Shut up about Barclay Perkins - Crap value Lager

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This was inspired by finding a price list. One that included the exotic Dreher Vienna Beer as well as popular British beers.

I was struck by how much more expensive Dreher's beer was. And that's without taking the strength of the beer into consideration. Being a mad collector of all sorts of numbers, I've technical details of quite a few of the beers listed. Which means I can come up with a comparison that takes the different strengths of the beers into consideration.

Let's start with the price list itself. It has some local brands, but also breweries active nationally or even internationally: Allsopp, Bass, Guinness, William Younger and Barclay Perkins. I'm slightly surprised to see Bass's IPA was more expensive than Allsopp's. I'd have expected them to cost the same.

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Hampshire Telegraph - Saturday 02 December 1871, page 2.

Dreher's Vienna Beer was 50% dearer than the most expensive British beer, Bass East India Ale and more than double the price of the cheaper ones.

Dreher brewed several beers of differing gravities. I'm pretty sure the one we're after is the Märzen from 1869. That's the one sample of Dreher's beer which was made in Britain. That happens to be the best value possibility. But it's still 50% more per unit of alcohol than the worst value British beer, Younger's XP. Coming in at almost double the price of Bass is impressive, as that was a pretty poor value beer.

Year	Brewer	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	price per ABV point (shillings)	price per barrel (shillings)
1867	Barclay Perkins	TT	Porter	1054.0	1016.3	4.98	69.74%	8.43	42
1870	Barclay Perkins	X	Mild	1060.4	1016.6	5.79	72.48%	7.25	42
1870	Barclay Perkins	KK	Stock Ale	1084.5	1028.8	7.37	65.90%	7.33	54
1870	Barclay Perkins	KKK	Stock Ale	1095.3	1046.0	6.52	51.74%	8.28	54
1868	William Younger	XP	IPA	1055.0	1017.0	5.03	69.09%	12.33	62
1869	Allsopp	Pale Ale	Pale Ale	1068.5	1013.5	7.19	80.32%	9.18	66
1869	Bass	Pale Ale	Pale Ale	1067.0	1013.2	6.81	80.31%	9.98	68
1869	Dreher	Dreher's Beer	Märzen	1062.2	1019.8	5.54	68.22%	18.06	100
1870	Dreher	Pilsener	Pilsener	1051.3	1016.7	4.48	66.33%	22.31	100
1870	Dreher	Lagerbier	Lagerbier	1053.5	1017.6	4.65	65.96%	21.51	100
1870	Dreher	Märzen	Märzen	1054.7	1016.9	4.90	67.95%	20.40	100
Sources:
Barclay Perkins brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers ACC/2305/1/572 and ACC/2305/1/573/1
William Younger brewing records held at the Scottish Brewing Archive, document number WY/6/1/2/21
British Medical Journal August 28th 1869, page 245
British Medical Journal Jan 23rd 1869, page 84
"Theory and Practice of the Preparation of Malt and the Fabrication of Beer" Julius E. Thausing, Anton Schwartz and A.H. Bauer, Philadelphia 1882, pages 748-751

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Unsurprisingly, Mild is the best value. What does this really tell us? Something I've been saying for years: "Drink Mild!"

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