War and Wort, part 3
Hello Again, Dearest Readers,
Welcome back to the third and final entry in our series on the effects of war on (largely British) beer. Last week, we traipsed through WWI, a war in which the policies of the UK government on a macroscale and pubs on a microscale brought about a pretty staggering increase in beer taxes and prices, a serious and, in retrospect, irreversible lowering of Original Gravities (or “OG;” read: essentially beer strength), and a tightening of the brewing belt in the form of the brewing of a third of the volume of beer at the end of the war as at its beginning [War! P20]. Interestingly, WWII brought more modest changes, but carries equal import for the UK beer fanatic, as the inter-war years and WWII essentially ossified the styles of the day into those with which we’re now intimately familiar.
(Oh and a quick note - for notation, I’ll use W for War! and P for Peace!, the two tomes contained in the R.P. collection I’m using as my chief reference)
PEACETIME
I’m sure plenty of small nudges and developments occurred in the brewing world in the inter-war years, but we’ll focus on a few as webbing between the two wars. The larger story is a non-story, which is to say the pretty constant rate of taxation on standard barrels (read: volumes of beer), and the gradual rise in OG (again, strength-ish) from its seemingly all-time nadir in WWI to a reasonable 1.043 or so (1.048, ~12% higher, is, as mentioned last time, a good “average” strength), and then back down to 1.041 or so, the minimum being a pretty staggering 1.031, which puts beer on average in the high 2% ABV’s or low 3%’s [W p185, P p7]. Ouch.
Oh, and remember that claim in the last post that Government Ale all but died shortly after the war? Well, not entirely - it underwent a transformation in name, but not substance, and continued to be brewed through the beginnings of WWII, apparently, as “4d Ale” or simply “Ale [W p42].” Interestingly, Sir Pattinson argues that it was in some ways a “direct ancestor of most Modern Milds,” occupying the same strength bracket, and, to my eye, having a similar grist (read: malt-side of its recipe) [P pp43-45]. Speaking of those Modern Milds, a number of factors coalesced in its evolution into a generally dark, low-gravity beer, but the quick-and-dirty is a sudden tax increase in 1931/1932 that, while quickly reversed thereafter, nonetheless correlated with a sudden drop in Mild gravity, as well as the general fracturing of styles into further sub-styles, with a lower strength beer offered at the earlier “low” price, and the new beer, at original strength, being remarketed and upcharged. These breweries were evidently slicker than Stringer Bell.
Finally, a smaller item, but worth noting from a modern perspective: in 1932, for the first time Whitbread sold more bottled beer than draught beer, a mere five years after the introduction to the market of Newcastle Brown Ale, which, if memory serves, was the first large-scale bottled beer, per this Brown Ale book. I think! I don’t have the book in front of me; stop screaming.
WWII - THE SOCIETAL ANGLE
In the last war, rapidly increasing beer costs led many beer-loving Englishmen (and presumably women - the news clippings made no reference to them, shocker) to swap from beer to whiskey, largely. This time, probably not so much! Barrelage actually grew about a million standard barrels (36 gallons I think, but it’s not crucial to this story) from 1940 to 1945, from around 18.7 to 19.7 million standard barrels, mirroring an anecdotal trend in the contemporaneous articles in the book: namely, that consumption held steady [W p185]. I can’t help but assume that the lack of a governmentally-enforced volume limit (as far as I can tell) played a part in that.
One change that did occur, in lieu of a fleeing to hooch, was a transition to some degree away from the stronger and more expensive Bitter to the cheaper and “weaker” Mild [W p147]. Ultimately, though, Bitter won out and Mild, which to my palate, and its current preferences, is a shame.
Two more miscellaneous notes: 1) there was a group of auditors who sat around pubs a few times over the years and counted the number of occupants, a number which, in further support of the “constancy of demand, at least” theory flirted with above and in the last post, showed an average 36% increase in customers, in 1939 versus 1938, in a number of “houses” (pubs), and this same group noted that 35%-38% of the customers were women [W p161] ; 2) as was the case with WWI, teetotalers were belly-aching about raw materials like barley being “destroyed every day in brewing and distilling” [W p173]. Even as a person with an incredibly harsh view of the sale of alcohol, particularly as a member in the guild, so to speak, I find it a bit harsh to call for the cessation of the brewing of 3% Mild in the middle of a world war.
THE ECONOMIC ANGLE
Thought you’d be able to get through a post without another painful lesson in Economics, didn’t you? No such luck, though I promise not to bring it up for a while. Pinky promise.
Last time, a triage of moves was employed by the government to raise money via taxation, and ensure sufficient food reserves (I assume) - volume limits, a substantial tax increase, and price fixing (this last item for a few items, but presumably in part to limit the price increasing effects of Supply and Demand, in effect forcing breweries to lower gravities as an indirect price-raising measure). This time, it looks like it’s just taxes, and the increase seems more modest - taxes increased roughly four-fold over WWII (from 80s to about 287s), vs an increase from about 8s in 1914 to 50s by April 1918, or about six-fold [W p10, W p187]. The result was a more stable environment for prices and gravities, though interestingly a modest decline in profitability for pubs (roughly 5% for the beer component of their offerings), versus the noted jump in the first World War [W p176].
A fair question about taxes - what about inflation? Based on this calculator whose veracity I absolutely cannot vouch for, it looks like inflation in the two periods (1914-1918, 1939-1945) was comparable, at 66% and 51% relatively, meaning the impact of these taxes is pretty even. In fact, adjusting the WWII tax increase for those differing inflations, if indeed that’s how you would even do that, show them neck-a-neck.
The second part of this economic story is the demand angle, and, as evinced by the increased pub attendance noted above, demand for beer during wartime seems to go up - who woulda guessed! But, there is an interesting change in this war - bombings by plane. While U-Boots (pronounced like “Boat,” fun fact, like Moog) had stricken a bit close for comfort in the first World War, bombings terrorized the cities of the UK themselves, with some proposals to close pubs upon the first air sirens of the day, and it’s speculated that the fear they induced knocked demand back a bit [W p160].
QUICK MISCS
A few quick notes:
In the first World War, the hop market experienced a profound surplus, a problem that required government intervention. This time, due to bombings and the holding steady of beer production, hops were actually hard to get, and some breweries had to actually ask the Board for an extra allottance. The result was a decrease in hopping rates to the tune of about 20%, which did somewhat increase the incidence of infection (since very few beers were pasteurized, especially in the UK where cask beer was still a’rocking and a’rolling), but this was mitigated due to the lightning fast consumption of these beers [W pp180, 215]
Cask conditioning, speaking of, was very much a thing, and apparently took place at 55˚F-60˚F, which is very interesting indeed; I’d be nervous to try that myself, but I wouldn’t be nearly as worried with top-cropped yeast. This is a technical detail that I don’t think almost anyone will care about, so I see no point in offering an explanation of its mild significance [W p206]
CONCLUSION
Well, goodness gracious, we did it! And while some of the developments were obvious, like a drop in gravity and an increase in consumption, other elements were practically shocking, like a spike in Pub profits in WWI and the almost soap opera-level developments of beer styles, resulting in the virtual death of Porter, the transformation of Mild, and the stage-setting for the semi-supremacy of Bitter. The craft movement has reversed Porter’s untimely death, but Mild has yet to be fully revived, in part perhaps due to the (increasingly fading) faddish brewing of high ABV beers, a trend that runs parallel with the popularity of IPAs. Long live the session beer!
Oh, and I’d like to shout out Ronald Pattinson one more time for assembling this sick collection of his works, this thing, which certainly increased the quality and detail of these last two posts, through a combination of recreation of contemporaneous articles, as well as concise summaries and opinions, both of which were very helpful in, if nothing else, getting me in the headspace of the time quickly. I can’t vouch for its quality as toilet paper, though.
And if you’d like a taste of this history, we’re now offering The Curly Finger, i.e. Barclay Perkins’ 1939 Dark Lager, on draft and in cans in our tasting room, so swing by and grab a pint of history!
Best,
Adrian “Broh, wasn’t this due Wednesday?” Febre