Burton-on-Trent was long famed for the quality of its ales, but suffered a distinct disadvantage compared to the two other great brewing centres Britain has produced, London and Edinburgh. It lacked any sizeable population, and hence a local market for its produce. In order to sell its beers it had to transport them and it wasn’t even near the sea, which was the best way to move beer in the days before proper roads and canals.
Burton always had to look outwards, therefore, if its brewers were to make a name for themselves, unlike the London brewers who had a ready market on their doorstep. The Burton brewers were pioneers of and rapidly expert in exporting beers. In the eighteenth century that export market was largely concentrated on Russia and the Baltic, but the beers that they exported, although often termed ‘pale ales’, were not IPA.
Burton Ales sent to the Baltic were ‘nut brown, fairly sweet and of great strength.’ i They were also very popular. The great period of the Baltic trade was from 1740-1800. An Act of 1698 enabled work to commence to enable navigation of the River Trent, and in 1712 it became possible to move beer directly by water from Burton to Hull by barges run out of Gainsborough. Once in Hull cargoes were transhipped onto ocean going vessels to either serve the London market – some 638 barrels heading that way in 1712 ii - or increasingly the new export markets, though these latter took some time to develop.
There had always been a fair number of brewers in Burton (in 1600 there were 46 licensed victuallers supplying a population of 1,500 iii), but by the mid-eighteenth century the principal brewers were all involved in the export market. Some brewers like Benjamin Wilson, founder of the firm that was to become the mighty Samuel Allsopp built considerable mercantile interests around his export trade, and much of his export volumes were bartered for goods being imported. Indeed brewers often took payment in the form of staves needed for coopering the very casks needed to export the beer. In some years extracurricular mercantile activities yielded greater revenues than the brewing operations that had brought them into being.
This
explains why the Baltic trade was much more important than the relatively
trifling volumes of beer being transported. Consider, for example,
that in 1775 the entire Baltic trade from all the Burton brewers was
worth 11,025 barrels. In London in 1776 Samuel Whitbread alone brewed
102,500 barrels.
The Burton trade was fiddly too. We have explained elsewhere why London brewing
carried massive economies of scale that brewers elsewhere were unable to exploit
(www.london-porter.com), but in order to achieve sales the Burton brewers had
to trade piecemeal too. One order of 1770 was for ‘two 14 gallon casks
of strong ale by sea to London’ another was for one hogshead by land
to London. Frequently casks had to be ‘cased’ or enclosed in other
casks to stop the ‘Gainsboro’ Captains’, as the bargees were
known, from ‘sucking the monkey’.
The Baltic was not even the largest export market at the time, which was North America, and, though the Burton brewers undoubtedly shipped volumes there via Liverpool, this trade was dominated by London.
Whilst casks are easy to handle beer is an costly item to transport because it has a fairly low value in relation to its bulk, however export was relatively easy for brewers This is because the trade being undertaken around the globe was all being undertaken to one purpose; to support the manufacturing that was the power driving the economics of the British Empire. Raw materials (bulky) were being shipped in and finished goods (less bulky) were being shipped out.
Freight rates, therefore were markedly different depending upon which direction ships were heading. Indeed, some ships were grateful for goods to act as ballast. Melbourne Town Hall, for example, is built out of ballast rock excavated on Shetland. This differential operated whether the market was North America, the Baltic or India, and it enabled the seeding of the India Pale Ale market to be done cost effectively and entirely unofficially.