Irish Brewing History: Beer Strengths in the Early 20th Century

One of the questions that comes to mind when I look at old newspaper brewery advertisements or at a newly-found vintage beer labels is just how strong were the beers of our brewing past. Nowadays the strength of any beer is displayed on the can or bottle, or perhaps scrawled in chalk on the blackboard over the counter in our favourite bar, and if all else fails a quick search online gives you the information you require.

But this was not always the case, as in the not-so-distant past there were few if any regulations regarding the displaying to the consumer of the strength of any given beer. I am not sure that the retailer cared, nor did the customer to any great degree other than knowing that XX was stronger than X and stout was stronger than porter - although that was really only true if you were comparing the brews from just a single brewery.

But that alcohol strength is one vital piece of information that is of importance to the strangely obsessive folks that inhabit the niche world of beer history, and in the absence of a brewing record showing the gravities of the beer before and after fermentation - and those records are quite rare in Ireland - there tends to be a lot of use of the word 'probably' instead of 'definitely' - something that seems to be the case with much of our general history too.

On a Recent visit to the archive department that is housed in the basement of the the library building on the wonderful campus at University College Cork, I unearthed an interesting notebook that belonged to an Edward Cruise of Ardee Street Brewery in Dublin. My reason for being there was to look for historic brewing recipes for Cork's own Lady's Well Brewery - or Murphy's Brewery as it is more commonly known - and I found those and much more besides, but this is a small example of the other treasures held within those well-minded records.

Ardee Street Brewery had quite a few owners, and I have written very briefly about the brewery with regard to an older beer label here, but in the time period we will be focussing on it was trading as Watkins, Jameson, Pim & Co. and Edward Cruise appears to have been the head brewer there during this period. He is listed here as a member of the London Section of The Institute of Brewing since 1913 with an address at Ardee Street. He would also become head brewer in Lady's Well Brewery in 1948 and later became a board member there¹. This would explain how this notebook ended up in these archives before it fell into my grateful hands - at least for one damp morning in October.

The notebook contains some quite interesting information but what stood out for me was a list of the gravities of different beers from 1906 until 1912. These were arrived at by a somewhat complicated process of distillation and gravity measuring that may or may not be entirely accurate but seems to give a relatively accurate figure for the original gravity of any given beer based on its 'present' gravity and spirit value. Mr. Cruise, or perhaps his laboratory team, had done all the hard work to give a list of final gravities (as well as other information) and this just left me with the task of calculating the Alcohol by Volume with a simple formula, and to transcribe to the best of my ability the handwritten list. You will see below where I have made some assumptions, but what it gives us is a fascinating list of the gravities of quite a number of beers that have been 'lost' up to this point.

Beer Gravities and Strengths - Calculated by the Distillation Method

Year	Product	Present Gravity	Original Gravity	Alcohol by Vol.
1906	Ardee Street Brewery(?) Vaults X No. 31	1.0141	1.0528	5.08%
1906	Mountjoy X [Porter?]	1.0144	1.0587	5.81%
1906	D'Arcy & Son Porter	1.0198	1.0587	5.11%
1907	Mountjoy Porter	1.0137	1.0567	5.64%
1907	D'Arcy & Son Stout	1.0184	1.0617	5.68%
1907	Guinness Extra [Stout]	1.0232	1.0732	6.56%
1907	D'Arcy & Son Porter	1.0183	1.0546	4.76%
1907	Watkins X D[raught?]	1.0162	1.0548	5.07%
1907	O'Connell Strong Ale	1.0105	1.0522	5.47%
1907	Foreign AG & Co(?) Invalid sold in Limerick - Guinness?	1.0213	1.0760	7.18%
1907	Watkins 14 S.S. [Special Stout]	1.0126	1.0543	5.47%
1908	Guinness XX Draught	1.0216	1.0740	6.88%
1908	Guinness same as sent to Texas(?)	1.0116	1.0703	7.70%
1908	O'Connell Strong Ale	1.0146	1.0533	5.08%
1908	Younger & Co Canteen Stout	1.0237	1.0508	3.56%
1908	Watkins No. 1 Skr(?) 45 XX	1.0179	1.0755	7.56%
1909	"Strangways" [Strangman's!] Waterford Porter	1.0198	1.0561	4.76%
1909	Ind Coope Luncheon Stout	1.0131	1.0542	5.39%
1909	Allsopp Oatmeal Stout	1.0143	1.0554	5.39%
1909	Ardee Street Brewery(?) Pale Ale supplied to canteen	1.0061	1.0517	5.99%
1909	Ardee Street Brewery(?) Mild Ale	1.0061	1.0511	5.91%
1909	Ardee Street Brewery(?) Pale Ale Ex Vaults	1.0060	1.0511	5.92%
1909	Ardee Street Brewery(?) D.S. [Double Stout] Canteen	1.0134	1.0640	6.64%
1909	Ardee Street Brewery(?) XXX Ex Vaults	1.0205	1.0821	8.09%
1909	Ardee Street Brewery(?) Canteen Pale Ale	1.0117	1.0540	5.55%
1912	Guinness X	1.0145	1.0562	5.47%
1912	Guinness X	1.0152	1.0563	5.39%
1912	Guinness X	1.0154	1.0569	5.45%
1912	Guinness X	1.0154	1.0569	5.45%
1912	Guinness XX - Sold at 3d per pint	N/A	N/A	N/A
1912	Ardee Street Brewery(?) No. 44 Vaults Special Stout	N/A	N/A	N/A

Transcribed by Liam - www.beerfoodtravel.blogspot.com - via item BL/BM/BC/445(1-7) in Cork University Library Archives

Do not reproduce without receiving permission to do so and crediting sources

This is certainly a wonderful range with some interesting notes...

• O'Connell Strong Ale was not as strong as I would have assumed given the name
• He acquired a sample of Guinness that was the 'same as sent to Texas' if I have transcribed it correctly, and Guinness were certainly exporting to Texas at this time according to David Hughes's 'A Bottle of Guinness Please'
• I have assumed that where no name is given for the brewery or 'Vaults' are mentioned that these beers are from Ardee Street's Brewery's own stock - but I have no actual proof of this. It certainly gives a lovely list of the beers being brewed if we include those written as 'Watkins' - Special Stout, Draught X, Pale Ale, Mild Ale and XXX
• 'Canteen' beers were those normally supplied to army canteens but I am not sure if this is what the term means here, although I suspect it does
• Note how Strangman's in Waterford is written as 'Strangway's' - almost Strangeways!
• The 'Watkins No. 1 Skr(?) 45 XX' is quite a strong beer but I cannot quite make out some of the writing. I am assuming that the numbers shown beside various recipes refer to the gyle - again I have no proof of that
• We see a Younger's weak looking canteen stout listed as well as an Ind Coope Luncheon Stout and an Allsopp Oatmeal Stout - both at the same abv

There are some notes to the side of the list that give the actual OGs of some of Ardee Street Brewery's own beers (as well as figures from a Lipton Analysis?) and although they do not match exactly the calculated FG figure, they are generally close enough to right to give me confidence that the gravities of the beers are relatively accurate for the purposes of showing the strengths of the various brews.

Here are the original pages from the notebook to show the extra information and other notes ...

©Murphys Archive item BL/BM/BC/445(1-7), Special Collections & Archives, UCC Library, University College Cork, Ireland

© Murphys Archive item BL/BM/BC/445(1-7), Special Collections & Archives, UCC Library, University College Cork, Ireland

I hope you find this information as interesting as I did, I must admit I was quite excited to see it jump from the pages of a century old book ...

(With thanks to all the extremely helpful and professional people in the archive department in UCC.)

Liam

¹ ‘The Murphy Story’ – Donal Ó Drisceoil & Diarmuid Ó Drisceoil

All written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its source, and a link back to this post.

Original images are © Murphys Archive item BL/BM/BC/445(1-7), Special Collections & Archives, UCC Library, University College Cork, Ireland from whom I have received permission to display these images on this site.