Beer and Breweries
The term alcohol originated about four hundred years ago as the Arabic term for a blue cosmetic eye shadow (antimony sulphide), the term was later used to refer to any metal powder but by about the middle of the eighteenth century the term had come to mean distilled spirit of wine, probably due to the Alchemists experiments. The present sense of the word originated in about 1850, twenty years after the building of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Alcoholic drinks are available in three common forms; beer, spirits and wine, cider is a much smaller industry.
In the Middle Ages Britain was an important wine producing country but wine making declined in favour of beer as the climate changed. The comparatively small size of the cider market can be judged by the comparatively recent interest in taxing the stuff. The importance of alcoholic drinks in British culture has long been recognised, the standard three basic necessities recognised by Governments were for many years food, drink and tobacco and by the 1980's the cost of alcohol advertising in Britain was about a thousand pounds a minute. Most of the advertising was for the less flavoured beers such as lager which had never been terribly popular in the UK.
The beer and spirits industry includes buildings of distinctive character and has made considerable use of railway transportation over the years. This makes it worthy of serious consideration on a model railway. In the real world, other than at the massive breweries of Burton on Trent, railway traffic flows would be relatively light but modellers licence can be applied and many of the vehicles used were of interesting unusual types.
Before discussing the modelling potential it is useful to have an overview of the brewing process as this has a considerable effect on the design of brewery buildings.
Beer and Ale
Beer is made from the grains of barley which have been made into 'malt' at a 'maltings' and flavoured with hops (Ale is the same stuff but without the hops).
The barley was delivered mainly in sacks but some maltings (especially after the First World War) were equipped to accept deliveries in bulk. Inside the 'maltings' are large tanks in which the grain (usually barley) is 'seeped' (soaked in water) to start the seeds germinating, this produced more sugar (technically maltose) in the seed. Then you dry it by spreading it out on the 'malting floor' for 10-12 days. Then it is put into a kiln and dried with hot air for about 4 days, the temperature of the kiln determines the type of malt produced, which allows different types of beer to be made. The resulting material is then baked in a 'backing house' to drive off the water and stop the process. The dried material is then passed through a mill to grind it up and the result is called malt, a yellowish or amber coloured granular material shipped out in bags.
The standard malt bag was the 2 bushel type, holding about half a hundredweight, flaked maize (corn) was also supplied to breweries in sacks of this type and size.
Fig ___ Typical malt sack
By the 1980s the malt was typically delivered in white plastic sacks, slightly larger (I think) than the standard hessian type shown.
The taxation of malt originally relied on having seeping tanks of fixed size and capacity and this in turn influenced the design of early maltings. Prior to the repeal of the Malt Tax in 1880 almost all the buildings were no more than two and a half stories tall (the loft area was used for storage). The main part of the maltings would be a long building with many windows, the seeping tanks were built into the ground inside this building. The traditional form of the baking house was a circular structure with a conical roof with a curiously shaped cowl on the top similar to an oast house (discussed below). When the tax rules changed, allowing new designs of iron seeping tanks, newly built maltings often featured buildings up to four and a half stories and the roof of the baking house changed from a circular cone shape to a more easily built (and modelled) pyramid shape. Not all maltings were so tall, there was a two story maltings with the pyramid shaped roof on the baking houses at Langley on the banks of the Titford Canal (part of the Birmingham Canal Network). There is a good colour illustration of this building in the book Canals in Colour (by Anthony Burton with photographs by Derek Pratt, Blandford Press, 1974). By the time the tax laws changed the railways were challenging the canals in the grain trade and maltings built after the 1880's which did not have a local canal wharf often had a private siding or two.
Maltings require a lot of floor space and breweries are usually sited in towns, where floor space is dearer than in the country, hence the two were usually separate entities. Also it is cheaper to carry to the brewery three hundredweights of malt than it is to carry the four hundredweights of barley required to yield it, so malting is usually carried out in the region where the barley is grown. There are of course exceptions, Burton on Trent was famous as the brewery for Britain (laced with brewery operated railways it was also famous for its over 30 level crossings in the town). At Burton there were a number of maltings in the town itself, and doubtless there were other examples elsewhere.
A maltings built after the 1850s often had a railway siding run into it and this makes a neat and small addition to a layout. These 'maltings' were sometimes just a plain rectangular 'industrial' building, some with a standard pitched roof fitted with vents, however there were many which retained the distinctive traditional appearance, especially in the tall pyramid shaped roof with the vent on top. The example shown below is rather compressed but it is based on a prototype and could be included fairly easily in a cramped location. A search on the internet would throw up several variations on this basic structure.
Fig ___ Typical 'maltings'
Hops are a plant, related to the nettle and to hemp, introduced by the Normans shortly after 1066. The Germans had been using hops to make beer for some time before the British tried it. The hops are a climbing plant, the hop fields are equipped with rows of tall wooden poles (perhaps 15 feet or 5m tall) with wire strung between them, the plants grow up onto these wires. The men tending the plants used stilts.
Fig ___ Tying strings onto the wires for hop plants
The harvest is in the autumn and is done by hand, only the flowers of the female plant are harvested, and it is only a part of those flowers that provides the bitter flavouring for beers. Hops are grown on a large scale in Kent and the hop-picking season provided the annual country 'holiday' for thousands of Londoners. Special passenger trains were laid on to carry these workers to the hop growing areas and the fruits of their labours were shifted in seasonal specials.
The gathered flowers are taken in large baskets to an 'oast house'. Oast houses are circular buildings with tall conical roofs, they are agricultural rather than industrial. Inside the flowers are where they are dried (using hot air). Oast houses were built singly, usually close by the farm, and would not feature a direct railway connection but the hops season did bring with it a considerable amount of rail traffic. The dried flowers are then ground down, allowed to cool and packed into large bags called 'pockets'. Some oast houses had a windmill, used for grinding down the dried hopps, the small oast house shown below would likely have been built beside such a mill. One postcard I saw (from about the time of the First World War) had a smock mill beside an oast house with the mill bearing adverts for various animal feeds such as Kositos and Molassine (see also 'Lineside Industries - Flour, bread, biscuits, breakfast cereals and animal feed'). Most of the crop goes to the breweries. The main hop growing areas are Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire. We do not produce enough to meet the demand so we import some from central Europe.
Fig ___ Hop sacks showing pre-war and post war examples of the lettering
A traditional oast or oast house is a rather distinctive building with its tall cone shaped roof above the oven area, topped by a moveable cowl. As far as I am aware few if any had a rail connection however one of these buildings can help set a location on a layout, especially for Kent and Sussex. The example illustrated is a typical small oast house, a search on the internet would throw up several variations on this basic structure.
Fig ___ Typical small Oast House
To make beer you make a mix of water and malt, adding flavourings (notably sugar) and yeast to make it ferment. The yeast converts the sugar in the seed into alcohol and carbon dioxide. British beers generally contain a selection of unmalted cereals and specialist sugars. These special sugars were in use by the time the railways arrived, generally they are caramels & glucose syrups (although the only photographs I have found show sacks of sugar at the breweries). We have been drinking beer for about ten thousand years.
At the brewery the malt is run through crushing rollers in a 'mill', then put into large (usually rectangular) tanks full of hot water called 'mash tuns'. In these tanks the malt continues to change until nearly all the sugar has changed to alcohol. The resulting liquid, called Wort, is drawn off and passed to an enclosed heating vessel called a 'copper' (because that is what it is made of). The residual mush of barley grain is dried and passed to animal feed makers as 'spent grain' originally in sacks but by the 1950s they were sending out a lot in bulk carried in sheeted hoppers (often iron ore hoppers).
Meanwhile, in the copper, hops are added to the mix which is heated for a couple of hours (this stage is called 'mashing'). The liquid, now called 'hopped wort', is strained to remove the hops (again this residue is sold on, often as fertiliser but some went to the animal feed makers). The hopped wort is cooled before being passed to another tank called the fermentation vessel. Here the yeast is added and fermentation of the sugar takes place, typically this stage take three or four days. The yeast tends to float because of the fermentation producing carbon dioxide, this is skimmed off, some to be re-cycled into the next batch of beer, the rest sold to the animal feeds people (some goes into human food as well, mainly in soups).
The beer is then drained off this tank and placed into storage tanks, from where it is placed into casks (barrels), usually of the 'hogshead' type. The beer has to stay in the cask for a pre determined period of time, some is then processed and bottled, the rest stays in the cask for delivery to the pub.
Few changes have been made in the basic process over the last several hundred years, partly because the complex interplay of enzymatic and chemical reactions are not fully understood. The nature of the beer depends to a large extent on the type of malt used, dark beers use malt which has been heated to a higher temperature than that used for the lighter beers, stouts are made with roasted barley or roasted malt.
Breweries by their nature have a considerable involvement with road transport for local deliveries, this means they are generally built round a large yard, often cobbled. The main building or buildings are generally quite large, generally three or four stories tall and usually fitted with large louvered ventilators on the roof. External staircases appear to have been a common feature and in the example shown below these were simple concrete affairs which can be modelled using standard Plastruct staircases and handrails.
Brewing uses a lot of power and heat so the chimney would be a significant local landmark, often with the brewery name and sometimes their logo picked out on the side in white painted bricks.
Brewing also requires large supplies of fresh water so the brewery was often built over a spring and a large roof-mounted water tank was a fairly common feature. Soft water is best for dyeing, tanning leather and uses less soap in the laundry. Soft water is also best for beer, hence the success of Burton on Trent, breweries in hard water areas imported soda and other materials with which to 'burtonise' their water. Another problem with hard water is that it deposits calcium which is bad for boilers.
The ingredients (sacks of malt, hops and grain) are hoisted up to the top, usually by a simple hoist on the outside of the main building, and the process works down through the building producing finished products at ground level. The site might include stables for the dray horses, a lot of barrels stored in the open and a coopers workshop.
Breweries in the mid 19th Century had a lot of louvered openings, the one in my local village had louvered sides on a major part of the building. These were located around the 'mash tuns' and 'coppers' (discussed below) and in paintings and drawings steam is usually shown pouring from these openings (it doesn't show up on the long exposure photographs of the time). The illustration below, based on a photo taken in the later 19th century, shows a typical example. Note the large louvered area on the upper side of the main building, and a separate roof vent above that. These large louvered openings seem to have been bricked up by the mid 1920s (but again I am not an expert), but adding them is a way of defining the period for the layout as 'pre-grouping'. Also note the 'blind' window and door (bricked up openings) to the left of the building, that kind of detail can add character to a model. The figures in the doorways give a sense of the scale of the building. The 'lean to' at the left hand end is the boiler room, open fronted in this case (boilers were often in roofed but not walled structures in the 19th century) and with a substantial coal pile beside it. Smaller breweries in the 19th century used vertical boilers, often mounted outside the main building, larger establishments would typically have a Lancashire boiler under more substantial cover (see also 'Lineside Industries - Prototype industrial ancillary structures' for more on boilers).
Fig ___ Typical 19th Century brewery
There will always be a lot of barrels in the brewery yard area, almost all will be on their side (there being little point in up-ending them when they were moved by rolling them along). Empty barrels might be stacked two high but full barrels would generally all be on the ground and not stacked (they were very heavy).
Breweries tended to have a common outline, more or less shaped like a wedge of cheese on its side, if you find old breweries in towns you will find most follow this general pattern. This came about because of the use of gravity where possible to assist in the processing.
Fig ___ Typical Brewery
Starting at the left A is the area dealing with reception and preparation of the malt. B is where the mash tuns reside, the brewery water tanks are above. C is the spent grain. D is the boilers and furnaces. E is the 'coppers'. F is where the hops are processed. G, H, I and J are the wort coolers, fermenting room, intermediate room and 'barm presses' ('barm' is another name for yeast, this room was where the spare yeast was pressed into blocks to be sold). K is the Union Room where the beer is put into casks to mature and L is the racking room where the casks are stored ready for shipping. There would also be a substantial coopers for dealing with the barrels, and the site would be cluttered with a great many of the casks.
Fig ___ Typical beer cask
The breweries maintained fleets of road vehicles, called 'drays', to deliver the beer (most smaller local breweries only supplied pubs up to a maximum of about twenty miles away). These were originally horse drawn but by the 1920s motor lorries were in use. The illustration shows pre-war (1920s) and post war (1960ish) examples.
Fig ___ Brewers drays
At the pub the beer is put on a wooden rack in a cool room (usually a cellar) and allowed to stand. The landlord adds ground fish bones called 'finings', these sink down through the beer to the bottom, there the remaining yeast sticks to them and they rise up to the top, collecting the remaining yeast from the beer. The barrel is then ready to drink and the brass tap is hammered in through the bung at the end for connecting to the pumps on the bar.
In the early 20th century a number of breweries began making 'fizzy' soft drinks, using the carbon dioxide produce in the beer making end of the business. A separate building, typically a three story rectangular structure, often with a flat roof, would appear at one end of the brewery. One local example had 'Mineral Water Manufactory' in glazed brick near the roof line.
Modelling a Brewery
Breweries range in size from small establishments capable of fitting into about a foot by six inches (30cm x 15cm) in N gauge, right up to vast complexes with their own railway systems. Bass Charringtons commissioned a model of their main brewery in 1977 which featured a non-working N Gauge railway system, the model was several yards square.
There is a rather good plastic kit of a brewery in the Heljan range and more recently the British firm Metcalf Models have produced a card kit of a British brewery (unfortunately the original model had black printed-on windows, I believe the more recent version has pre-punched window openings with printed clear plastic windows). You can of course build your own, which offers the chance to fill in an awkward corner.
Brewery buildings tend to be large and once again placing them in low relief on the backscene with a siding or two run in front is probably the best option. The sketch below was made some years ago, it shows a conveniently compact former brewery in Stockport (when I unearth the photographs I shall add them to this page). The scale is approximate, this was the drawing I used to make my own model in the early 1980s. The smaller buildings to the right are narrower than the main structure and fronted by a loading platform. Not shown is the large chimney that invariably appeared, oddly enough a lot of breweries had a flag pole on the roof, from which they would often fly a large flag, either their own or the 'Union Jack'.
Fig ___ Typical brewery for a layout
The 'hoist' section to the right of the main building was to allow the sacks of malt and hops to be lifted up into the building. This building, almost in full relief, ended up under two inches deep, with the siding run into the 'yard' area the total depth required was about four inches, the rail siding shared the same entrance as road traffic, entering across a road at the right hand end.
The brewery on which the sketch is based was the Royal Oak brewery in Stockport. The 'dray' shown below belonged to the Lion Ales brewery in Blackburn, the illustration is based on a 1950s Thornycroft lorry advert and shows how wooden casks were loaded. Once loaded metal rods were fitted to the sides of the dray with one or sometimes two lines of chain running between them (as shown on the 8-wheeler above). At the delivery end a sack of hay (or something similar) was dropped on the floor beside the dray and the barrel rolled off the lorry to fall onto this. The barrel was then rolled to the entrance to the cellar of the pub, which usually (but not always) was a cellar, and maneuvered onto a raised set of timber rails.
Fig ___ Lion Ales dray
Breweries also supplied a range of their products in bottles, some beers were only available as a bottle. This meant they needed a bottling plant, but these seem to have been (in general and at smaller breweries) accommodated within the typical brewery buildings. The bottles were shipped in unpainted but rather dark coloured open topped wooden crates holding 12 bottles (from memory). The crates were fairly consistent in size, roughly 15 inches long, 12 inches wide and about 10 inches high. Crates of bottles were carried on the drays and some breweries also operated smaller flat-bed lorries to carry them. Crates of bottles are a difficult proposition to model, and you need rather a lot of them, but the Preiser range of accessories includes an unpainted set that includes a good number of these crates.
Inward supplies to the brewery would include sacks of malt and hops and sacks and casks of sugar, all shipped in sheeted open wagons and perhaps vans. The cooper would use large numbers of barrel staves and empty barrels would be returned from the customers. The boilers require coal and there would also be supplies of empty beer bottles. I believe the bottles were supplied in cartons or light wooden cases, each bottle wrapped in paper.
The standard size for oak barrel staves was five foot six inches long (160 cm), three inches (7.5 cm) thick by five inches (12.5 cm) wide as this was long enough to make the largest common barrel. The staves were shipped loose and would be stacked on end in open wagons for rail transport. They were not usually sheeted over as they were well seasoned by the time they arrived in Britain. I think the easiest way to make such a load is to glue some used match sticks down (packed closely side by side) to a scrap of wood with water soluble PVA glue then sand them down to about half thickness. You can then cut them to length with a razor saw whilst they are still glued down and release the resulting 'planks' by soaking in water.
Outgoing rail traffic would be filled beer barrels mostly in open wagons, cattle wagons were also used and some companies built 'cask wagons' or 'beer vans' as well. The crates of bottles would always be in vans I believe.
Fig ___ Railway wagons used for beer traffic
In the post war era BR built open wagons on redundant plate wagon chassis to carry pallets of 'keg' beer, shipped strapped to pallets in plain metal 'barrels'. The bauxite wagon shown above is an example of the type. I am not sure about the later involvement of BR with the keg beer trade, it may well have ended when Speedlink was wound up in 1991. The more recent privatised 'enterprise' services may carry beer, in which case it will almost certainly be in kegs, but I am not sure on that. In the 1970s the kegs were distinctly 'barrel' shaped, these days they favour cylindrical types which stack more closely. These have always been shipped palletised, they are much smaller than the traditional wooden beer barrel (the term 'keg' is an actual measure), those I remember were about two feet tall or 60cm. The older barrel shaped examples (mainly associated with beer) were strapped 4 to a pallet, by the later 1980s the cylindrical type (mainly associated with lager) were shipped 8 to a pallet (in two layers of four), and by the later 1980s they were wrapped in plastic to hold them together (I am not certain when the plastic wrapping came in, I think it was the later 1980s). You sometimes see 12 smaller kegs on a pallet these days, however modern kegs are all measured in litres and I never got round to bothering with that as a measure.
Fig ___ 1970s and 2007 kegs
There were a few rail tank wagons used for beer traffic although these were never common. Scottish and Newcastle breweries operated a couple of for wheeled rail tank wagons, the body was a dark red with white serif markings. The example shown below is an Ind Coope three-compartment tank from a photo taken in the 1950s. Modelling this tank is discussed in the section 'Kit Bashing - K Various types of unusual tank wagons'.
Fig ___ Railway beer tank wagon
In the post war era there were a number of railway road-rail beer tanks in use, the illustration shows two of these, for more information see the section 'Kit Bashing - J Various types of road-rail tanks and wagons'. The illustration below shows a Whitbreads tanker and one type of Guinness tanker.
Fig ___ Road-rail beer tanks
Probably more common were the demountable beer tanks, also from the post-war era, for more information on the beer tanks and demountable tanks see also 'Freight Operations - Grain and Beer Traffic'. Modelling the demountable tanks is discussed in the section 'Kit Bashing - H Various types of BR era demountable tanks and wagons'.
The model shown below is liveried for Bass Charringtons beer, the upper sketch shows one of these tanks in later life being used for adhesives.
Fig___ Model of a demountable beer tank
Also going out would be quantities of 'spent grain' (in bulk in sheeted open wagons), used hops (I think in sacks but I am not certain on they yet) and bags of brewers yeast, all of which would be destined for the animal feeds business. In the later 1950s BR was using sheeted iron ore hoppers to carry the spent grain, the illustration below shows an N Gauge Society hopper fitted with a tarpaulin for this traffic.
Fig ___ Sheeted hopper delivering spent grain
The large breweries in Burton on Trent had their own internal railways, some years ago Bass commissioned an N Gauge model of their brewery for their museum, if that is still there it would be worth a visit if only to get a sense of the scale of the prototype. It would be perfectly possible to build a shunting layout just representing the internal railway system at a large brewery. The illustration below shows one of two hoppers photographed at the Bass brewery in the 1960s, I believe these are 'internal user' vehicles as there did not appear to be any of the usual railway markings.
Fig ___ Bass internal hopper wagon for malt
The Bass red triangle was the first registered trade mark in the UK, registered in 1875 and reportedly in use since the 1600s.
Outline history of the industry
Brewing goes back a very long way, a lot of pubs and inns made their own beer but by the end of the 18th century separate breweries supplying several customers was the norm. Gin was cheap to make, and cheap to buy (see under Spirits and Distilleries), it was causing a great deal of concern by the later 18th century so in 1830 the Prime Minister (The Duke of Wellingon at that time, and back then he was called the First Minister of the Treasury, which is technically the correct title even today) decided that the seriously poor (who were supported by the community) could apply for a licence to sell beer from their home, thereby reliving the parish of the cost of their upkeep. Part of the idea was to wean people off gin and onto beer, one part of the Beer Houses Act of 1830 reduced the duty on beer, making it a relatively cheap drink. 24,000 licences where issued in 1830 alone, with 50 new beer houses a day opening in Liverpool, this had a devastating impact on the existing licensed trade but probably improved the health of the nation quite a lot. Having said which a couple of years later Parliament became sufficiently concerned about the resulting drunkeness to form a committee to look at the matter and from 1933 there were a number of Beer Houses (Ammendment) Acts but it was only with the 1933 Beerhouse Act that a requirement for an annual licence to be granted by local magistrates was introduced.
Most beer was made at the pub by the landlord until the later 19th Century, by which time many local breweries had been set up, known as 'common brewers' these sold their beer wholesale to the nearby pubs, inns and hotels. The economies of scale meant that the brewers beer was often cheaper than the publican could produce himself and pub brewed beer faded away over time.
In 1839 a brewer by the name of Samuel Allsopp was instrumental in getting the railways to run a line to Burton on Trent, setting the scene for that town's dominance in the brewing trade. By 1870 the number of breweries in Burton increased to 26, although Bass and Allsopp were responsible for 70% of the output from the town. Some of these breweries were owned by the London Brewers who had found that they could not brew competitive 'pale ales' with London water. Some like Ind Coope opened their Brewery fairly early on (eventually merging with Allsopp), others resisted, for example Truman opened a Burton operation only in 1874.
In 1883 Bass was using 250,000 quarters of malt and 31,000 hundredweight of hops. The export trade was also booming, serving places as far away as India and Australia, and some 40,000 casks per annum were required for export alone. Huge numbers of staves were required, in the millions, many imported from the USA. By 1890 Bass was by far the worlds largest brewer with a huge site employing thousands of people. By 1900 breweries were being established on the Indian sub continent and in Australia and New Zealand and the export trade was in serious decline.
By this time there were over 30 breweries in Burton, between them operating some 87 miles of private brewery track with 36 level crossings in the town.
By the 1880's beer consumption was fluctuating, many pub landlords found it hard going and had to sell their leases to the breweries, fuelling the trend for 'tied houses'. The breweries were by this time increasingly looking at a national rather than regional or local market and favoured tied houses as these provided a guaranteed outlet for their beer (a law passed in the 1860s relating to licensed premises had also boosted this trend). After about 1900 things began to look up for the pub trade as a whole and the majority of pubs were by this time brewery owned but immediately prior to the First World War the government raised the licence duty on tied houses, forcing many smaller breweries into bankruptcy. The second world war caused some material damage to many breweries but the economic restrictions and generally hard times of the immediate post war era did far more damage.
There are several flavours of British beer, pale ale, mild or brown ale, stout and Burton or strong ale. Dark beers are made from malts which have been heated more than those for the lighter beers and 'stouts' are made with roasted malt or roasted barley. Lager beer is slightly different, it has less hops in it and can be made from a range of grains (the American lager 'Budweiser' is made from rice, in America lager is called beer and British beer is called ale). In about 1890 one worthy commented:
Every want, whim and fancy of the ale-drinker may now be gratified. There is Scotch or old Burton for the lover of strong beer, porter for the labouring classes, stout for the weakly, and last but far from least, that splendid liquid, pale ale, which when bottled, vies with champagne in its excellence and delicacy of flavour, and beats it altogether out of the field when we take into consideration its sustaining and restorative powers.
By the end of the 19th century the Middle Classes were asking for lighter bottled beers and the breweries in Burton were happy to oblige as these required less time maturing at the brewery, by 1900 this could be provided in casks as 'bitter'. From the time of the First World War the strength of British beers (both in terms of the alcohol and also the yeast left in the beer) was greatly reduced, making it less of a 'food' but also a lot less likely to get you drunk.
Burton was by far the most important brewing centre, the water in London could not be used to make Pale Ale (so the London brewers produced Porter, Stout, Mild and Strong Ales). Later, as water treatment technology improved ways were found to make something akin to Burton water in London and Pale Ale was produced there.
In the post world war two era there was a rash of mergers, producing ever larger national brands, although many people felt that the quality of their local beers suffered as a result. By the end of the decade just six brewing companies dominated the British markey, these were
Allied Breweries, Bass Charringtons, Courage, Watney [by then owned by the Grand Metropolitan hotel chain], Scottish and Newcastle and Whitbread. Guinness was the main supplier of stout and also introduced their own brand (Harp) larger.
In the 1960s there was a push to try and sell 'keg' beer, that is beer filtered to remove the yeast and pasteurized as this was far more profitable for the breweries. This stuff is shipped in aluminium 'kegs'. At the pub they attach a cylinder of carbon dioxide to the keg, at the bar they have a 'tap' in place of a 'pump'. As it lacks taste it often served chilled (as is lager, for the same reason) and it was rather 'fizzy' compared to traditional beers. In the North people tend to prefer a 'head' of froth on their beer, believing this indicates the beer is 'healthy' (there is some truth in that idea) and a pint glass has an extension above the one pint line but in London and the south the 'head' is less popular and a 'pint glass' holds exactly a pint.
The first keg beer to market was 'Watney's Red Barrel', sold by Watney, Mann and Truman, which was at the time a subsidiary of Grand Metropolitan plc. Originally developed for export (Watney's claim this was in the 1930s), this was heavily promoted (again as with lager the lack of taste means a lot has to be spent on advertising) and by the early 1960s it was seen in all parts of the country. One idea that caught on was the large can, holding either four or seven pints, introduced in 1968 and marketed as the 'Party Four' and 'Party Seven'. These proved popular, I remember in the later 1960s and early 1970s attending parties in some very out of the way places at which cardboard cartons containing two of these tins were an essential feature.
Other keg beers include Whitbread's 'Tankard', Ind Coope's 'Double Diamond' (originally a bottled beer I believe), Younger's 'Tartan', Worthington 'E' and Courage 'Tavern' however none were as widely available or as heavily promoted as Red Barrel. If the facility on your layout is a remote bottling plant rather than a brewery signs for one of the above brands would help set the date as the 1960s and 70s.
The keg beers were consistent and intensive advertising made them popular for a time, but people drifted back to 'real ales', citing the lack of taste as a major factor. The growing distain for keg beer saw the formation of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMERA), founded in 1971 and now (early 21st Century) the largest single-issue consumer group in the country. Keg beer is more profitable for the brewers and remains standard at the 'kiddie pubs' catering to the younger kamikaze drinkers, (which are also more profitable for the publicans). In the later 20th Century there was a resurgence of interest in pub brewed beer as the breweries merged and standardised on the commercially profitable but often not very good beer types (notably various forms of cheap lager beer, promoted on the basis of their alcohol content and chilled to disguise their lack of flavour). The result was the 'micro brewery', producing a small range of traditional beers on the premises. By the 1990s the government had decided that we had too few brewers who between then controlled too many of the pubs and legislation was passed to open the market up somewhat. The reputation of the 'kiddie pubs' and the drunken kiddes encountered on the streets around them had damaged the trade however, driving away the grown ups who traditionally had patronised pubs. The supermarkets has meanwhile targeted the drinks industry as their next area of expansion, killing off the 'off licences' by the early 21st Century. The combination of loud TVs and juke boxes in the pubs, drunken youths on the street and supermarkets selling cheap booze told against the trade and by the early 21st century the pubs were closing down. This however meant that the social formum offered by the pub had gone and one could no longer easily find the name of a good plumber.
Major Breweries
NB This section is still being worked on - If your brewery isn't here, and you know anything about it, please contribute by sending me an e-mail!
In the mid 1960s there were well over a hundred breweries in the UK, owned by about a hundred different firms and producing over 30 million barrels of beer a year. Personally I gave up trying to sort out a suitable brewery company, logo and livery and invented my own (Dedard Ales, who operated a single brewery supplying a small chain of Dedard pubs run by Dedard landlords and a separate bottling plant supplied using a single railway tank wagon and a couple of 'demountable tanks'). The logo was a letter D flanked by two lines (a 'flying' or 'winged' D). This could be drawn on with a fibre tipped pen or a white 'roller ball' jell pen and meant I did not have to rely on transfers (expensive, when available).
Fig ___ Dedard logo
There were innumerable local breweries some of which merged, others failed, and there were also rather a lot of major breweries (taken here as those serving more than their own local area), many of whom bought out smaller firms but retained the brewery and the 'brand'. Some notable examples of the latter were: Allied Breweries Ltd., Allsopp Breweries Ltd., Bass Ltd., The Association of Clubs' Breweries Ltd., Charrington United Breweries, Courage Barclay and Simonds Ltd., Arthur Guinness Son and Company Ltd., Ind Coope Ltd, Scottish and Newcastle Breweries Ltd., Tollemache and Cobbold Breweries Ltd., Truman Hanbury Buxton and Company Ltd., Vaux and Associated Breweries Ltd., Watney Mann Ltd., Whitbread and Company Ltd.
Other alcoholic beverage makers included: The Distillers Company Ltd., International Distillers and Vintners Ltd. and Showerings, Vine Products and Whiteways Ltd.
Allied Breweries Ltd. See Ind Coope below.
Allsopp Breweries Ltd
Originally based in Burton on Trent throughout the 19th century Allsopp's brewing business was second only to Bass in size. In 1913 the company and they went into receivership and in 1934 it was merged with the neighbouring Ind Coope & Co.Ltd. to form Ind Coope & Allsopp Ltd. Allsopp's brand remained in use however (the company dropped Allsopp from its name in 1959 but the brand remained in use)
Ansells Brewery
Founded in 1888 in Birmingham, they became a limited company in 1901 and grew by acquiring several other smaller local brewers including Rushtons (1923), Lucas of Leamington (1928) and Holt's Brewery (1934). Holt's logo, a Red Squirrel seen in side profile, was subsequently adopted by Ansells to identify its own beers. In 1961, Ansells merged with Taylor Walker & Co and Ind, Coope & Co to form Allied Breweries. There were tank lorries and tank road trailers branded Ansells operating in the 1970s but the Birmingham brewery closed in 1981. From early 2002, the brand was produced by Carlsberg Tetley at their Leeds plant.
Bass
Set up in 1777 by a Mr William Bass at Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire. In 1888 the company was incorporated as Bass, Ratcliffe & Gretton Ltd. but the brand remained Bass. In 1926 Bass bought out Worthington & Co. In 1961 they merged with Mitchells & Butler to form Bass, Mitchells & Butler and in 1967 this company merged with Charrington United Breweries (maker of Carling Lager) to form Bass Charrington Ltd. In 1983 the company was renamed Bass plc. In 1997 they purchased Robinson's Soft Drinks (the makers of the famous barley water). In 2000 Bass decided to concentrate on its hotels business and sold its brewing interests to Interbrew. In 2002 the American firm Coors acquired the England and Wales business of Bass Brewers and created Coors Brewers, which has breweries in Burton, Alton and Tadcaster.
Charrington United Breweries Ltd
Charrington United was formed in 1962 by the merger of the London based Charringtons with the Northern Breweries of Great Britain Ltd, the new group was then one of the largest brewing empires in Great Britain (they adopted the Toby Jug as its emblem). The latter included Hammonds Bradford Brewery Co, who purchased the Tadcaster Tower Brewery Company in the 1940s, becoming Hammonds United Breweries Limited. In the 1960s HUB merged with Hope & Anchor (based in Sheffield and famed for its Jubilee Stout, this brewery introduced Carling Black Label in 1954) and John Jeffrey & Co. Ltd (based in Edinburgh), forming Northern Breweries of Great Britain Limited. In 1967 Charrington's merged with Bass, Mitchell's and Butler, of the Midlands to form Bass Charrington. This latter company operated demountable beer tank containers in the early BR era, these are discussed in 'Kit Bashing - H Various types of BR era demountable tanks and wagons produced using the Ratio oil tank kit and Peco chassis kits.
Courage Barclay and Simonds Ltd.,
Courage & Co Ltd was set up as a brewery in Bermondsey in 1787, it had become Courage & Donaldson in by the 1880s but soon rebranded itself Courage Ltd. In 1955 Courage merged with Barclay, Perkins & Co Ltd to become Courage, Barclay & Co Ltd, in 1960 a merger with Simonds' Brewery (based in Reading) brought the name to Courage, Barclay, Simonds & Co Ltd. but in about 1970s they shortened this back to Courage Ltd again. The company was bought out by the Imperial Tobacco Group Ltd in the early 1970s but they sold the brand to Elders IXL, who were renamed the Foster's Brewing Group in 1990. They then merged the Courage side of the business with the breweries of Grand Metropolitan but Courage was then bought by Scottish & Newcastle in 1995, at some point the rights to the Courage brand were sold to a company called Wells & Young’s Brewing Company.
Arthur Guinness Son and Company Ltd.
Guinness was brewed in Dublin and shipped to the UK and the Guinness deliveries from their Park Royal brewery in London to the various 'stores' depots around the country were truly epic in nature. Up to World War Two the stout was shipped in wooden casks, local deliveries from Park Royal (including the south Midlands and East Anglia) were by road, further afield Guinness stores were supplied by rail. During and after the war the shortage of American oak for the casks lead to a move toward bulk shipments, 500 gallon stainless steel demountable tanks proved a success (over a thousand were built) and road tank trailers were supplied in some numbers as well as a fleet of eight wheeled tanker lorries (operated up to 1953 by the firm of Thomass Allen, who had been road-hauling Guinness for many years). Following the nationalisation of road haulage British Road Services had to be employed for deliveries of more than 25 miles from base but in 1953 the fleet of Thomass Allen delivery vehicles (and most of the staff) were purchased by Guinness and reestablished as Park Royal Transport Ltd). On the railway side there was a twice weekly block train up to the distribution and bottling plant in Newcastle with open wagons filled with casks and several demountable tanks as well. The tanks were plain metal and 'cheese shaped', that is circular with a flat top and bottom and quite large (two per wagon). The road rail tanks were used to supply depots in Newcastle, South Wales and Plymouth (as well as other destinations). They introduced their 'Harp Lager' brand in the 1960s (I believe), with the brewing being done in the UK. Harp, as with most lagers, was purely a 'keg' beer, shipped in aluminium kegs as described above.
To add sketches of road-rail tank and demountable tanks
Ind Coope Ltd later Allied Breweries
This firm had the familiar 'red hand' logo. This logo as retained after they took over Allsopps to become Ind Coop Allsopps in 1934. Somewhere about the time of the Second World War this firm built an unusual three compartment beer tank wagon, illustrated above and described in the section 'Kit Bashing - K Various types of unusual tank wagons modelled from W&T and Peco kit parts'. In the post war era the company grew very quickly, they dropped the Allsopp name in 1959, becoming once again just Ind Coope and its bottled Double Diamond had become a national brand. They merged with Tetley Walker and Ansells in the 1960s, becoming the largest brewery company in the country. Showerings, Vine Products & Whiteways were acquired in 1968 and J Lyons & Co (ice cream, tea, coffee, cakes, catering, motor vehicles and meat products) were bought out in 1978. The company was renamed Allied-Lyons in 1981 and Allied Domecq in 1994 and continued expanding by purchasing other companies both in the UK and abroad. By the later 1980s it was considered to have over stretched itself, interest in cider, perry, British wines, speciality drinks and Lyons Maid ice cream had all gone by February 1992. They went into partnership with Carlsberg, forming Carlsberg-Tetley Brewing Ltd, and this company ended up owning all the breweries in the Allied group after 1997.
T D Ridley & Sons Ltd
Founded in 1842 this Essex company was registered 1906. It grew into a substantial group by buying other breweries but was sold to Greene King in 2005.
Scottish and Newcastle Breweries Ltd.
William McEwan's established Fountain Brewery in Fountainbridge in 1856. The company merged with Younger's in 1931, then with Newcastle Breweries in 1960 to form Scottish & Newcastle. This company operated demountable beer tank containers in the early BR era, these are discussed in 'Kit Bashing - H Various types of BR era demountable tanks and wagons produced using the Ratio oil tank kit and Peco chassis kits. Scottish & Newcastle opened a new Fountain Brewery at Fountainbridge, on a 22 acre site beside the Union Canal in 1973. The company also retained their older premises on the opposite side of the main road. In 1995, Scottish & Newcastle took over Courage to form Scottish Courage.
Tollemache and Cobbold Breweries Ltd.
This Ipswitch based company has a history dating back to 1723, Tollemache became part of the company in the 1880s. Over the years the company purchased a number of breweries in the south of the country and ended up owning over 300 pubs. In the later 1970s the company was bought out by Ellerman shipping line, then sold to various large conglomerates, eventually becoming part of Ridley's in 2002.
Truman Hanbury Buxton and Company Ltd.
Truman, Hanbury and Buxton were a major London based brewers. This company operated demountable beer tank containers in the early BR era, in brown with (I believe) white markings. These are discussed in 'Kit Bashing - H Various types of BR era demountable tanks and wagons produced using the Ratio oil tank kit and Peco chassis kits'. Truman's moved their entire operation to Burton on Trent in the 1970s, then merged with Watney Mann.
Vaux and Associated Breweries Ltd.
Watney Mann Ltd.
Watney Mann breweries were based in London, they bare famous, or possibly infamous, for their 'red barrel' keg beer brand.
In 1972 they were purchased by Grand Metropolitian, the hotel and brewing combine. The debt incurred nearly killed Grand Met but by the end of the 1980's they had recovered.
Grand Metropolitian made their money in the post war years by buying hotels. In 1970 they bought Truman Hanburg breweries, the biggest take over deal in history with a cost of £400 million. Grand Met already owned about half of the Danish Carlsberg breweries which sold Carlsberg and Tuborg beers.
Whitbread and Company Ltd.
Whitbread celebrated 250th anniversary in 1992, run by Whitbread family since 1742 and headquarters still in Chiswell Street, central London. By 1750 Whitbreads was one of the biggest of the 50 fiercely competitive breweries in London, second only to Calvert & Company. Their main products were stout and 'porter' (a weak form of stout) but in the 1830's Whitbreads introduced an ale which sold well.
Whitbreads managed to survive the 1950's and thanks to its distribution network it was able to offer amalgamation schemes which it called The Whitbread Umberella, to smaller companies. This in turn lead to the absorption of over twenty smaller breweries between 1950 and 1970, and the number of tied houses rose from less than a hundred to over ten thousand. There were many well known names which became part of Whitbreads in the amalgamations, Dutton (1964), Rhymney (1966), Threlfall and Fremins (1967), Strong (1968) and Brickwood in 1971.
The 1970's was a bad time for everyone, breweries included, and Whitbreads nearly failed in the middle of the decade. As interest shifted from ale beers to larger Whitbread began to diversify its interests and by the 1990's the company received only half its income from brewing.
Whitbreds are of particular interest in the present context as they operated road-rail beer tank trailers in the BR era, two of which were built in 1946 (see illustration above).
Worthington Ales
I am not sure when they were formed but they merged with Bass in 1926. The brand remained in use possibly into the 21st century (certainly into the later 20th century).
Interbrew
Interbrew is a Belgian company which, in May 2000, acquired the brewing business of Whitbread PLC, known as the Whitbread Beer Company (WBC). Prior to the take over of Whitbreads Interbrew’s involvement in the UK beer market was primarily through a licence agreement with Whitbread to brew and distribute Stella Artois. Later the same year (I think) Interbrew purchased the beer making interests of Bass PCL (who had diversified into hotels) and so became the largest brewer in the UK.
Coors Brewers
In 2002 the American firm Coors acquired the England and Wales business of Bass Brewers and created Coors Brewers, which has breweries in Burton, Alton and Tadcaster. By 2006 Carling (rebranded from Carling Black Label in 1998) was the UK's biggest selling beer brand.
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