Ales in All Creatures Great and Small

[SteveH aka shetc]

I'm watching the most recent incarnation of All Creatures Great and Small. The show takes place between the Wars, 1930s. The local pub seems to serve a lot of dark ale. What beer would North Yorkshire farmers being drinking at that time?

 

[3 Dawg Night]

My wife has been watching it in the evenings while I'm studying for my masters. I watched the first episode with her, and it looked really good. She said she'd re-watch it with me when I finish up in September.

Samuel Smith is in Yorkshire, so a northern English brown ale is a good bet. It could be a dark mild as well.

 

[duncan.brown]

The best answer can probably be found by perusing Shut up about Barclay Perkins but I’ll take a wild guess. Of course, there’s no such place as Darrowby, but the original TV show was filmed in Askrigg and the recent one in Grassington. Both are in North Yorkshire.

Theakstons is in Masham, which is a 40 minute drive from Askrigg. Grassington is about the same distance from Keighley, where Timothy Taylor is located. Both of these breweries were around between the wars. @3 Dawg Night might be a bit too far a field with Samuel Smith, as Tadcaster is over an hour and a half away.

As for the type of beer, I’d go with a dark mild. It used to be the most popular style in England, but went out of fashion after the 1960s. If I was to try and recreate what they are drinking, I’d go with a dark mild recipe from the inter-war period from Ron Pattinson’s blog.

Dark milds are a great session beer after long a day with your hand up a sheep.

 

[duncan.brown]

I forgot the obvious: Tetley’s! They were once the largest brewery in the North of England. The Forrester’s Arms in Grassington was a Tetley pub acquired in 1913 so Tetley’s beers would have been in the right (real, at least) place at the right time. Given that, I’d go with one of these recipes:

https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2016/05/tetleys-mild-ales-in-1920.html

 

[HB2 HughBHomeBrew]

Been watching that too and noticing the huge mugs of tasty-looking black ale!

 

[Snuffy]

I’ve been noticing those massive mugs of dark ale as well. I’m just getting over a Belgian patch and I’m starting a run of English ales. I’m halfway thru an excellent batch of Old Peculiar and I’ve just ordered clones of Bishops Finger and Worthington’s White Shield. After those, I think I could go with a Tim Taylor’s Landlord Strong. None of those are dark tho...

 

[Kent88]

I noticed most of the beer in ACGaS is dark, but there was something yellow/gold in a clear stein as well.

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

I noticed most of the beer in ACGaS is dark, but there was something yellow/gold in a clear stein as well.

Sometimes the vets order bitter. They never name the dark beer.

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

Coincidentally, I have a keg of cask-conditioned dark mild, serving from my redneck beer engine.

 

[HB2 HughBHomeBrew]

Then I had a sad thought - maybe it's just Coke Zero in those mugs - the actors are at work, after all

 

[Snuffy]

it would be sweet to live a block from the pub.

 

[duncan.brown]

Then I had a sad thought - maybe it's just Coke Zero in those mugs - the actors are at work, after all

Not in the original 1977 version apparently! Peter Davidson (Tristan) said in an interview with the Guardian "I had to spend a lot of time in the Drover’s Arms quaffing pints. The beer was real, which caused problems in the drunken scenes, since I loathed beer." [1]

One other thought, for those not familiar with the British pub scene: prior to the 1980s England had vertical integration of beer distribution. This means that, based on the historical evidence, it's pretty much a given that any real vet in the 1930s in Grassington would have been drinking Tetley's as the Forrester's Arms would only have served Tetley's beer.

For more than two centuries the UK brewing industry operated under the auspices of what was known as a ‘vertical tie’. Brewers of all sizes owned or controlled pubs in a tight geographic area around each brewery to guarantee the distribution and consumption of the brewery's production. [2]

Charlie Bamforth has written some interesting articles about how he the 1989 beer orders hurt the British pub scene.

[1] How we made All Creatures Great and Small

[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00076791.2015.1041380

 

[duncan.brown]

it would be sweet to live a block from the pub.

One of the things I miss most about England is a the pub (which is a very distinct place from a bar). Even small villages used to have at least two or three pubs. This was the walk to my local growing up:

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/45+...e741bc1ee5d!2m2!1d-1.0610144!2d53.0232468!3e0
Of course, we had to walk to the next village over to avoid our dads! British pubs... a place where a group of lads can stand 2 meters from the bar, shout "you buy the drinks, because you look 18" and still get served! "Are you buying for anyone under age?" "No, they are all for me."

 

[Kent88]

Peter Davidson (Tristan) said in an interview with the Guardian "I had to spend a lot of time in the Drover’s Arms quaffing pints. The beer was real, which caused problems in the drunken scenes, since I loathed beer."

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

I lived in Edinburgh for 20 years before moving back to Florida. For the first 10 years, my local was literally a 2 min walk from my flat. We spent so much time in there that a bunch of my friends bought the pub.