It's all about the Bass
The Story of Bass: The Rise and Demise of a Brewing Great (Harry White, Amberley Publishing, £15.99)
By Phil Mellows
Haplessly sandwiched between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Easter Saturday has long suffered an identity crisis, with nothing much going for it. All that changed this year, though. From now on, it will have its own red letters on the calendar, spelling out National Bass Day.
For this, we have to thank Ian Thurman. For the past few years he has enlisted some 150 Bass drinkers in tracking down every handpump in the country pouring the cask ale, creating a definitive spreadsheet of around 450 pubs, concentrated in Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire.
National Bass Day is both a celebration and a marketing campaign aimed at growing that list, getting more pubs to stock it. I knew I had no chance of getting a pint down south, so I packed a bag and headed north to meet Ian – over a pint of Bass, of course – at his local in the Derbyshire Peak District, The Flying Childers (it’s a racehorse, and a whole other story).
My first question was, why Bass? He assured me he enjoyed other beers, but there’s something special about this one.
For a start, it’s a distinctive brew, unmistakeably Bass. When I tasted it again after many years, perhaps decades, I recognised it instantly – yes, that’s Bass!
It is also one of the world’s most recognisable brands. The red triangle is, in fact, Trademark Number One, the very first to be registered. It carries such a symbolic weight that artists have incorporated it into their paintings, from Manet (‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère’) to Picasso (‘Bottle of Bass and Glass’ among others).
And watching the layers of lacing from a well-kept pint of Bass sink down a branded glass to reveal that ruddy peak in front of your nose is all part of the experience.
Then there’s the history. At one time, before the 1989 Beer Orders turned the pub and brewing industries upside down, Bass was pouring in about 9,000 pubs, so it’s lost 95% of its distribution.
That alone would have killed off many brands, but Bass has survived simply because there are many people who want to drink it and can imagine no substitute, and enough pubs realise that, if they put it on the bar, it’s going to sell.
And now there’s a consumer campaign. Ian is faintly baffled that he finds himself leading it. Shouldn’t it be the brewery?
Which brings us to the big problem with Bass. It’s brewed, pleasingly, in the town where it was born, Burton-upon-Trent, by Marston’s. But the brand is owned by a different brewery, AB Inbev, which, as the world’s largest, is hardly bothered about a beer that’s only sold in a few hundred pubs (bottled Bass, still significant in the global market, is a different matter).
The history behind all this is set out meticulously in a new book by Harry White, who headed quality control at Bass Brewers when I worked on the company’s in-house newspaper in the 1990s.
The Story of Bass: the rise and demise of a Brewing Great begins with William Bass setting up his brewery in Burton in 1777. Soon it was selling its beers not only in the domestic market but overseas. The new pale Burton ale, also made by the neighbouring Allsopp’s, was a beer that looked appealing as well as being able to travel long distances.
White then weaves into his narrative, lavishly illustrated by images mostly sourced from the National Brewery Centre – formerly the Bass Museum – the histories of all the many breweries that were acquired and merged to make up Britain’s biggest brewer until it was broken up between Interbrew, now AB Inbev, and US brewery Coors, in 2000.
But this Story of Bass is nearly all rise and there’s not much about the demise, which probably needs a different book. Beer Orders geeks like myself (well, probably just me) will point out that White makes the common error of saying that the UK’s brewing giants were forced to sell off 22,000 pubs between them. That figure, recommended by the preceding Monopolies & Mergers report, was halved as a result of industry lobbying.
It didn’t change the result, though, provoking a restructuring of the sector that brought an end to Bass, the company, and very nearly Bass, the draught ale.
Not quite though. Thanks to consumer power we can have strong hopes we’ll still be drinking Bass on Easter Saturday 2023 and, as Ian Thurman boldly declares, for all time.
Phil’s top three Bass pubs in Staffs
If you’re going to have just one pint of Bass in your whole life, why not squeeze into the corridor of Coopers Tavern, a keg’s throw from the birthplace of Bass in Burton-on-Trent, the pub where the people who brew it drink it, straight from the cask.
The Coachmakers Arms is an unspoilt four-roomed gem in Hanley, Stoke-onTrent.
If you like your beer with an open fire, try The Black Lion, in the Staffordshire moorland village of Cheddleton.