Learn & Discover
Learn & Discover
Tiny beers through history
It feels like everyone knows about small beer. It’s practically ingrained in our national consciousness, no doubt thanks to the phrase’s use as an idiom for something of little importance. And you may think that the history of small beer is itself small beer. Medieval and Early Modern England (and Scotland) brewed a low alcohol beer that everyone drank to stay hydrated. What else is there to know?
It’s probably my past life as a museum curator that encourages me to fall down rabbit holes in beer history. I always want to know a little bit more, and pulling on the thread can occasionally unravel the whole bloomin’ cardigan. That has certainly been the case when I attempted to answer one seemingly simple question:
How small was small beer?
What was the alcohol by volume (ABV) of historical small beer? I wanted to understand at what alcoholic strength small beer becomes strong beer – and whether that distinction bears any relationship to what we consider a weak or strong beer to be today.
Trying to find the answer to this tiny question about small beer has led me to a new discovery about the way that our nation consumed beer in years gone by.
Laura Hadland
A food and drink writer, photographer, competition judge & CAMRA member. Laura’s an award winning blogger at Extreme Housewifery and is the author of ’50 years of CAMRA’. She runs a creative agency for SME’s called Thirst Media.
Tiny beers through history
It feels like everyone knows about small beer. It’s practically ingrained in our national consciousness, no doubt thanks to the phrase’s use as an idiom for something of little importance. And you may think that the history of small beer is itself small beer. Medieval and Early Modern England (and Scotland) brewed a low alcohol beer that everyone drank to stay hydrated. What else is there to know?
It’s probably my past life as a museum curator that encourages me to fall down rabbit holes in beer history. I always want to know a little bit more, and pulling on the thread can occasionally unravel the whole bloomin’ cardigan. That has certainly been the case when I attempted to answer one seemingly simple question:
How small was small beer?
What was the alcohol by volume (ABV) of historical small beer? I wanted to understand at what alcoholic strength small beer becomes strong beer – and whether that distinction bears any relationship to what we consider a weak or strong beer to be today.
Trying to find the answer to this tiny question about small beer has led me to a new discovery about the way that our nation consumed beer in years gone by
Rachel Hendry
A wine and cider writer, featured in Wine52’s Glug magazine, Pellicle magazine, Burum Collective and Two Belly. The mind behind wine newsletter J’adore le Plonk and an untiring advocate for spritzing every drink she can get her hands on.
Testing the Assumptions
I started out on this path because I was writing about the history of low and no alcohol beer, and there is one great dragon of a lie that needs to be slain. It is endlessly perpetuated that in the Ye Olde England days, people drank small beer instead of water, because it was safer.
We know that safe drinking water was available. We know that because pretty much every settlement in human history has been founded where there is an abundant and reliable source of water. The evolution of modern society is intricately tied to the waterways which carry the survival and prosperity of its people. There is plentiful evidence for the manipulation of water courses in ancient times, never mind the canals, wells and conduits that were used in the medieval period and beyond to provide safe water for residents to drink. Town councils were endlessly imposing sanitation laws in an effort to keep them clean.
So British people in centuries past weren’t drinking beer out of necessity. They were drinking it because that was the staple drink. It was cultural, if you will. Beer had a calorific benefit for a society predominantly engaged in manual labour. And as we will see later, it was entirely socially acceptable.
There is plentiful evidence for the manipulation of water courses in ancient times, never mind the canals, wells and conduits that were used in the medieval period and beyond to provide safe water for residents to drink. Town councils were endlessly imposing sanitation laws in an effort to keep them clean.
Testing the Assumptions
I started out on this path because I was writing about the history of low and no alcohol beer, and there is one great dragon of a lie that needs to be slain. It is endlessly perpetuated that in the Ye Olde England days, people drank small beer instead of water, because it was safer.
We know that safe drinking water was available. We know that because pretty much every settlement in human history has been founded where there is an abundant and reliable source of water. The evolution of modern society is intricately tied to the waterways which carry the survival and prosperity of its people.
There is plentiful evidence for the manipulation of water courses in ancient times, never mind the canals, wells and conduits that were used in the medieval period and beyond to provide safe water for residents to drink. Town councils were endlessly imposing sanitation laws in an effort to keep them clean.
So British people in centuries past weren’t drinking beer out of necessity. They were drinking it because that was the staple drink. It was cultural, if you will. Beer had a calorific benefit for a society predominantly engaged in manual labour. And as we will see later, it was entirely socially acceptable.
“So British people in centuries past weren’t drinking beer out of necessity. They were drinking it because that was the staple drink. It was cultural, if you will.”
— Laura Hadland
“After just a year of formation the CIU had helped 13 clubs to begin, growing to 55 by its second.”
— Rachel Hendry
What is small beer?
There were essentially three options for brewing a low alcohol beer:
Intentionally brew a low gravity beer as a whole beer
Take a second run on the grain from a standard brew, which would yield less fermentable sugars and produce a weaker brew
Extract some alcohol from a regular beer by boiling
It seems the first option was preferred for quality, and the route taken by home brewers. Commercial brewers were the most likely to use a second running to eke out their profit margins. ‘A Brewer of Extensive Practice’ wrote their methodology in detail in 1760 in the treatise ‘The Compleat Brewer, or Art and Mystery of Brewing Explained’:
MOST families have got into so regular a way of brewing their small beer after their ale that it will be not be easy to persuade them them out of it, but they may be assured that if they have any value for that kind of drink it is their interest to brew it alone, for the trouble is very little more than the other way, and the drink is incomparably better. The method is very little different from the brewing of any other kind. As to the quantity of malt or strength of the beer that is at the pleasure of the person, but however it is intended in point of strength, the brewing should be performed at once, and all that is made should be of one kind, not a stronger first and a weaker afterwards. We shall give directions at the rate of two bushels and a half to the hogshead, which will make a very excellent kind.[1] [my italics]
The anonymous author goes on to detail the recipe as promised. Not only is this source interesting in detailing how small beer was made, it also emphasises that there was no set guideline as to its strength.
What is small beer?
There were essentially three options for brewing a low alcohol beer:
- Intentionally brew a low gravity beer as a whole beer
- Take a second run on the grain from a standard brew, which would yield less fermentable sugars and produce a weaker brew
- Extract some alcohol from a regular beer by boiling
It seems the first option was preferred for quality, and the route taken by home brewers. Commercial brewers were the most likely to use a second running to eke out their profit margins. ‘A Brewer of Extensive Practice’ wrote their methodology in detail in 1760 in the treatise ‘The Compleat Brewer, or Art and Mystery of Brewing Explained’:
MOST families have got into so regular a way of brewing their small beer after their ale that it will be not be easy to persuade them them out of it, but they may be assured that if they have any value for that kind of drink it is their interest to brew it alone, for the trouble is very little more than the other way, and the drink is incomparably better. The method is very little different from the brewing of any other kind. As to the quantity of malt or strength of the beer that is at the pleasure of the person, but however it is intended in point of strength, the brewing should be performed at once, and all that is made should be of one kind, not a stronger first and a weaker afterwards. We shall give directions at the rate of two bushels and a half to the hogshead, which will make a very excellent kind.1
The anonymous author goes on to detail the recipe as promised. Not only is this source interesting in detailing how small beer was made, it also emphasises that there was no set guideline as to its strength.
Perhaps I could find a legal definition. Beer duty was first levied in 1643 to raise funds for the parliamentary armies of the English Civil War. Conveniently enough for my purposes, they identify two categories for excise duty – small beer and strong beer. While this distinction clearly related to the strength of the beer, the way they were separated from a legal standpoint was their sale price. Sell it for less than six shillings per barrel and it’s small beer, any more is classified as “strong”.
How did the excise officer know that people were paying the correct level of tax on the beer that they produced? Simple – he tasted it.
As unscientific and open to challenge as that sounds, it was up to the taxman’s judgement whether a beer was “small” or “strong” for duty purposes. There are records of beer being tasted by the excise officer in court before the magistrate, where a brewer is being charged with adulteration of his product. It’s quite clear those officers had attuned palates and knew what they were looking for.
Naturally, this led to some brewers trying to game the system in order to pay less tax. The mixing or dilution of beer was commonplace. The need to resolve these disputes led to excise collection being a key driving force for the standardisation of weights and measures. Part of this technological advancement was the accurate measurement of ABV. These techniques were used first for spirits in the early nineteenth century. As they became more reliable and widespread, they were applied to beer as well.
One pioneer in the scientific measurement of alcoholic strength, perhaps the very first, was the German chemist Friedrich Accum. He was one of the first people to really look at the composition of food and drink and a lone voice discussing alcohol by volume. Alcoholic strength to that point could be, and was, measured in gravity, but nobody had much reason to do it.
In his 1820 volume, the “Treatise on adulterations of food”, Accum found the small beer he tested to average just 0.75% alcohol. So at last, I had a number. A very low number, but it is all we have. It is currently the only answer to the question how small is small beer.
Perhaps I could find a legal definition. Beer duty was first levied in 1643 to raise funds for the parliamentary armies of the English Civil War. Conveniently enough for my purposes, they identify two categories for excise duty – small beer and strong beer. While this distinction clearly related to the strength of the beer, the way they were separated from a legal standpoint was their sale price. Sell it for less than six shillings per barrel and it’s small beer, any more is classified as “strong”.
How did the excise officer know that people were paying the correct level of tax on the beer that they produced? Simple – he tasted it.
As unscientific and open to challenge as that sounds, it was up to the taxman’s judgement whether a beer was “small” or “strong” for duty purposes. There are records of beer being tasted by the excise officer in court before the magistrate, where a brewer is being charged with adulteration of his product. It’s quite clear those officers had attuned palates and knew what they were looking for
Naturally, this led to some brewers trying to game the system in order to pay less tax. The mixing or dilution of beer was commonplace. The need to resolve these disputes led to excise collection being a key driving force for the standardisation of weights and measures. Part of this technological advancement was the accurate measurement of ABV. These techniques were used first for spirits in the early nineteenth century. As they became more reliable and widespread, they were applied to beer as well.
One pioneer in the scientific measurement of alcoholic strength, perhaps the very first, was the German chemist Friedrich Accum. He was one of the first people to really look at the composition of food and drink and a lone voice discussing alcohol by volume. Alcoholic strength to that point could be, and was, measured in gravity, but nobody had much reason to do it.
In his 1820 volume, the “Treatise on adulterations of food”, Accum found the small beer he tested to average just 0.75% alcohol. So at last, I had a number. A very low number, but it is all we have. It is currently the only answer to the question how small is small beer.
The English Drinking Habit
I continued to slog through the archives looking for any reference to small beer to confirm or deny Accum’s conclusions. My search brought me to the 1776 book by Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith, ‘The Wealth of Nations’. The name Adam Smith immediately struck terror into my heart, as I remember well studying his work for a paper on modern political thought at university. I remembered his work to be tougher going than a pogo race through quicksand and I do not find it any more pleasurable to read, twenty years on. However, he did specifically mention the taxation of small beer:
In the country brewery for common country sale, a quarter of malt is seldom brewed into less than two barrels of strong, and one barrel of small beer; frequently into two barrels and a-half of strong beer. The different taxes upon small beer amount to one shilling and fourpence a-barrel.
The English Drinking Habit
I continued to slog through the archives looking for any reference to small beer to confirm or deny Accum’s conclusions. My search brought me to the 1776 book by Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith, ‘The Wealth of Nations’. The name Adam Smith immediately struck terror into my heart, as I remember well studying his work for a paper on modern political thought at university. I remembered his work to be tougher going than a pogo race through quicksand and I do not find it any more pleasurable to read, twenty years on. However, he did specifically mention the taxation of small beer:
In the country brewery for common country sale, a quarter of malt is seldom brewed into less than two barrels of strong, and one barrel of small beer; frequently into two barrels and a-half of strong beer. The different taxes upon small beer amount to one shilling and fourpence a-barrel.
“Naturally, this led to some brewers trying to game the system in order to pay less tax. The mixing or dilution of beer was commonplace. The need to resolve these disputes led to excise collection being a key driving force for the standardisation of weights and measures.”
— Laura Hadland
“Naturally, this led to some brewers trying to game the system in order to pay less tax. The mixing or dilution of beer was commonplace. The need to resolve these disputes led to excise collection being a key driving force for the standardisation of weights and measures.”
— Laura Hadland
Oh, it’s dull. So very dull. Smith was arguing that instead of putting heavy taxes on malt, beer and ale, you could raise the same amount of revenue by just taxing malt, because there were far greater opportunities for fraud “in a brewery than in a malt-house”, plus you’d catch everyone who was brewing for private use too. Fair enough. But also in the same volume Smith says:
People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare. Nobody affects the character of liberality and good fellowship, by being profuse of a liquor which is as cheap as small beer … At present, drunkenness is by no means the vice of people of fashion, or of those who can easily afford the most expensive liquors. A gentleman drunk with ale has scarce ever been seen among us.
I found it interesting that Smith labels small beer as cheap, rather than weak. And also that he correlates it with “daily fare”. But I didn’t really know what to do with that information.
Oh, it’s dull. So very dull. Smith was arguing that instead of putting heavy taxes on malt, beer and ale, you could raise the same amount of revenue by just taxing malt, because there were far greater opportunities for fraud “in a brewery than in a malt-house”, plus you’d catch everyone who was brewing for private use too. Fair enough. But also in the same volume Smith says:
People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare. Nobody affects the character of liberality and good fellowship, by being profuse of a liquor which is as cheap as small beer … At present, drunkenness is by no means the vice of people of fashion, or of those who can easily afford the most expensive liquors. A gentleman drunk with ale has scarce ever been seen among us.
I found it interesting that Smith labels small beer as cheap, rather than weak. And also that he correlates it with “daily fare”. But I didn’t really know what to do with that information.
Fortunately, I had a call set up with Professor Henry Yeomans of the University of Leeds just at that moment (true story.) Henry has written extensively about the history of beer and its relationship to society and the economy across this period. He has spent more time looking at historic excise records than is probably healthy. We were discussing the progress of my research when he offered to send me a source I had not seen before.
It was “An account of the quantity of different sorts of beer, stated by barrels, made in each kingdom, in each year from 5th July 1786 to 5th July 1826, and for three quarters of a year from 5th July 1826” which was printed by the government in June 1827. That title is wild. They really knew how to give documents a catchy name in the nineteenth century.
There are two interesting things about this report from the Excise Office, which is just a long list of numbers of barrels, the rate of duty and the amount raised. The first is that it is divided up by strong beer, table beer and small beer. Quite often these days we see table beer and small beer as much the same thing. But it is clear that, once upon a time, they were distinct categories. Small beer was the weakest, and therefore had the lowest rate of duty – 1 shilling 4 pence in England in 1787. Table beer was stronger and attracted a rate of 3 shillings, while strong beer was taxed at 8 shillings. This gives us a good idea of their relative strength, although no absolute figures.
The second thing I noticed was like a bolt from the blue, suddenly tying all of my thinking together with one delightful piece of hard, numerical evidence. In England, the amount of strong beer being made was around 3 or 4 times more than quantity of small beer being produced. Now, if “everyone” is drinking small beer as a staple, then brewers should be making much more of it to meet demand – right? But as Smith says, the important thing about small beer is that it is cheap. That means it would necessarily be weaker, but its cultural positioning depends on the price.
Fortunately, I had a call set up with Professor Henry Yeomans of the University of Leeds just at that moment (true story.) Henry has written extensively about the history of beer and its relationship to society and the economy across this period. He has spent more time looking at historic excise records than is probably healthy. We were discussing the progress of my research when he offered to send me a source I had not seen before.
It was “An account of the quantity of different sorts of beer, stated by barrels, made in each kingdom, in each year from 5th July 1786 to 5th July 1826, and for three quarters of a year from 5th July 1826” which was printed by the government in June 1827. That title is wild. They really knew how to give documents a catchy name in the nineteenth century.
There are two interesting things about this report from the Excise Office, which is just a long list of numbers of barrels, the rate of duty and the amount raised. The first is that it is divided up by strong beer, table beer and small beer. Quite often these days we see table beer and small beer as much the same thing. But it is clear that, once upon a time, they were distinct categories. Small beer was the weakest, and therefore had the lowest rate of duty – 1 shilling 4 pence in England in 1787. Table beer was stronger and attracted a rate of 3 shillings, while strong beer was taxed at 8 shillings. This gives us a good idea of their relative strength, although no absolute figures.
The second thing I noticed was like a bolt from the blue, suddenly tying all of my thinking together with one delightful piece of hard, numerical evidence. In England, the amount of strong beer being made was around 3 or 4 times more than quantity of small beer being produced. Now, if “everyone” is drinking small beer as a staple, then brewers should be making much more of it to meet demand – right? But as Smith says, the important thing about small beer is that it is cheap. That means it would necessarily be weaker, but its cultural positioning depends on the price.
It occurred to me that we are applying our modern sensibilities to the past. We can just about bend our heads around the idea of a weak beer being consumed in quantity throughout the day. It’s harder to accept that drinking anything approaching a strong beer from dawn til dusk could be the norm. It just sounds mad.
But we know that beer drinking was unproblematic and socially acceptable in the early 18th century – consider the gentle serenity of Hogarth’s portrayal of Beer Street next to the debauched depravity of Gin Lane in his famous prints. At the time of the Beer Act in 1830, beer is referred to in the House of Commons as “the second necessary of life.”
It occurred to me that we are applying our modern sensibilities to the past. We can just about bend our heads around the idea of a weak beer being consumed in quantity throughout the day. It’s harder to accept that drinking anything approaching a strong beer from dawn til dusk could be the norm. It just sounds mad.
But we know that beer drinking was unproblematic and socially acceptable in the early 18th century – consider the gentle serenity of Hogarth’s portrayal of Beer Street next to the debauched depravity of Gin Lane in his famous prints. At the time of the Beer Act in 1830, beer is referred to in the House of Commons as “the second necessary of life.”
The Hadland Theory of Small Beer
Perhaps everyone was drinking standard beer, and small beer was made as a low-cost alternative to ensure that even the poorest members of society were able to participate in this most basic convention. The sources, as I read them, back this up. In the Records of the Borough of Leicester, an ordinance from 1467 states that brewers should “make good wholesome small drink for the poor people” at a half penny per gallon, “that the poor may the better be relieved.” Any brewer found defaulting on this law would be fined, and face imprisonment on the fourth infraction.
So brewers were being legally compelled to make small beer. Presumably this means they could turn a better profit from strong beer, so without pressure they wouldn’t bother to brew small beer, even from the second runnings. But the poor needed beer they could afford, and that’s what small beer was.
The Hadland Theory of Small Beer
Perhaps everyone was drinking standard beer, and small beer was made as a low-cost alternative to ensure that even the poorest members of society were able to participate in this most basic convention. The sources, as I read them, back this up. In the Records of the Borough of Leicester, an ordinance from 1467 states that brewers should “make good wholesome small drink for the poor people” at a half penny per gallon, “that the poor may the better be relieved.” Any brewer found defaulting on this law would be fined, and face imprisonment on the fourth infraction.
So brewers were being legally compelled to make small beer. Presumably this means they could turn a better profit from strong beer, so without pressure they wouldn’t bother to brew small beer, even from the second runnings. But the poor needed beer they could afford, and that’s what small beer was.
Anecdotally, it seems that some people may have had a preference for small beer, whatever their financial status. The farcical ‘Swearing on the Horns’ oath taken in certain Highgate pubs in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries allegedly included the phrase:
You must not eat brown bread while you can get white, unless you like brown the best; nor must you drink small beer when you can get strong, unless you like small the best.
You might argue that the watering down of strong beer, which we know occurred, would account for less table beer being produced in the official figures. But I would argue that if that were the case on a wholesale basis then why was table beer being made at all, and indeed having its production legislated? And why would you make something at a higher tax bracket, as the evidence shows, to then water it down and sell for less? This theory would need more evidence of the relative strengths of the different categories of beer to confirm it – you would need to show a brewer stood to make more from a volume of diluted strong beer that made the increased duty worthwhile.
Anecdotally, it seems that some people may have had a preference for small beer, whatever their financial status. The farcical ‘Swearing on the Horns’ oath taken in certain Highgate pubs in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries allegedly included the phrase:
You must not eat brown bread while you can get white, unless you like brown the best; nor must you drink small beer when you can get strong, unless you like small the best.
You might argue that the watering down of strong beer, which we know occurred, would account for less table beer being produced in the official figures. But I would argue that if that were the case on a wholesale basis then why was table beer being made at all, and indeed having its production legislated? And why would you make something at a higher tax bracket, as the evidence shows, to then water it down and sell for less? This theory would need more evidence of the relative strengths of the different categories of beer to confirm it – you would need to show a brewer stood to make more from a volume of diluted strong beer that made the increased duty worthwhile.
“You must not eat brown bread while you can get white, unless you like brown the best; nor must you drink small beer when you can get strong, unless you like small the best.”
— The farcical ‘Swearing on the Horns’ oath taken in certain Highgate pubs in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries allegedly included this phrase, Laura Hadland.
“The post-war boom led to the peak of the WMCs popularity“
— Rachel Hendry
You pays your money, you takes your chances. I have to admit that my theory of strong beer for all, small beer for the poor, is based on a handful of fragmentary sources covering several hundred years. But this is what we have to work with. All study of history is an inexact science, reflecting the current state of our knowledge and discovery. Maybe I will unearth more nuggets that confirm my ideas, maybe I will find a new source that forces me to change course entirely. But for now, this is my theory and I hope you enjoyed discovering how I developed it.
You pays your money, you takes your chances. I have to admit that my theory of strong beer for all, small beer for the poor, is based on a handful of fragmentary sources covering several hundred years. But this is what we have to work with. All study of history is an inexact science, reflecting the current state of our knowledge and discovery. Maybe I will unearth more nuggets that confirm my ideas, maybe I will find a new source that forces me to change course entirely. But for now, this is my theory and I hope you enjoyed discovering how I developed it.
