The heyday of the IPA market was remarkably short, strictly speaking running from the 1840s to the 1880s, and drove the rapid growth and fame of Burton. Heavily hopped and dry hopped with English Fuggles and Goldings as well as American and German hops, the IPA’s marked a half-way house between the vatted strong ales of previous centuries and the running ales of the modern era. This was because the length of the sea journey effectively substituted for the vatting period, enabling the brewers to dispense with the need for investment for vatting within the brewery.
It is quite probable that the shipwreck and sale took place. Whether it had such a catalytic effect, however, is suspect, for domestic sales did not really take off until 1839, and what happened in 1839 was that Samuel Allsopp was finally successful in attracting the railway to Burton, curing the town’s historic distribution handicap once and for all.
Burton was a boom town. During the 1840’s Burton breweries’ output increased from 70,000 to 300,000 barrels (still just less than Barclays in 1815, however), and the number of breweries increased from around nine to 15 in 1851 and to 26 by 1869, although Bass and Allsopp were responsible for 70% of the output. Some of these breweries were owned by the London Brewers who realised that they could not brew competitive pale ales with London water. Some like Ind Coope opened their Brewery fairly on – eventually merging with Allsopp – others were tardy and resisted; Truman opened a Burton operation only in 1874.
In
1845 the tax on glass was abolished and drinking from pewter went into
steep decline. The public could see their drink clearly and the growing
demand for pale ales received a huge fillip.
Burton trebled in size every decade from 1850 to 1880, such that Bass, which
gradually surged ahead of Allsopp was producing 900,000 barrels in 1874 . In
1883 Bass was using 250,000 quarters of malt and 31,000 hundredweight of hops.
Some 40,000 casks per annum were required for export alone. Huge numbers of staves
were required, many from the US where even in the previous century New England,
Virginia and Maryland were together supplying up to 60 million staves per annum.
In 1889 Allsopp’s, then the country’s third largest brewery firm, boasted a union room ( a fermenting and cleansing room where casks where held together ‘in union’) of 375 feet in length and 105 feet in width, containing 1,424 unions capable of cleansing 230,688 gallons at a time. Allsopp’s entire compliment of unions numbered 4,500 for around 695 gallons capacity each. The firm employed 1,600 excluding white collar staff. In 1851 the entire blue collar employment of the Burton brewers was 867 men and 61 boys.
In 1889 Bass – the world’s largest brewing company - on the other hand employed 2,250 in Burton alone, on a 145 acre site, on which there were no fewer than 32 steam engines. It also owned 32 maltings in Burton and elsewhere and was bottling around 100 million bottles per annum, reflecting the growing middle class demand for drinking beer in the home. In 1889 brewing was booming.
“ Every want, whim and fancy of the ale-drinker may now be gratified. There is Scotch or old Burton for the lover of strong beer, porter for the labouring classes, stout for the weakly, and last but far from least, that splendid liquid, pale ale, which when bottled, vies with champagne in its excellence and delicacy of flavour, and beats it altogether out of the field when we take into consideration its sustaining and restorative powers.” xi
In a fast moving age, where much capital was at risk, it was not surprising therefore, that science and technology were also coming to the fore. Whereas the Porter brewers of the previous century had only the thermometer and hydrometer to assist them, the Burton brewers could call on an increasing array of technically more sophisticated brewing aides. In the 1830 the Scots had invented the ‘sparging’ machine. No doubt it was the Auld Allliance that prompted them to take the name for this rinsing device from the French verb asperger to spray. This removed the need for first and second mashes and possibly two boilings of the copper per gyle, with a third to make small beer. In 1853 the Steel’s masher improved the efficiency of mashing, removing the need for stirring the mash. First amongst these innovations, however, was the microscope.
Louis Pasteur had visited Whitbread in 1870 and persuaded them, rather reluctantly, to purchase one. From thence the brewers relationship with his yeast changed. He could start to study it, understand it, and from thence, instead of being at its mercy, could attempt - not always successfully – to control it. The effect of this was to eliminate the need for lengthy maturation. From there scientific analysis extended to understanding all the raw materials of beer. Brewing science became an occupation.