Bass
Back in the day my pub was tied to Bass Charrington. Regulars who remember drinking here in the '80s tell me that the landlord only served one ale back then: Draught Bass. It's an historic beer, and no mistake. Bass's red triangle logo was the first registered trademark in the world. Napoleon was said to have loved the stuff so much he asked whether it could be produced under licence in France.
Nowadays Draught Bass is produced by Marston's under licence from InBev, who own the brand. To be honest, I don't think I've ever tried it. I think it's one of those beers you only see in old man's pubs, so I very rarely come across it. I'm curious to see what it's like, so I'm going to order a cask. Just the one, mind.
In Édouard Manet's 1882 painting of the bar at the Folies Bergère, you can see a bottle of Bass sitting alongside champagne.
37 comments:
I always have a pint on the rare occasions I see it now. It's not a bad drop, with a definite 'Burton' flavour to it, but not outstanding. The Sloney Pony always used to have it on.
It's emminently forgettable stuff, brown, slightly malty, and wet. There's a pub up in Fotrovia (called The Hope, if I'm not mistaken) that has Bass as its only beer on tap. Tolerable if there's no other reasonable choice.
my grandad swears by it... best beer ever in his opinion. If he only lived closer he'd be there in a flash!
Howay Man,
Its on draft at The Florence, just off Upper Street by the shell garage, on the corner of . . . Florence Street
Ham
are you in your pub early tomorrow (Weds) eve, Jeff? In view of this post, I have an ideal gift for your cellar ...
Leave it in the cellar for at least 4 weeks or longer if you can. It needs ages to develop the ''Burton Snout''.
That's the sulphurous nose typical of Burton beers.
The same applies to Marstons Pedigree. We did one last year at 4 months cellaring, and at 2 1/2 months out of date..
It tasted like Pedigree should.
I've tried it. It's like an old man's beer.
"Old men's pubs". You're talking about me, aren't you? Just wait till you've got another decade or two under your belt and see how hip and fashionable you are then.
The old (union-brewed) draught Bass could, with proper handling, be a wonderful beer. In theory, Marston's brewery, having union sets, is the perfect place to reproduce Bass.
wow never noticed that before in the manet and i must have seen it a gazillion times, thanks for pointing that out.
derek
Martyn, yes!
Interesting, Bass is fairly popular in the U.S. in bars that serve things other than domestics. I had no idea it had negative connotations here. I was never the biggest fan of it, more of a it'll do in a pinch, but would be somewhat curious to see what it tasted like from a cask and at proper temperatures here.
I used to make the mistake of ordering it at the Falcon at Clapham Junction. A waste of good water.
The Ship in Fitzrovia (134 New Cavendish Street, W1W 6YB) has Bass as their only draft ale.
The keg stuff is a bit dull, I wounder if the cask version is much different?
I think the beer really came of age when Take That recorded a track called "Pint Of Bass" about 15 years ago.
It's the Border Collie of ales.
The ever-dependable, roast spuds on a Sunday, Joan Hunter-Dunn ale of England.
And I've never had a bad one.
Just found this on a website called "Information Britain":
Bass, cask conditioned and characterful, is one of our great beers. Its very character can lead to an unfortunate side-effect, a somewhat aromatic flatulence sometime after enjoying the beer, but that is a small and hopefully private cross to bear for one of the great tastes of Britain
I've always wanted to try cask bass as for many of us stateside fellas of a certain age (old, I guess according to some posters) it was their gateway to better brews than the big American breweries.
Old Sulphurous, as many brews from Marston's are.
It is an overrated 'character' in beer.
And, for the record, 'Burton Snatch' will decrease with age. It's a yeast thing.
I live in Derby which is chock full of pubs that serve Bass and Pedi, sometimes direct from the cask but more commonly from a jug. The first cask beers I ever had that I really enjoyed - the naysayers round here will tell you its not as good as it used to be but its still a refreshing change from the hop bombs I drink at home.
Didn't Mark Dorber used to age Bass for months before serving at White Horse
I always remember cask Bass at 4.4% abv. to be a great beer. I don't recall it being sulfurous. Pedigree on the other hand was sulfur bomb.
OK, Jeff, see you later on.
Sulphury beer from Burton - as Roger Protz once said, "It's just the gypsum in my soil ..."
surfadelic - good to know I'm not the only yank around here!
I seem to remember Mark dry hopping it as well.
Used to drink it in the Kings Head on Upper Street in the late 1980s, very good; have yet to have add a decent pint of it ever since. Mind you, I don’t get White Shield, so maybe it’s a Burton thing.
Jeff — which Napoleon would that have been by the way? Presumely the third one who fancied a fight with Prussia much to his regret.
I walked into a rathe rDodgy pub in Bristol today, and all that they had on handpull was Bass and Thatchers Trad. ( I know.) Because i had read this blog, i tried a half of Bass, straight from the Cask. It was flat, lifeless and overridingly dull. It tasted like a photocopy of ale. If the photocopier was colour blind.
nteresting, Bass is fairly popular in the U.S. in bars that serve things other than domestics. I had no idea it had negative connotations here.I saw Bass on tap at a bar in Boston last week. The surprise at seeing it was diminished having seen what other english beers seem popular over there - Newcastle Brown is everywhere, and Stella is considered exotic-ish.
Needless to say I went for the Harpoon IPA instead.
The Ship in Fitzrovia (134 New Cavendish Street, W1W 6YB) has Bass as their only draft ale.That's the fella..... don't know why I said "Fotrovia", either...
Strangely, there is a pub in Bruges dedicated to Bass! It's called Barabass, 43 Sint Clarastraat. They only have it in bottles, though.
Sulphury and a bit 'cream flow' for my tastes. A classic certainly, but not one for many modern ale drinkers' palettes. Like Banks Bitter with extra bite or ageing Tetley with a waft of dry roasted peanut scrapings.
It remains many people's favourite pint though!
A few years back I was chatting to a Kent hop merchant, former supplier to Bass, he said that at some point (1990s I think - either when InBev took over, or some prior simplistic cost-cutting exercise happened) Bass simply stopped ordering their normal UK hops & just bought from the cheapest source on the world market - just comparing %age alpha-acid (hop bitterness) & price, not quality, aroma, freshness, flavour, etc.
I don't think it was ever a very hoppy beer, I think they used UK-grown Northdown & maybe Challenger in the later days, but in my occasional tastes of it, swapping to cheap & cheerless did it no favours.
In Mark Dorber's days at The White Horse, I did occasionally enjoy a cellared & sometimes dry-hopped version, which always had wonderfully creamy carbonation, but I'd still normally stick to the Roosters.
As a daft aside to the story that Napoleon asked if Bass could be brewed in France, I love the irony of Shepherd Neame, with their recent facile, jingoistic marketing, who, it's said, also briefly flirted with the idea of setting up a brewery in France in order to take advantage of the lower alcohol taxes.
Had my first Bass at The Bell, Horndon on the Hill, also largely as a result of having read this post. Not the greatest beer ever but eminently drinkable if not characterful.
Ron Pattinson is right - it was one of the best beers in the UK back when they brewed it using the Burton Union System. Then some brain donor in the higher echelons of Bass worked out they could save over £1million a year by dispensing with the Burton Union and using synthetic hop flavouring.
The results were disastrous - I was working for Martons at the time and we thought it was an April Fool when Bass approached us to buy the Unions off them - which we did faster than you could imagine - to enable the expansion of Pedigree capacity.
I can't drink Bass anymore - it makes me too upset to think what it was like - and no, I'm not an old man - I'm a shade over 40...
Draught Bass as an ale, as Farmer Geddon notes above, was sold down the road as the 70s became the 80s by a Chief Executive who was an accountant by profession and who didn't drink beer. Identifying increased margins in "Leisure" and peddling stupefying quantities of Grolsch, Carling and later, nitro- keg (whilst helping create the 'Alcopop' category by giving the world 'Hooch'), Bass PLC laid waste to a drinking landscape their famous products helped create. As well as pouring the Bass marketing millions into creating a generation of drinkers who regard a glass of Carling Ice or a sugared, pink, vodka based concoction as the natural choice of a young Englishman, they simultaneously began dismantling the greatest "brand" in their, or anyone's portfolio.
Before they jettisoned the critical fermenting environment of the Burton Unions, Draught Bass was a beer of astonishing delicacy and complexity and my favourite beer of all time - bar none. Once our biggest selling ale it's actually now, in many areas, very hard to find. The modern version is without the indefinable magic given it by the old Bass yeast and certainly isn't dry hopped and, has no doubt had suffered many other incremental cost savings in terms of ingredients. Now, appearing, bizarrely, out of Marston's brewery, it still can, in good condition, be relied upon to deliver a hint of what the old fuss was about and aid those of us drinking it from memory. Bottled and keg versions in the 21st century mentioned by American or European bloggers are better than nothing but make no mistake, these can be no representation of the real thing when, today, the real thing itself is barely so. Pre 1980 (the transfer to the new brewery and conical fermenters), Bass was fantastic ale. Gently, aromatically hoppy rather than bullyingly so like so many modern brews, it had an estery, retrained fruity/yeastiness in the mouth and engagingly, a big, similarly fruity/yeasty nose that was ever so slightly sulphury. With its perfect amber clarity, those who dreamed of things like 'England in a glass' had found it in Burton's supreme product.
It always had a long life in the unbreached cask and even when vented, would fizz and pop away in the stillage for many a day until, in high condition, it was ready to offer the lucky drinker a real taste of Burton and Bass heritage, expressing the greatness of Bass' and British brewing with consumate eloquence.
Sadly Marstons can't possibly brew Bass in the Unions - the whole point of the unions is the yeast, and keeping it happy, and Bass is a different yeast, so no dice.
I find it one of the most variable beers I've ever had. My favourite pub in the whole world (no offence Stonch) is the Cooper's in Burton, with a great range of well-kept cask ales. But Bass in there is flat, dull and tasteless.
However, the Hen and Chickens in Abergavenny - a pub that's "alright" without being either great or shit in any other way - serves it as a pint that makes me fall in love with drinking beer all over again.
I'll refrain from using this is a plug for my new book, which among other things does the history of Bass in some detail...
MicMac: Shepherd Neame ... it's said, also briefly flirted with the idea of setting up a brewery in France in order to take advantage of the lower alcohol taxes.They looked at buying a brewery in Northern France, but decided against it - and then regretted it ...
Does Famer Geddon (or anybody else) remember exactly when Bass sold the Union to Marstons? I vivited the brewery during it's last week and, of course, had one of the last pints. Going next month to see how it's getting on.
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