Spoilt by Progress

If you look at the Banks's Brewery website, it describes, in a timeline, the various breweries taken over by the company. For most of the time the owning company was Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries and then Marstons, and now Carlsberg Marstons Brewing (CMBC).

Back in the day, brewing companies, on the whole, took over other brewers to acquire outlets, or sometimes, to buy out an owner who wanted to cash in. The latest in the company's line was the buyout by Carlsberg of the minority share of the brewing company formed by Carlsberg and Marstons as a joint venture.  Moving back a little, Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries themselves had acquired several breweries by takeover. These included well known names such as Jennings in the Lake District, Camerons of Hartlepool (now independent again) and Julia Hansons of Dudley, taken over in 1943. In 1999, Marston, Thompson and Evershed and Mansfield breweries were acquired. This was a now a big company, and it was renamed Marstons to reflect its national presence.  

Further additions to the company were some brewing interests of Thwaites and the former Wells and Youngs brewery in Bedford, which was bought and sold, and along the way, all taken over breweries were closed and others, too, were acquired and eventually closed.  Under Marstons though, breweries such as Jennings, Ringwood and Wychwood hung on, only to be closed when Carlsberg acquired a controlling interest.

Now the original brewery, the Park Brewery in Wolverhampton, is set to close next year. CMBC cite the lower demand for cask ale and the loss of the contract to brew San Miguel - though what that has to do with Banks's is somewhat opaque. The Park Brewery has been in operation since 1875 and its beers were once legendary in the Midlands, though much less so now.  Reading about it, it seems to be considered as a traditional brewery, with somewhat outdated brewing kit. The subsequent lack of flexibility, and the availability of additional capacity at the former Marston's site at Burton, means the writing was certainly on the wall. Nor can its value as a city centre site be overlooked.

It is almost forgotten that Carlsberg-Tetley Brewing Limited, existed from Jan 1993 - Mar 2004.  The famous Joshua Tetley Brewery in Leeds was taken over by Carlsberg Group. The Leeds Brewery was closed in 2011, and demolished in 2012, with production contracted out by Carlsberg to remaining breweries in the group.  In the meantime, they had already shut the huge Tetley Walker plant in Warrington in 1996 and then sold the Ind Coope Brewery Burton Brewery to Bass in 1998, with the loss of brands such as former Champion Beer of Britain, Ind Coope Draught Burton Ale. Although the brewery is still brewing under Molson-Coors ownership.  Tetley Bitter was farmed out to become the shadow of its former self that it remains to this day.

So, is over capacity the real reason for this? Sadly, there is little point in denying that is a fact, but the lack lustre brands produced by CMBC does not give much hope for the future either. Where does this leave us, then? In the short term, many of the large number of existing brands from formerly well thought of breweries, will be brewed on a single central site. The outcome of that will also probably mean more rationalisation in time. Choice will be diminished once again. Cask drinkers expect more than bland beer brewed down to a price that Pub Companies will pay, when they know it could be so much better. Sales will diminish further.

What can we learn from this?  The big players, all foreign owned, do not see it as their future to any meaningful extent. Cask is being further driven into being a niche product. Family and other small brewers need to fill the quality gap, though routes to market make that difficult.  

And finally,  if you want to keep your brewery alive, keep away from Carlsberg.  They have form. A lot of form. 

Supermarket bottle ranges will also likely be rationalised, and would anyone bet money that CMBC Burton has a long-term future?

Carlsberg makes the previous famous Whitbread Tour of Destruction seem like a minor blip in brewing history, and do they brew the best beer in the world?  well,you already know the answer to that.

A Little Bit of History

 I tend - no - firmly avoid - writing in any detail about beer history. Firstly I'm a lazy bugger - I tend to paint things with a broad brush and leave the finer points to others - and secondly - I know for sure that I'd get a lot of it wrong and haven't the will or application to research to ensure I don't. I know myself fairly well. 

When I was working and the boss of quite a few, I liked to think I saw the big picture and then had others apply the fine detail. The attractions of this method of operation became clear to me in one of the few actual epiphanies I have ever had. When I went to see,  a long time ago, the Three Graces statue in Edinburgh, the accompanying pull up description told me that Antonio Canova, the sculptor did not, as I'd originally supposed simply take a suitably sized lump of stone to meet what he had in mind and fashion it into a magnificent statue, by chipping away at it over a long and tedious period. Rather he drew it roughly, had someone better at drawing firm it up into something precise, added dimensions and then set all his apprentices and other trainees do the hard work. Eventually, having supervised the operation, he trotted along at the end with his daintiest chisel and some sandpaper and finished it off. Well - more or less.  Not that bad a way to operate I thought. It helped my career a lot.

So back to beer history - of a sort.  When I lived in Dumbarton we had a small, but very old pub at 1 High St, called the Elephant and Castle. Named after the town's coat of arms, it was when I lived there, operated and probably owned by Scottish and Newcastle Breweries. I used to go there on occasion and invariably drank pint screwtop bottles of McEwans's Pale Ale, a beer for which I have an abiding affection. And why not? It was the first beer I ever tasted. The pub wasn't that big and certainly, as far as I recall, had no particular architectural features to accompany its venerable years.  Anything of any antiquity that had been there had long since gone, but it was always one of the friendliest pubs in the town and so worth, as they said then in these parts, "throwing your heid roon the door" now and then.

Sadly, while I did pop in again sometimes over the years when I visited my old mother when I had long since lived in England, it somehow had managed to close in my absence and became a rather sorry sight, with copious weeds growing out of its roof and gutters. It was finally demolished in 2017, having been closed for over ten years, to make way for a new walkway to the River Leven from that side of town.

It was however brought back to my mind by this photograph which shows the pub in 1946, the staff resplendent in their starched long aprons and suitably serious expressions. The photo was posted on the Facebook site Memories of Dumbarton and there is an accompanying article written in 1986 describing it in a little detail.  Of course, those contributing tended to comment on how they knew or were related to the subjects in the photo, rather than the pub. Sadly there was little insight into the pub itself, but it was referred to, somewhat obviously, as Nellies, something I never did, or in fact, had ever heard. To me, it was always just the Elephant and I don't ever recall it being called otherwise. But I don't doubt it.  The local newspaper covered its demolition, but shed no real light on its history, except to say that the council accepted that despite the pub's being built around 1807,  it had no architectural merit or features.  One interesting point was that in common with the Irish way of pub naming, when the front was torn off, it revealed it had been called Galbraith's at one time. Again something I didn't know.

Dumbarton also used to have its own brewery. The Crown Brewery aka Gillespies, which was further along the High St than the Elephant, or rather, just off it. Oddly enough, that's something I didn't know for much of my Dumbarton life, but how that changed is another story and is mentioned here.  There isn't much detail on the Crown Brewery that I can find, but various labels and scant information are to be had fairly easily. In short though, the brewery was wound up, according to the Edinburgh Gazette in 1952. Sadly I have not been able to find out what subsequently happened, but it does seem that Scottish Brewers bought some liquidated assets, as they used "Gillespies" as the name of a stout, a beer which some may even remember.  I've often wondered if Crown/Gillespies ever owned any pubs in the town or indeed, elsewhere, but I have never been able to find out.  Of course if I was a proper historian - hold the press - any sort of historian at all - I'd delve more into that, but I refer you to my earlier paragraph above.

So the tale ends there? Not quite. When I looked at the photo above, I noticed behind the bar, on the gantry, a mirror. It is hard to say, but it looks like a Crown Brewery mirror. The shape of the crown on the mirror matches the crown used as the company logo. Was the Elephant and Castle supplied by Crown Brewery? It would seem so. Was it owned by them? Maybe. We need a historian to work that one out.

The Coat of Arms for Dumbarton is the Elephant and Castle. The elephant allegedly for the shape of Dumbarton Rock and the castle; well, the castle that sits upon the Rock. The Rock, 240 feet high, is allegedly the oldest known fortified site in Scotland and perhaps, Britain.

 I am grateful to Margaret Rose Black of Memories of Dumbarton for permission to use the photo of the staff in the pub and for the article I refer to.

The Bull and Bladder

The home of Batham's Brewery, officially the Vine, but known by many by its alternative name as above,  is a fine place indeed.  The interior has four rooms linked by a central corridor, with brown glazed tiles on the walls and a serving hatch to service the various different spaces.  Like many, when there, I tend to be in one of the rooms off the main corridor, as indeed, most visitors do, but it is the inner sanctum, the public bar (though I don't actually know how they refer to it locally) that really is the prize spot. But wait a minute. This isn't a big room and there is pub etiquette to think of. You don't just march in to a place like this and  plonk yourself down.  Locals use this space and yes, they have a right to some respect and thus it is, that although I'd poked my head round the door more than once, I don't recall ever sitting there for a couple of pints. Until now. We called in on a Thursday just before teatime and the public bar was nearly empty. We were in the sweet spot after which the lunchtime mob has long gone and the teatime regulars had scarcely started to drift in.  There was probably five or six within and with us four, ten at most. The bar wouldn't comfortably hold more than two and a half times that, so you see my point I hope. It looked reasonable to do so, so we entered the holy of holies and sat in the empty seats below the main bow window. We were given a friendly welcome by the (once again excellent barmaid - a Black Country speciality it seems - and nods from the locals. So far so good.

The pub itself has a history that can easily be discerned by our ubiquitous friend, Google, but of course I will mention its wonderful exterior, for this is that rarest of beasts, a pub that looks just as good outside as it is splendid inside. That's a lot rarer than you might think.  We parked in the handy car park opposite which gives a great view of the pub. While the others darted inside, I paused to observe and take in the place. It is a remarkably handsome building, two tone yellow and cream in colour, dark wood windows and its famous slogan painted at roof level in block capitals, "BLESSING OF YOUR HEART - YOU BREW GOOD ALE". Adjacent and attached is the brewery, with the proud words, "The Birthplace of Genuine Beer".  No false modesty here. They are proud of their pub, their brewery and their beer. And so they ought to be.

Batham's is a small company, with ten houses. That seems to suit them, though they do have a small free trade of around 20 accounts. I recommend having a look at the brewery's website which allows you to download, free of charge, The History of Batham's Black Country Brewery, a fascinating read, with many old photos.

Back in the public bar, we ordered pints of bitter and savoured this most traditional of brews, with its slightly sweet opening and bitter finish. Too good to have just one, we had another then left them to it.  The locals would be in soon.

Batham's is one of a very few breweries that still deliver beer in hogsheads of 54 Imperial gallons.

The Vine is situated at:

10 Delph Road,
Brierley Hill,
West Midlands.
DY5 2TN

Go there!