the disastrous rise in beer duty. An increase which actually saw the amount of tax collected fall, as brewers dropped gravities to be able to leave the retail price the same. The gravity of Watney's X Ale dropped from 1043º to 1034º, and the price remained at 6d per pint. But look at what happened with Brown Ale: the gravity only dropped to 1038º and the price increased from 7d per pint to 8d.

That in itself tells us something. Punters were prepared to pay more for Brown Ale, but weren't for draught Mild. It implies that Brown Ale was more fashionable and upmarket. I know, it's difficult to believe now that Brown Ale could have been either of those things.

After the tax increase was reversed in 1933, Watney's X Ale remained around the same gravity, but fell in price to 5d per pint. While the gravity of their Brown Ale went back to the pre-1931 level and its price dropped by 1d. Which is how things remained until WW II. By the end of which both had dropped to around 1030º. Post-war, both bubbled along in the low 1030's. My guess is that by then they were basically the same beer, with maybe the odd tweak to the Brown Ale, as at Whitbread with Best Ale and Forest Brown.

Here's an interesting fact. Watney's Brown Ale was about exactly the average OG of all beer brewed in the UK in the late 1920's and early 1930's. And Mann's, the original modern Brown Ale, had a very similar gravity, too. While post-war Watney's Brown Ale was 3-4 degrees below average gravity.



Year
Average OG
Year
Average OG
Year
Average OG


1928
1043.31
1941
1038.51
1953
1036.87


1929
1043.21
1942
1035.53
1954
1036.97


1930
1043.05
1943
1034.34
1955
1037.13


1931
1042.69
1944
1034.63
1956
1037.22


1932
1041.19
1945
1034.54
1957
1037.42


1933
1039.69
1946
1034.72
1958
1037.48


1934
1040.99
1947
1032.59
1959
1037.52


1935
1041.06
1948
1032.66
1960
1037.25


1936
1041.02
1949
1033.43
1961
1037.41


1937
1041.10
1950
1033.88
1962
1037.70


1938
1041.02
1951
1036.99
1963
1037.70


1939
1040.93
1952
1037.07
1964
1037.66


1940
1040.62






Sources:


Brewers' Journal 1921, page 246.


Brewers' Almanack 1955, p. 50


Brewers' Almanack 1962, p. 48


Brewers' Almanack 1971, p. 45



One last point. That XX Brown Ale. Judging by the colour, it wasn’t really brown at all but the colour of Bitter. I’ve no idea why it was called Brown Ale.



Watney's Brown Ale 1929 - 1964


Year
Beer
Price
size
package
Acidity
FG
OG
colour
ABV
App. Atten-uation


1929
Brown Ale
7d
pint
bottled

1010
1042

4.16
76.19%


1931
Brown Ale
7d
pint
bottled
0.05
1011.4
1043.3

4.14
73.67%


1931
Brown Ale
7d
pint
bottled
0.08
1007.5
1042.3

4.53
82.27%


1931
Brown Ale
8d
pint
bottled
0.06
1008.8
1038

3.79
76.84%


1932
Brown Ale
8d
pint
bottled
0.05
1008.2
1038

3.87
78.42%


1933
Brown Ale
8d
pint
bottled
0.06
1010.4
1038

3.58
72.63%


1936
Brown Ale
7d
pint
bottled
0.06
1011.6
1041.7

3.90
72.18%


1936
Brown Ale
13d
quart
bottled
0.05
1012.6
1040.6

3.62
68.97%


1937
Brown Ale

half pint
bottled


1040.13





1937
Brown Ale
13d
pint
bottled
0.05
1014.5
1040.8

3.40
64.46%


1938
Brown Ale
7d
pint
bottled
0.06
1010.8
1040.8

3.89
73.53%


1938
Brown Ale
7d
pint
bottled
0.05
1013.6
1041.1
13 + 40
3.56
66.91%


1938
XX Brown Ale
6d
pint
draught
0.04
1015.6
1043.4
23
3.59
64.06%


1941
Brown Ale
6.5d
half pint
bottled
0.07
1009.9
1034.3
12 + 40
3.16
71.14%


1944
Brown Ale


bottled
0.05
1010.4
1031.6
10 + 40 Brown
2.74
67.09%


1946
Brown Ale
13d
pint
bottled
0.06
1011.4
1031.2
17 + 40
2.56
63.46%


1946
Brown Ale
12d
pint
bottled
0.05
1008.5
1029.6
12 + 40
2.73
71.28%


1947
Brown Ale
12d
pint
bottled
0.04
1010.3
1028.3
13 + 40
2.33
63.60%


1947
Brown Ale
12d
pint
bottled
0.07
1005.5
1028.7
10 + 40
3.01
80.84%


1947
Brown Ale
13d
pint
bottled
0.04
1009.7
1029.8
11 + 40
2.60
67.45%


1947
Brown Ale
13d
pint
bottled
0.06
1007.4
1029.3
17 + 40
2.84
74.74%


1948
Brown Ale
15d
pint
bottled
0.05
1009.3
1030.6
14 + 40
2.76
69.61%


1948
Brown Ale
16d
pint
bottled
0.07
1005.7
1031
18 + 40
3.29
81.61%


1949
Brown Ale
16d
pint
bottled
0.05
1009.7
1030.3
16 + 40
2.66
67.99%


1949
Brown Ale
15d
pint
bottled
0.07
1007.8
1030
16 + 40
2.88
74.00%


1950
Brown Ale
15d
pint
bottled
0.08
1007.8
1029.4
10 + 40
2.80
73.47%


1950
Brown Ale
15d
pint
bottled
0.04
1007.9
1030.4
15 + 40
2.92
74.01%


1950
Brown Ale
8.5d
half pint
bottled
0.06
1010.8
1032.6
16 + 40
2.82
66.87%


1951
Brown Ale
8.5d
half pint
bottled
0.05
1010.3
1031.1
40 + 17
2.69
66.88%


1952
Brown Ale
9d
half pint
bottled
0.05
1009.3
1031.1
16 + 40
2.82
70.10%


1952
Brown Ale
9d
half pint
bottled
0.06
1010.8
1032
16 + 40
2.74
66.25%


1953
Brown Ale
9.5d
half pint
bottled
0.06
1009.9
1032.1
17 + 40
2.87
69.16%


1953
Brown Ale
9.5d
half pint
bottled
0.05
1009.8
1032.8
16 + 40
2.98
70.12%


1954
Brown Ale
9.5d
half pint
bottled
0.05
1010
1031.9
18 + 40
2.83
68.65%


1954
Brown Ale
10d
nip
bottled
0.06
1010.2
1032.8
120
2.92
68.90%


1955
Brown Ale
10.5d
half pint
bottled
0.05
1010.9
1032.3
125
2.77
66.25%


1956
Brown Ale
10d
half pint
bottled
0.05
1011.1
1032.2
120
2.73
65.53%


1963
Brown Ale
12d
half pint
bottled
0.04
1013.4
1033.1
135
2.54
59.52%


1964
Brown Ale
22d
pint
bottled
0.04
1012.4
1033.4
135
2.71
62.87%


1964
Brown Ale
22d
pint
bottled
0.04
1013
1033.4
115
2.63
61.08%


Sources:


Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001.


Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.


Truman Gravity Book document B/THB/C/252 held at the London Metropolitan Archives



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