Shut up about Barclay Perkins - Whitbread Burton Ale quality 1922

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And here we are, at the end of the Burton road, as little weary, but happy. Happy the bloody journey is over.

It end with a whimper. There are only three Whitbread Burton examples. Hardly a big enough sample to draw any conclusions. That's why I've thrown in some bonus tables.

But first some dull financial information:

"Whitbread and Co., Ltd., report for the year ended June 30th a net profit of £222,749, as compared with £226,270 for the previous year. After meeting debenture interest and dividends on Preference and Preferred Ordinary stocks, the directors recommend a final dividend upon the Ordinary shares of 8 per cent, making, with the interim dividend of 2 per cent., a total of 10 per cent., the same as for the previous year. A sum of £319,531 will remain to be carried forward, as compared with £289,580 carried forward a year ago."
"The Brewers' Journal, 1923", page 424.

This is exciting. I now know Whitbread's profit for 1922 and 1923. But do you know what other figures I have? Whitbread's output for the 1920's:

Whitbread KK output 1921 - 1929
	barrels	% of total	total brewed
1921	32,481	4.81%	675,647
1922	35,060	6.09%	576,118
1923	34,553	6.84%	505,097
1924	43,707	7.92%	551,616
1925	46,480	8.80%	527,977
1926	44,912	8.76%	512,528
1927	46,218	10.00%	462,250
1928	47,567	9.74%	488,357
1929	56,258	12.67%	443,888
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers

Which means I can see what their profit per barrel was in those years: in 1922 7.73 shillings and in 1923 8.96 shillings. That doesn't seem an awful lot.

Now the beer. Fairly typical, but the attenuation is at the high end, as is as a consequence the ABV, at just over 5.5%.

Here's the pathetically small table, more picnic than dining:

Whitbread Burton Ale quality 1922
Year	Beer	FG	OG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	Appearance	Flavour	score
1922	KK	1005	1052.2	6.13	89.66%	cloudy	fine	1
1922	KK	1016	1054	4.89	69.81%	almost bright	fair	1
1922	KK	1010	1053.5	5.67	81.31%	bright	good	2
Average		1011	1053.2	5.56	80.26%			1.33
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001

One in three bright - I think we can agree that's crap. All positive scores for flavour, leaving an impressive average of 1.33. Though the number of examples is ridiculously small

Next time I'll review all the Burtons.

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