Thursday 16 November 2017

Kent Beers in 1902

Doing one of my random searches of the British Newspaper Archive a fascinating page of adverts.

It's from a local paper and features advertisements from three breweries from the immediate vicinity. What fascinates me are the similarities and differences between the three brewery's ranges.

The only beer common to all three is my old favourite, AK. Tomson & Wotton even brewed two AKs, presumably at different strengths because the prices are different. Slightly weird to see an AK described as East India Pale Ale. Light Bitter, which how the other two breweries describe it, is more usual.

Shepherd Neame and Tomson & Wotton also both have a beer called KK as their strongest Pale Ale. While Rigden's is called XXK. Though that is another way of writing KK. The london breweries originally called their Stock Ales XXK, XXXK and XXXK, before switching over to KK, KKK and KKKK. At 60s, Shep's KK was a very expensive beer. That's about the same as you'd pay for a barrel of Bass Pale Ale, a beer that commanded a high price.

I'm sure Tomson & Wotton brewed a Mild, even though it isn't mentioned in their advert. Odd that the other two breweries both call theirs Mild Beer rather than the more standard Mild Ale. Note that both only have a single beer described as Mild.

I was surprised to see that the two Faversham breweries produced both Table Ale and Table Beer. Table anything was pretty rare in England by this point. It had long been dropped by the big London brewers. The examples here must have been pretty low gravity as they're under 30s per barrel. At that price, they's have to be under 1040º.

Porter was already starting to die out in the provinces by this time. Though it seems to have clung on longer in the Southeast, possibly because of the proximity to London. Porter remained popular in the capital longer than elsewhere.

There's only one Strong Ale, Rigden's XXX. Which I'm guessing is a Stock Ale rather than a Stock Pale Ale.


Kent Beers in 1902
Brewery Place year beer price per barrel (s) price per gallon (d)
Shepherd Neame Faversham 1902 Stock KK India Pale Ale 60 20
Shepherd Neame Faversham 1902 East India Pale Ale, No. 1 48 16
Shepherd Neame Faversham 1902 East India Pale Ale, No. 2 36 12
Shepherd Neame Faversham 1902 East India Pale Ale, AK 34 11.33
Shepherd Neame Faversham 1902 Mild Beer 36 12
Shepherd Neame Faversham 1902 Table Ale 28 9.33
Shepherd Neame Faversham 1902 Table Beer 24 8
Shepherd Neame Faversham 1902 Stout 50 16.67
Shepherd Neame Faversham 1902 Porter 36 12
W.E. & J. Rigden Faversham 1902 XXK Bitter Ale 50 16.67
W.E. & J. Rigden Faversham 1902 SA Special Ale 42 14
W.E. & J. Rigden Faversham 1902 AK Light Bitter Ale 36 12
W.E. & J. Rigden Faversham 1902 XXX Stock Ale 58 19.33
W.E. & J. Rigden Faversham 1902 X Mild Beer 36 12
W.E. & J. Rigden Faversham 1902 TA Table Ale 28 9.33
W.E. & J. Rigden Faversham 1902 TB Table Beer 22 7.33
W.E. & J. Rigden Faversham 1902 DBS Double Brown Stout 53 17.67
W.E. & J. Rigden Faversham 1902 Nourishing Stout 48 16
W.E. & J. Rigden Faversham 1902 P Porter 36 12
Tomson & Wotton Ramsgate 1902 AK Light Bitter Ale 30 10
Tomson & Wotton Ramsgate 1902 AK Light Bitter Ale 36 12
Tomson & Wotton Ramsgate 1902 AKK Pale Ale 42 14
Tomson & Wotton Ramsgate 1902 KK Pale Ale 48 16
Source:
 Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald - Saturday 06 December 1902, page 1.

2 comments:

David Harrison said...

Mild was known as 'Beer' in East Kent. I remember the elderly gents in the Dragoon, Canterbury in the 70s would call for Beer, and were served Shepherd Neame Mild.Damn good, too.

Anonymous said...

Do you have a sense of why Porter was fading away? Or maybe you covered this extensively on your site and I should just use Google instead of asking you to repeat yourself...