Visit the Shut up about Barclay Perkins site

Today is a real treataroonie. As long as you're a table fan. And I don't mean a rotating cooling device mounted on a desk. Probably didn't need to tell you that.

Watney. A name pretty much erased from history. I can remember when that process started. Back in the early 1980's I believe it was when Watney began removing their name from the outside of their tied houses. If you saw a pub without a brewery logo and some bollocks like "Traditional Ales" very prominent on the signage you could be sure it was an ashamed Watney's pub, trying to pretend it was something else.

The 1898 merger with Combe and Reid left Watneys as one of the largest brewers in the country, producing over 1 million barrels annually. They also had a considerable tied estate, especially in London. This was obvious before they started removing their name from their pubs.

Right let's crack on with the beer. Or beers, as there are a couple of different ones in the main table. The majority are KK or draught Burton. As I've told you 60 gazillion times, Burton was one of the standard draught beers in London pubs until the 1960's. Along with Mild, Bitter, Stout and in the 1920's, Porter. Also cropping up a couple of times is bottles Stingo, a type of strong beer mostly associated with Yorkshire. Feel free to think of it as either an Old Ale or a Barley Wine. It's your choice. Then at the end there's Export Gold, which I guess you could call a pale Barley Wine. If you were obsessed with labelling everything to within an inch of its life.

Starting with the Burton, you can that's mostly a tale of falling gravity. 1922 is the year when things got back to normal after WW I. Price controls were abolished the year before. The impact of a reduction in duty from 100s. per standard barrel to 80s. per standard barrel can be seen with the reduction in price from 9d. to 8d. per pint. At the same time the gravity was increased a little.

How does Watney's KK compare to other London Burton's? Let's take a closer look. The Whitbread Gravity book has lots of analyses for 1922, especially for London beers. This is no coincidence. With the end of price control, Whitbread would want to know what their competitors were up to.

London Strong Ales in 1922
Year Brewer Beer Price size package FG OG ABV App. Atten-uation
1922 Barclay Perkins KK 9 pint draught 1011.7 1056.2 5.80 79.18%
1922 Beasley KK 9 pint draught 1014.4 1056.6 5.49 74.56%
1922 Cannon Brewery KK 9 pint draught 1015.4 1054.4 5.06 71.69%
1922 Charrington KK 9 pint draught 1015.6 1055.9 5.23 72.09%
1922 City of London KK 9 pint draught 1008.5 1056.7 6.30 85.01%
1922 Courage KK 9 pint draught 1013.2 1053.7 5.27 75.42%
1922 Hoare KK 9 pint draught 1015.5 1056.5 5.33 72.57%
1922 Huggins KK 9 pint draught 1012.6 1056.1 5.67 77.54%
1922 Lion Brewery KK 9 pint draught 1010.7 1056.7 6.00 81.13%
1922 Mann KK 9 pint draught 1013 1057 5.73 77.19%
1922 Meux KK 9 pint draught 1007.4 1058.4 6.68 87.33%
1922 Truman KK 9 pint draught 1013.8 1052.8 5.07 73.86%
1922 Wenlock KK 9 pint draught 1010 1054 5.74 81.48%
1922 Whitbread KK 9 pint draught 1016.3 1054 4.89 69.81%
Average 9 1012.7 1055.6 5.59 77.06%
1922 Watney KK 9d pint draught 1012.5 1058.5 6.00 78.63%
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001.

As you can see, all of the beers were pretty similar. Note, too, how many decent-sized breweries there still were in London. And see how they fit in with the last set of price controls:

[TABLE="width: 476"]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl67, width: 476, colspan: 6"]Price control 1917-1921[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl66, width: 64"][/TD]
[TD="class: xl69, width: 82"]Oct 1917[/TD]
[TD="class: xl69, width: 82"]Apr 1918[/TD]
[TD="class: xl69, width: 79"]Feb 1919[/TD]
[TD="class: xl69, width: 80"]Jul 1919[/TD]
[TD="class: xl69, width: 89"]Apr 1920[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl66, width: 64"]2d[/TD]
[TD="class: xl66, width: 82"][/TD]
[TD="class: xl66, width: 82"][/TD]
[TD="class: xl66, width: 79"][/TD]
[TD="class: xl66, width: 80"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl66, width: 64"]4d[/TD]
[TD="class: xl66, width: 82"]