On mid-strength beer
Pete Brown’s Sunday Times beer column on 22nd June (a must read btw) featured mid-strength beers. That is beers between 1.2% and 3.4% which attract lower duty thanks to changes introduced in 2023.
Mid-Strength beer is a marketing term for what historically were known as Table Beers. As he notes the Kernel were largely responsible for re-launching the genre (before the tax changes) and even earlier Redemption Trinity. He also rightly underlines that Big Beer has been reducing the strength of beers to 3.4% to take advantage of the tax change without cutting the price of the beer. On the cask side see Greene King IPA.
Brian Harrison’s Drink and the Victorians provides some useful historic context. Modern anti-drink campaigners (see the Guardian) tend to be total abstinence types although they rarely quite get around to saying that. Historically temperance campaigners had a rather different agenda. They wanted to get people off spirits and on to lighter wines and beer.
Here table beer was important. Lower strength beers which avoided getting drunk had an important role in the labour movement where temperance was a strong influence. As Harrison notes even in the 1950s while Yorkshire miners liked a drink any union official found to be more than a moderate drinker didn’t last.
As a union officer in the 2020s I agree. A like a beer, but only after a meeting. In meetings I chair (less common now its often on-line tbh) anyone drinking before or during a meeting will get short shrift.
So here’s to table beer my absolute current favourite is Pressure Drop’s Ja at 3.2%. A gloriously tasty drop of murky beer, brewed obviously in Tottenham.
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