Today is the 64th birthday of Des de Moor, who’s a London-based freelance beer writer. I honestly can’t recall exactly when we met, but we’ve been judging together at beer competitions and attending other beer events around the world for a number of years, and Des is great fun to share a pint with. He’s also the author of the CAMRA Guide to London’s Best Beer Pubs & Bars. Join in wishing Des a very happy birthday.
Today is the birthday of Joseph Bramah (April 13, 1748-December 9, 1814). Bramah was an English engineer, and inventor, whose most famous invention was the hydraulic press. But he also made improvements and created a practical beer engine, creating his beer pump and engine inventions between 1785 and 1797.
Another summary of his achievements is quite flattering:
English engineer and inventor whose lock manufacturing shop was the cradle of the British machine-tool industry. Central in early Victorian lockmaking and manufacturing, he influenced almost every mechanical trade of the time. Like Henry Ford, his influence was probably greater for the manufacturing processes he developed, than the product itself. He took out his first patent on a safety lock (1784) and in 1795 he patented his hydraulic press, known as the Bramah press, used for heavy forging. He devised a numerical printing machine for bank notes and was one of the first to suggest the practicability of screw propellers and of hydraulic transmission. He invented milling and planing machines and other machine tools, a beer-engine (1797), and a water-closet.
As for the actual patents, there were two of them. The first was in 1785 and was for what he called a “beer pump.” Then, in 1793 he was granted Patent No. 2196 for his improved version, now referred to as a “beer engine.” It was actually a Dutchman, John Lofting, who had first invented the beer pump in 1688, but Bramah’s were more refined and practical, and more importantly, patented. Curiously, Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History lists the patent dates as 1787 and 1797, so it’s unclear which are the correct dates.
In this engraving, entitled Men of Science Living in 1807-8, Bramah is on the left side, the tenth one in the back from the left. He’s the one with the wide sash across his chest and the star-shaped badge on his jacket. Others include Joseph Banks, Henry Cavendish and James Watt.
There’s even a J.D. Wetherspoon’s pub in his home town of Bramley called The Joseph Bramah
Today is the birthday of Ralph Thrale (1698-April 9, 1758). Thrale’s exact date of birth is not known, but he died today in 1758, so that’s why I’m celebrating his birthday today. He was born in Offley, Hertfordshire, England, the son of Ralph Thrale, a Cottager originally from Sandridge who moved to Offley. His uncle brought him to London around 1711 after his father died (when he was only 13) to work at his Anchor Brewery, in Southwark, in the central part of the city, and eventually he became the Master of The Brewers Company, having bought the brewery after his uncle’s death. He was also a Member of Parliament from 1741-1747 and also High Sheriff for Surrey from 1733-34.
The son of ‘a hardworking man at Offley’, Thrale was brought to London by his uncle, Edmund Halsey, the owner of the Anchor brewery at Southwark, who ‘said he would make a man of him, and did so but … treated him very roughly’, making him work ‘at six shillings a week for twenty years’. He soon ‘made himself so useful … that the weight of the business fell entirely on him’, and he was expected to succeed to the brewery.1 But he fell out with his uncle by marrying ‘a wench that Halsey wanted to have for his own pleasure’, and was cut off.2On Halsey’s death in 1729, the Anchor brewery was put up for sale. According to Mrs. Piozzi, Thrale’s daughter-in-law,
to find a purchaser for so large a property was a difficult matter, and after some time, it was suggested that it would be advisable to treat with Thrale, a sensible, active, honest man, who had been long employed in the house, and to transfer the whole to him for £30,000, security being taken upon the property. This was accordingly settled. In eleven years Thrale paid the purchase money. He acquired a large fortune. But what was most remarkable was the liberality with which he used his riches.
Returned as an opposition Whig for Southwark, the brewers’ constituency, he voted against the Government on the chairman of the elections committee in 1741 and on the Hanoverians in 1744, was absent from other recorded divisions, did not stand again, and died 8 Apr. 1758.
Thrale’s Anchor Brewery around 1785.
This mention of Ralph Thrale’s involvement in the Anchor Brewery is from “A History of Beer and Brewing,” by Ian Spencer Hornsey:
This is the entry for Barclay, Perkins & Co. Ltd, which at one time had been Thrale’s Anchor Brewery, from “The Brewing Industry: A Guide to Historical Records,” edited by Lesley Richmond, Alison Turton, published in 1990:
The Anchor Brewery around 1820.
And finally, the famous English writer Charles Dickens, during the period when he was writing many of his major works, “he was also the publisher, editor, and a major contributor to the journals Household Words (1850–1859) and All the Year Round (1858–1870). In “Volume V, from March 30, 1861 to September 21, 1861,” in a piece entitled “Queen of the Blue Stockings,” from April 20, 1861, Ralph Thrale is mentioned in a history of the Barclay Perkins brewery to give context to his tale:
A marker where Thrale’s brewery once stood in central London.
Today is the birthday of Thomas Dawes (April 8, 1785-February 11, 1863). He was born in Ambleside, Cumbria, England, but emigrated to Canada in 1808, eventually settling in Montreal. After working in breweries, he founded the Dawes Brewing around 1811 and it remained in the family until 1952.
This biography of Dawes is from the Musee de Lachine website in Montreal, Quebec’s exhibition on Black Horse Beer entitled “Pour boire il faut vendre” (To get a drink you have to sell):”
Born in Ambleside, England, Thomas Dawes (about 1775-1863) was the eldest of six children. He arrived in Canada in his early thirties, in 1808. In 1811, he settled in the area of Montréal called Côte des Argoulets (today’s Verdun borough), where he found work at a brewery run by Joseph Chapman. The brewing business suited him, it seems, since it became his lifelong career.
Thomas Dawes married Charlotte Weller in 1817, with Joseph Chapman and James Ogilvie as witnesses. The Dawes and Ogilvie families appear to have been friends. The connection was confirmed a few years later when, on April 21, 1826, Thomas Dawes and his associate Archibald Ogilvie bought from Stephen Finchlay a parcel of land southwest of Montréal, near what is now 28th Avenue in Lachine. Banking on his experience, Dawes set out to operate a farm and a brewery on the 4-acre by 30-acre lot.
This account of the brewery and the Dawes family is a Google translation from “Historie du Quebec:”
The name Dawes evokes one of the most famous breweries in Quebec. It was in 1811 that Thomas Dawes founded the Dawes Brewery, which was Lachine’s first industrial enterprise. Dawes is the third brewery on the island of Montreal, after the Molson brewery , founded in 1786, and the Dunn brewery , which appeared in 1809.
The Dawes Brewery is a family business, and no less than four generations of Dawes manage it, before selling the company to Canadian Breweries .
After Thomas Dawes, his sons James P. Dawes and Thomas A. Dawes took over. The third generation is represented by Andrew J. Dawes and James P. Dawes Jr. The fourth, by Norman Dawes, who has run the brewery for decades. But he sold it in 1952.
The Dawes were involved in the development of Lachine. Indeed, Thomas A. Dawes was mayor of Lachine from 1868 to 1869, while Andrew J. Dawes held this position from 1888 to 1893. It was the Dawes who funded the foundation of the Lachine General Hospital and of several churches , the tram network and the installation of the first Lachine telegraph line.
In addition, the Dawes family was among the founders of the Société d’Assurance Automobile du Québec , created in 1904 under the name of the Automobile Club of Canada . Andrew J. Dawes also headed Bell Canada, the Merchant Bank and other large companies. In addition, the Dawes imported and raised black percherons and contributed to the improvement of this horse breed. It will be remembered that it was Percherons who ensured the delivery of the beer and that they thus became the symbol of the Dawes brewery thanks to Black Horse beer .
In 1862, the Dawes built their imposing family home in Lachine (which was not sold until 1940). Around the Dawes area, large fields were devoted to the cultivation of barley and hops.
The decline of the Dawes brewery began in 1909, when sixteen Quebec breweries merged into the National Breweries Ltd. consortium. But the Dawes Brewery survived this ordeal, even if the company felt the effects of American prohibition in the 1920s. In 1939, it became the Dawes Black Horse Brewery, recalling its most famous beer.
In 1944, the Dawes proposed a merger with Molson, but the latter refused for fear of establishing a monopoly. The National Breweries Ltd. consortium was finally sold in 1952. It was bought by Canadian Breweries . The group is renamed Dow Brewery (moreover, the Dow Brewery had already existed for years, it was the designation for the whole consortium). The Dawes Black Horse Brewery disappears, as does the great Dawes dynasty. The Dow has long become one of the most popular brands among Quebecers, but that’s another story.
Nobody’s sure exactly when the birthday of Henry Thrale is, not even the year is certain. He may have been born in 1724 or it may have been 1720. He did, however, die on April 4, 1781. He was the son of brewer Ralph Thrale (1698–1758), who bought the Anchor Brewery in Southwark, London, England in 1729. Henry Thrale became the owner when his father died. By “the early nineteenth century it was the largest brewery in the world. From 1781 [after Henry Thrale died] it was operated by Barclay Perkins & Co, who merged with Courage in 1955. The brewery was demolished in 1981.”
Henry Thrale was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1765 to 1780. He was a close friend of Samuel Johnson. Like his father, he was the proprietor of the large London brewery, H. Thrale & Co.
Born at the Alehouse in Harrow Corner, Southwark, he was the son of the rich brewer Ralph Thrale (1698–1758) and Mary Thrale. He married Hester Lynch Salusbury on 11 October 1763; they had 12 children, and she outlived him. He was MP for Southwark 23 December 1765 – September 1780, an Alderman, and Sheriff of the City of London: a respected, religious man who was a good hunter and sportsman with a taste for gambling.
Thrale’s Anchor Brewery around 1785.
This is the entry for Barclay, Perkins & Co. Ltd, which at one time had been Thrale’s Anchor Brewery, from “The Brewing Industry: A Guide to Historical Records,” edited by Lesley Richmond, Alison Turton, published in 1990:
The Anchor Brewery around 1820.
And finally, the famous English writer Charles Dickens, during the period when he was writing many of his major works, “he was also the publisher, editor, and a major contributor to the journals Household Words (1850–1859) and All the Year Round (1858–1870). In “Volume V, from March 30, 1861 to September 21, 1861,” in a piece entitled “Queen of the Blue Stockings,” from April 20, 1861, Ralph Thrale is mentioned in a history of the Barclay Perkins brewery to give context to his tale:
A marker where Thrale’s brewery once stood in central London.
Today is the birthday of Thomas Fowell Buxton (April 1, 1786–February 19, 1845). He was “an English Member of Parliament, brewer, abolitionist and social reformer.” While he’s best remembered today for his role in abolishing slavery in England, he was also involved in the brewing business. “In 1808, Buxton’s Hanbury family connections led to an appointment to work at the brewery of Truman, Hanbury & Company, in Brick Lane, Spitalfields, London. In 1811 he was made a partner in the business, renamed Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co. Later he became sole owner.”
In 1808 [Sampson] Hanbury’s nephew, Thomas Fowell Buxton, son of Thomas Fowell Buxton of Earl’s Colne, Essex, and Anna Hanbury, joined the brewery, aged 21 or 22. Buxton (who was not a Quaker, though his wife was) became a partner in 1811, at the age of 25, with a 1/12th share, bringing the last element to what would eventually, by 1827, be called Truman, Hanbury, Buxton and Company. By now the Black Eagle brewery was making 142,179 barrels of beer a year, some 20,000 barrels more than Whitbread, but a long way behind the number two London brewer, Meux Reid in Liquorpond Street, near Clerkenwell, on 220,000 barrels, and trailing Barclay Perkins in Southwark, on 264,405 barrels a year, by a large margin.
Buxton’s wife was one of the Gurneys of the Norwich bank, and a cousin of Sampson’s wife Agatha. A few years after he became a partner, in 1815, the shares in the brewery were redivided into 41 slices, and Buxton, evidently after bringing in some extra capital to the firm, increased his share to 8/41ths. His greatest gift to the brewery was sorting out the management of a concern that, by 1815, owned 200 pubs outright and financed another 300 landlords. But he also successfully intervened to prevent a disaster that might have destroyed the business.
Sir Benjamin died in March 1780 and, without a son to take on the business, it passed to his grandsons. In 1789, the brewery was taken over by Sampson Hanbury (Hanbury had been a partner since 1780; the Truman family became ‘sleeping partners’). Hanbury’s nephew, Thomas Fowell Buxton, joined the company in 1808, improved the brewing process, converted the works to steam power and, with the rapid expansion and improvement of Britain’s road and rail transport networks, the Black Eagle label soon became famous across Britain (by 1835, when Buxton took over the business upon Hanbury’s death, the brewery was producing some 200,000 barrels (32,000 m3) of porter a year).
The Brick Lane brewery – now known as Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co – took on new partners in 1816, the Pryor brothers (the company’s owners were renowned for their good treatment of their workers – providing free schooling – and for their support of abolitionism). By 1853 the brewery was the largest in the world, producing 400,000 barrels of beer each year, with a site covering six acres.
However, the company also faced competition from breweries based outside London – notably in Burton upon Trent, where the water was particularly suitable for brewing – and in 1873 the company acquired a brewery (Phillips) in Burton and began to build a major new brewery, named the Black Eagle after the original London site.
In 1888, Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co became a public company with shareholders, but the balance of production was now shifting to Burton.
The Brick Lane brewery site covered six acres by 1898.
The Brick Lane facility remained active through a take-over by the Grand Metropolitan Group in 1971 and a merger with Watney Mann in 1972, but it was in terminal decline. It eventually closed in 1989.
Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co. was a venerable British brewery that operated for more than 3 centuries before it closed its doors in 1988. The original brewery was built on Lolsworth Field, Spitalhope, London, by Thomas Bucknall in 1669. He was soon joined by Joseph Truman, who became brewery manager in 1694. Joseph Truman brought Joseph Truman Jr into the company in 1716 and his executor, Sir Benjamin Truman, who took ownership of the business in 1722. Two years later a new brewery, The Black Eagle, was built on nearby Brick Lane, which grew to become Britain’s second largest brewery, employing some 1,000 people. Sir Benjamin died in 1780 without a direct male heir and left the brewery to his grandsons. In the same year, Sampson Hanbury became a partner and took over control in 1789. His nephew, Thomas Fowler Buxton, joined in 1808. He improved the brewing process by adopting innovations in brewing technology brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Outside his activities in the brewery, Buxton was a renowned philanthropist, and he was elected a member of Parliament in 1818. He was associated with William Wilberforce, a leader in the fight to end the British slave trade. By the time of his death in 1845, the brewery produced about 305,000 hl of porter annually. The brewery is even mentioned in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (1850). Seizing upon the growing influence of Burton as a brewing center in the 19th century, the company acquired the Phillips brewery there in 1887 and 2 years later became a public company. But its fortunes declined with the shift in popular taste away from porter toward pale ale near the end of the 19th century. In 1971, the brewery was acquired by the Grand Metropolitan Group, which, in turn, was merged into Watney Mann 1 year later. Thomas, Hanbury, and Buxton ceased production in 1988 but its brewery still stands on its site in Brick Lane, London, where it has been redeveloped into a complex of residential housing, offices, restaurants, galleries, and shops.
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet, (born April 1, 1786, Castle Hedingham, Essex, England—died February 19, 1845, near Cromer, Norfolk), British philanthropist and politician who, in 1822, succeeded William Wilberforce as leader of the campaign in the House of Commons for the abolition of slavery in the British colonies and thus was partly responsible for the Abolition Act of August 28, 1833.
A brother-in-law of the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, Buxton, in 1818, published his own Inquiry into Prison Discipline, based on his inspection of Newgate Prison, London. In 1823 he joined Wilberforce and others in founding the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The ideas he expressed in The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy (1839) inspired the British government to send an expedition to the Niger River Delta in 1841. Intended to make anti-slave-trade treaties with the peoples of the area, to engage in other kinds of trade, and to establish a missionary headquarters, the expedition suffered many deaths from fever and was soon recalled. Although Buxton did not accompany the group, his own health was permanently affected by the shock of the failure of the project. He was made a baronet in 1840.
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton was born in Essex in 1786. He was privately educated and went to Trinty College, Dublin. He became a close friend of Joseph Gurney after his mother (a Quaker) introduced him to the Norfolk based family.
He started to attend Quaker meetings with the Gurney family and married Joseph’s sister, Hannah, in 1807. He became a partner in a brewing company and became involved in several campaigns for social reform. Another of Joseph’s sisters was Elizabeth Fry and Buxton became involved in her campaign for prison reform.
In 1818, Buxton was elected MP for Weymouth, a position he held until 1837. He was a strong advocate for the abolition of slavery in the British Colonies. In 1823, he formed the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade, the committee that co-ordinated the campaign for total abolition. In 1824, he succeeded William Wilberforce as head of the anti-slavery party in Parliament, continuing the struggle until the Slavery Abolition Act, in 1833, freed all enslaved people in the British Empire.
In 1838, Buxton published The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy. In this book, he told the British government to make treaties with rulers in Africa. An expedition was sent in 1841 to put the plan into action but it failed, mainly because of the large number of deaths among the expedition members from yellow fever and malaria.
You can read an account of this expedition in White Dreams, Black Africa: Antislavery Expedition to the Niger, 1841-42 by Howard Temperley, 1991.
Thomas Fowell Buxton was made a Baron in 1840 and is famous for
saying. “With Ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.”
Today is the birthday of Gilbert Greenall (March 30, 1867-October 24, 1938). He “was the son of Sir Gilbert Greenall, 1st Baronet. The family’s wealth was based on the brewing business established by Greenall’s great-grandfather Thomas Greenall in 1762 (which later became the Greenall’s Group PLC) [and which now is part of the De Vere hotel operator]. His father also had large interests in canals and banking. Greenall succeeded his father in the baronetcy in 1894 and notably served as High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1907, being appointed a deputy lieutenant the same year. In 1927 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Daresbury, of Walton in the County of Chester.
Lord Daresbury married Frances Eliza, daughter of Captain Edward Wynne Griffith, in 1900. He died in October 1938, aged 71, and was succeeded in his titles by his son Edward. Lady Daresbury died in 1953.”
Greenall’s Brewery was founded by Thomas Greenall in 1762. Initially based in St Helens, the company relocated to Warrington in 1787.
It bought the Groves & Whitnall Brewery in Salford in 1961, Shipstone’s Brewery in Nottingham in 1978 and Davenport’s Brewery in Birmingham in 1986. For much of the 20th century, the company traded as Greenall Whitley & Co Limited. The St Helens brewery was demolished in the 1970s to make way for a new shopping centre. The Warrington brewery on the edge of Stockton Heath was bought by Bruntwood, renamed Wilderspool Business Park and is now let to office occupiers.
The company ceased brewing in 1991 to concentrate on running pubs and hotels.
In 1999, the tenanted wing of the Greenall’s operation was sold to the Japanese bank, Nomura for £370 million[7] and the main Greenall’s operation, involving 770 pubs and 69 budget lodges, was sold to Scottish and Newcastle for £1.1billion. Greenalls started to focus its resources on its De Vere and Village Leisure hotel branding at that time.
In February 2005, Greenalls sold The Belfry to The Quinn Group for £186 million.
The Greenall family connection remained as Lord Daresbury, the descendant of the original founder, remained the non-executive chairman. This tie was severed in 2006 when Daresbury stepped down from the post and much of the family’s interest was sold.
Patriarch Thomas Greenall learned the brewing trade from his wife’s family in the 1750s and founded his own brewery in northwestern England at St. Helens in 1762. Brewing was a highly competitive business, with rivals ranging from the lone homebrewer to inns and pubs that brewed their own ales to wholesale brew masters like Greenall. Though the founder dabbled in nail making, coal mining, and yarn spinning throughout the late 18th century, brewing remained the family’s core interest. By the turn of the century, Thomas had brought sons Edward, William, and Peter into the business. The Greenalls began to purchase their own pubs and inns as early as 1800, helping to accelerate a gradual elimination of their competition. In Britain, it was customary for bars owned by breweries to carry only the beers brewed by the parent company. For nearly two centuries, these “tied houses” were a profitable segment of Greenall’s business.
In 1788, Greenall formed a separate partnership with William Orrett and Thomas Lyon to purchase the Saracen’s Head Brewery in nearby Wilderspool. Business was so good that within just three years the three partners undertook a £4,400 expansion of the operation.
The family business interests endured a rapid succession of generations in the first two decades of the 19th century. In 1805, both Thomas Greenall and William Orrett died. By 1817, the passing of William and Peter Greenall left only Edward to operate the growing St. Helens brewery. Just a year later, Thomas Lyon died. His nephew and heir, also Thomas, was interested in the Wilderspool brewery only as an investment. In 1818, 60-year-old Edward assigned eldest son Thomas to manage the family’s half interest in Wilderspool and charged younger son Peter with management of the family brewery at St. Helens.
While Peter pursued politics, eventually winning election to Parliament, Thomas proved to be the brewer of his generation. By this time, the family businesses had grown to the point that the Greenalls served as chairmen, guiding the overall direction of the company but leaving daily management concerns to other top executives. Throughout this period, ownership of the pubs and inns through which Greenall’s porters, sparkling ales, and bitters were dispensed was a key to maintaining a strong competitive position.
And this is Greenall Whitley & Co’s., Wilderspool Brewery, in Warrington in 1887.
And continuing Funding Universe’s history, this portion, entitled “Consolidation of Family Holdings in Mid-19th Century” is where Gilbert comes in and runs the company:
When both Peter and Thomas died in the late 1840s, their younger brother, Parliamentarian Gilbert Greenall, inherited the family’s St. Helens and Wilderspool holdings. Gilbert appointed his nephew, John Whitley, to manage the Wilderspool brewery in 1853 and set out himself to rebuild, retool, and enlarge the St. Helens operation mid-decade.
Longtime silent partner Thomas Lyon died in 1859 and his estate sold his stake in the Wilderspool brewery to Gilbert Greenall, making the Greenall family the sole owners of both the St. Helens and the Wilderspool operations. Gilbert marked the occasion by changing the unified firm’s name to Greenall & Company. Not long thereafter, Greenalls eliminated its last major local competitor by acquiring the Dentons Green Brewery in St. Helens. In 1880, Gilbert (who was made a baronet in 1876 by Queen Victoria) merged the St. Helens and Wilderspool breweries as Greenall Whitley & Company Limited and installed himself as the corporation’s first chairman. Though operating under the same corporate umbrella, the two houses retained their separate identities and brands. By 1882, Greenall’s annual sales volume totaled nearly 90,000 barrels of beer and the company owned about 200 pubs.
Sir Gilbert guided the expansion and modernization of the Wilderspool brewery as well as a flurry of acquisitions in the waning years of the 19th century. His four-year, £6,750 modernization program brought in state-of-the-art brewing and bottling equipment, upgraded the company’s railway access, and expanded the operation’s office space. Acquisitions included the Halewood, Richardson’s, and Spring breweries, bringing with them more than two dozen pubs. A rapid series of untimely deaths accelerated the family’s succession plans when in the space of just two years both Sir Gilbert and his second-in-command, Peter Whitley, died, propelling the chairman’s son, also Gilbert, into the leadership of two growing breweries at the young age of 27.
The new chairman suffered a trial by fire in the first two decades of the 20th century. He began the transition from horse-drawn transportation to gasoline-driven vehicles as early as 1908, adopting some of the first vehicles of their type. World War I brought extreme deprivation to the United Kingdom. Rationing of all foods–including brewing ingredients–and manpower shortages made this period a difficult one for Greenall Whitley, but the company emerged from the conflict unscathed.
The Greenall, Whitley & Co. Ltd. Brewery, in St. Helens, in 1902.
Greenall Whitley resumed its acquisition strategy in the period between the World Wars, purchasing nine pubs in 1919 alone. Four years later, the brewery diversified into wine and liquors through the acquisition of Gilbert & John Greenall Limited, a distillery owned by another branch of the family. Though the business remained concentrated in the northwest region of Britain, acquisitions gave Greenall Whitley a growing share of the area’s breweries and pubs in the early 1930s. The purchase of three operations in as many years added nearly 90 ale houses and inns to the company roster.
After four decades as chairman, Lord Gilbert Greenall (who had been given the hereditary title First Baron Daresbury of Walton by King George V in 1927) died in 1938, passing leadership of Greenall Whitley to his son Edward. In his nine years of service to the company, Edward made a special effort to restore and preserve the company’s historic pubs, as well as maintain high standards of quality in the breweries.
Today would have been Michael Jackson’s 83rd birthday. I first met Michael in the early 1990s, shortly after my first beer book was published. He is all but single-handedly responsible for the culture of better beer that exists today. He began writing about good beer in the 1960s and 70s and his writing has influenced (and continues to influence) generations of homebrewers and commercial brewers, many of whom were inspired to start their own breweries by his words. There are few others, if any, that have been so doggedly persistent and passionate about spreading the word about great beer. I know some of my earliest knowledge and appreciation of beer, and especially its history and heritage, came from Michael’s writings. Michael passed away in August 2007, nearly 14 years ago. I still miss him, and I suspect I’m not the only one. A few years ago, J.R. Richards’ documentary film about Michael Jackson, Beer Hunter: The Movie, debuted, which I helped a tiny bit with as a pioneer sponsor.
I did an article several years ago for Beer Connoisseur, for their Innovator’s Series, entitled Michael Jackson: The King of Beer Writers, A personal look back at the man who made hunting for beer a career. I reached out to a number of people who also knew Michael for their remembrances as well as my own, and as a result I’m pretty pleased with the results (although the original draft was almost twice as long).
I’ll again be playing some jazz and having a pint of something yummy in his honor, which has become my tradition for March 27, which I’ve also started declaring to be “Beer Writers Day.” Join me in drinking a toast to Michael Jackson, the most influential modern beer writer who’s ever lived.
At GABF in 2005, still wearing the same glasses. But my, oh my, have I changed. Sheesh.
On stage accepting the first beer writing awards from the Brewers Association with Jim Cline, GM of Rogue, Stan Hieronymus, who writes Real Beer’sBeer Therapy among much else, and Ray Daniels, formerly of the Brewers Association.
With Carolyn Smagalski receiving an award at Pilsner Urquell.
Today is the 81st birthday of Steve Wellington. He “started working for Bass in 1965, a year after the Worthington’s brewery was demolished, and brewed both Bass and Worthington’s beers. He left Bass to run his own business, teaching people how to brew at home, then returned in 1994 to run the White Shield microbrewery as part of the Brewing Museum in Burton. He brewed some of the beers Burton had lost: Worthington’s E, Imperial Stout, Barley Wine, and the legendary Worthington’s White Shield.” In 2007, he was named “Brewer of the Year’ by the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group in 2007 and Guild of British Beer Writers’ Brewer of the Year in 2004. I met him shortly after that, when I visited Marston’s in Burton-on-Trent, accompanying Matt Brynildson on a trip to do a collaboration beer. He was very generous with his time and showed us around his brewery. He then retired several times, as many as five (according to Roger Protz), the last time in 2018. When he retired previously, in 2011, Pete Brown referred to him as the “Jedi Master Brewer of Worthington White Shield,” and that sums him up nicely. I’ve run into Steve at least one another time, and he’s a great person. Join me in wishing Steve a very happy birthday.
Steve in the Worthington brewery when I met him.
Steve when he retired in 2011.
Wellington with a stash of ancient beer that was found in a vault under the streets of Burton upon Trent in 2007.
Today is the birthday of William H. Worthington (March 21, 1723-1800). Actually, it’s the date of his baptism, but that’s as close as we know, and, strangely, no one seems to have recorded the day he passed away and all we know is it was sometime in 1800. In 1761, he founded the Worthington Brewery in Burton-on-Trent, with the help of his wife Ann Tarratt, when “he purchased a brewery in the High Street for 320 pounds from Richard Cummings of Repton.”
The Worthington brand was purchased from Bass by the American brewing company Coors in 2002, which following a merger became Molson Coors in 2005. Worthington’s White Shield IPA has continued to be brewed since 1829. In 2010, Molson Coors opened the William Worthington microbrewery, which brews historical and seasonal beers.
The Worthington Brewery c. 1899.
Here’s the early history of the brewery, from Wikipedia:
William Worthington (1723–1800) was born at Orton on the Hill in Leicestershire, the fourth child of William Worthington (1687–1742), yeoman farmer, and his wife, Elizabeth. In 1744, he moved to Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire where he worked as a cooper at Joseph Smith’s brewery. In 1760, Worthington purchased the brewery from Smith’s successor, Richard Commings, for £320 (equivalent to £50,000 as of 2019).
By the 1780s, the brewery probably had an annual output of around 1,500 barrels, similar to the rival breweries of Benjamin Wilson and Michael Bass. Throughout the eighteenth century, Worthington sales were mostly of porter, directed towards the Baltic market, which was transported via narrowboat through the River Trent to the Port of Hull. Largely as a result of this trade, by the time of Worthington’s death in 1800, Worthington & Co. ranked among the largest of the provincial breweries.
And this account of the brewery is from the Oxford Companion to Beer, written by my friend Tim Hampson.
Worthington Brewery was established by William Worthington in the English town of Burton-on-Trent in 1744. It became one of a handful of companies to trade lucratively with the Baltic states along with the better-known Burton entrepreneurial brewers run by the Wilson, Sketchley, Bass, and Evans families. By the 1820s a worsening relationship with Napoleon Bonaparte soured much of this trade, and an alternative market had to be found.
Since at least the 1780s the East India Company had exported beers to the Indian sub-continent, following in the wake of the administrators and troops who left the United Kingdom to work in settlements there. Records show that some of the first shipments took place in 1697.
The trade was dominated by London brewer Abbot & Hodgsons, but the Burton brewers recognized a business opportunity when they saw one. When the London brewer faltered, the trade quickly became dominated by Burton brewers Bass and Allsop, and, to a lesser extent, Worthington. They first began to imitate the London brewers’ beer but discovered that a Burton IPA had the attribute of arriving in Calcutta pale, clear, and sparkling. See burton-on-trent and india pale ale. Sometime around the start of the 20th century the term “India pale ale” disappeared from White Shield’s label and became known by its heart shield and dagger label design, which was first registered as a trademark in 1863.
Worthington was never one of the big Burton brewers and was subsumed within the growing Bass empire in 1927. Somehow, nonetheless, the beer survived as a bottled beer. It was a curiosity as it still contained yeast in the bottle, long after the practice of bottle-conditioning had largely disappeared from British brewing. Drinkers’ conversations often focused on whether the beer should be poured clear or have the yeast tipped into the glass too. Many beer enthusiasts have commented upon the beer’s ability to age well, gaining character in the bottle over a year or two.
Blue plaque at the Unicorn Inn, Orton-on-the-Hill, August 2017. (Photo: Steve Peck)
