4.8% beers were, without a trace of irony, branded as 'Strong Ale' and if a beer was a whole 5 per cent, well, you'd genuinely have people shaking their heads, making a 'fwhooosh' noise, and saying things like 'Better not have too many of those!', 'Watch out for brain damage!', and 'Rather you than me, you criminally insane spazzbucket of derangement!'
No, really. They said things like this about 5% ABV beers in the early 1990s. Yeah, technically we had the 9% 'super strength' lager in cans, apparently consumed only by vagrants, and there were a few bottled exceptions like Whitbread Gold Label Barley wine and Thomas Hardy's Ale, but in a pub you'd struggle to find strong beers on draught, and if you inquired as to their existence, you'd be viewed with deep suspicion. You want a strong ale, have this one. 4.7%. Go easy on it there, boy.
How strong did you say it was?!?
And that's one of the reasons Gibbs Mew of Salisbury stood out among the regional breweries of their day. Their flagship beer, Bishop's Tipple, weighed in at 6.5%. And that, in them days, was a fairly big deal.They brewed it, I believe, all year round; you could get it on cask in their pubs in the West Country (and indeed often in London Wetherspoons) and it had a fairly wide availability in bottled form, with quite elaborate, colourful branding for its time.
After Gibbs Mew closed in 1998, the beers were contract-brewed by Usher's of Trowbridge, who themselves didn't last many more years. Bishop's Tipple was reduced to 5.2% and was a shadow of its former self.
And when Usher's went the way of all flesh, the brand was subsequently acquired by Wadworth's and changed yet again - apparently it's now down to 5% but still marketed as a 'strong ale' as if we're in the early 90s.
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| The current incarnation, courtesy of Wadworth |
Other Gibbs Mew beers were fairly nondescript and didn't generally travel East very often. I can barely remember what their bitter tasted like - it was an uneventful ordinary beer and perhaps nothing to shed tears over. (Salisbury is, however, a shockingly shite place to drink now, and this may well have been part of a broader effect of the closure.)
This is of course another barely explicable example of a regional brewery with a decent estate - around 300 pubs - that essentially spent decades building up a business, a brand, a product, a reputation, an identity... and then allowed it to disappear into the ether in the space of a few years.
How many younger people drinking the bland Waddies version of Bishop's Tipple today will even realise that this name is literally all that's left of a once substantial, if not great, brewery?
Gibbs Mew 1898-1998
In the early 80s, as a recently married young chap, my wife and I loved jumping in my first car and exploring England. Even then beer was my favourite hobby, and it was great to stay in far off counties with their own regional breweries (my own was Kent, Sheps and Fremlins). Staying in Glastonbury, about 1981, with a couple of friends, I drove us all to Montacute one day to visit the great N't stately home there. The house not being open for an hour or two, we parked up and wandered into the village. The Phelips' Arms, I remember it well. What was on handpull? Gibbs Mew Bishop's Tipple. It was wonderful, the best beer I'd ever tasted. I can't remember if they advertised the abv. Probably not, or I wouldn't have had 4 pints of it. I figured an afternoon in the house and a cream tea would sober me up before I drove back, hours later. I guess it did, but I remember us all giggling childishly in the dark halls of the house as the tudor portraits looked on.. I have some photos of the brewery in Salisbury, and I have an (empty) nip bottle I bought from a great little shop they had in the city. I don't think their other beers had a great reputation, but I thought they were OK, if maybe not that memorable. I was very sad when the brewery closed though.
ReplyDeleteGibbs Mew greatly expanded their tied estate in their last years by buying pubs from the former Big Six, which may have contributed to their downfall. The 1979 Good Beer Guide shows them as only having 55 pubs, but by 1996 the figure had risen to over 300.
ReplyDeleteApart from Bishop's Tipple, though, their beers never had much of a reputation, and they were regarded as being near the bottom of the Third Division South amongst family brewers. The 1994 GBG describes their Premium Bitter as "A truly bland and uninteresting beer".
GMs Wiltshire Bitter had reasonable sales in Brum in the mid 80s - it was one of the beers that had been available in Ansell's pubs during the Aston Brewery strike, and was so popular it survived long afterwards. Not a bad session beer, and certainly better than Ansell's or M&B's bitters. But in Salisbury, it was always Tipple. A great beer back then. I still have several bottles with "Save our Spire" branding.
ReplyDeleteIf I'd gone more personal with this entry, I would have chosen the Greyhound Brewery in Streatham.
ReplyDeleteA brewpub in London way, way before it became fashionable. Even before the Firkin chain. Streatham Strong. Streatham Dynamite. Probably rubbish beers by todays standards but great at the time.
I only really caught the back end of it in the early-mid 1990s. No idea where the brewing kit went. It was a real novelty to see fermenters behind glass back in them days...
Goose & Firkin, the first Bruce pub, was 1979. The Greyhound started brewing in 1984 but the pub was built in 1831. Streatham Strong was given as 1047 and Dynamite as 1056 whilst Dogbolter at the G & F was 1060. Information from the CAMRA New Beer Guide, published 1988 and fascinating to look back on nowadays.
DeleteThe G & F had a window in the floor which allowed a little of the brewery to be seen.
Agree that the GBG has little point now and I gave up buying it after the 35th edition - in fact the 1975 one was my first and I bought the 1974 second-hand a bit later - there is also a facsimile edition of 1974 so check the title page which makes it clear. I know someone who has 'Issue 0' but he keeps it locked away along with his original 1974 'Plague' edition.
In the 60's Gibbs took over a clubs brewery in the Lancashire village of Barrowford and churned out keg rubbish. Didn't last long and became Hammond's vinegar brewery. Who advised Gibbs to chuck money away on that venture? Gibbs' beers (apart from Bishop's Tipple) were like vinegar anyway, even on cask.
ReplyDeleteGreat and I have a swell offer: Whole House Renovation Checklist Pdf 1970's split level remodel
ReplyDelete