An Incredible Story Well Told

“It was basically the first big consumer brand. It was the first ever, the world's first ever multinational brand. That distinctive red triangle appears in so many different places and it was a symbol of quality. You wanted Bass Pale Ale wherever you were. It went to North America, it went to Australia, it went all around the world when global brands really were not a thing.

“And it was pale. It was bitter, it was bright, it was sparkling. It looked great in a glass. And it kind of swept all before it until Pilsner Lager came along about 50 years later and took over.”

That’s Pete Brown delivering the opening to the latest episode of One Iconic Beer. From the set-up, you can tell it promises to be humdinger, and it delivers. Pete, whom I’m sure most of you know is one of the world’s best beer writers, takes us through the 249-year history of the brewery, and the nearly two-century old history of British pale ale—of which Bass was by far the most prominent example.

Pete is joined by a very special guest: Dr. Harry White, who started at Bass in 1977 (200 years into the brewery’s life) and stayed there for thirty years. He takes us on a journey to Burton Upon Trent in the 1970s, when it was still a flourishing, one-industry town. Then we stroll with Harry into the 1860s brewhouse that produced Draught Bass, and he describes what industrial Victorian brewing, then still very much alive and intact, looked like: on-site maltings, English hops (“You could use any hops you wanted, as long as they were either Northdown or Challenger”), open fermentation, an active Burton-Union system, even a coolship (the one bit no longer in service)—he shows us everything.

Bass Pale Ale is one of the most important three or five or ten beers ever brewed (please debate), and in telling its story, we also trace the contours of British brewing. From the period when brewing industrialized and for the first time became an international product, to the cask era that followed new laws and World Wars, to the inevitable decline and consolidation that has left local British ale production in a woeful state.

But perhaps the story ends under the cheerful light of possibility. Draught Bass has made a comeback in Britain, and is now available on a thousand taps around the country. Does it augur a return to the kind of good old British ales Bass helped to define? Let’s hope so. It’s a cracking episode, so give it a listen. Oh, and there’s now a devoted website for the podcast, so give that a look, too.