British Brewing in the 1970’s with Ron Pattinson – BeerSmith Podcast #328 – BeerSmith™ Home Brewing Blog

Ron Pattinson joins me to discuss the rich history of British Brewing in the 1970’s.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (45:03)

• This week I welcome back Ron Pattinson. Ron is the author of dozens of books and articles on historical beer brewing including his most recent effort to document British brewing during World War II. You can find his articles and purchase his books from his blog which is Shut Up About Barclay Perkins.
• We discuss Ron’s upcoming book on the early 1800’s in brewing as well as today’s topic which is his recently completed book on British Brewing in the 1970’s.
• We start with a discussion of how brewing evolved from the end of WWII through the 1950’s and 1960’s and into the 1970’s. Included is a discussion of how beer consumption grew even though the economy was dire and inflation was running rampant.
• Ron tells us about the move towards kegged bitters and away from traditional cask ales which was largely driven by the breweries themselves.
• We talk about consolidation in the beer industry, a move towards automation and the rise of the “technocrats” in British brewing.
• We discuss some changes in techniques including things like tank beer and continuous fermentation.
• Ron tells us about the “Runcorn disaster” where a very large brewery was built but it proved unable to replicate many of the beers it was supposed to produce.
• Ron talks about the rise of the modern beer festival and how it was a refreshing change as brewery owned pubs often limited the number and variety of beers many people could access locally.
• We discuss the rise of lagers in the 1970’s as well as the decline of milds and even bitters, representing a change in British drinking preferences.
• Ron gives us an example of some dodgy brewing practices going on including the reuse of returned beer by blending it with new.
• We talk about Watner’s Red Barrel which had quite a reputation for not being of the greatest quality.
• Ron explains how pub structures changed and the large numbers of brewery owned pubs were eventually broken up in the 1980’s.
• He shares his closing thoughts.

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