Pint of Pickfords please
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The brewers, too, need watching. The big ones, The average original gravity (o.g.: the specific gravity of the wort before it started to ferment, which in the UK is the way of indicating alcoholic strength, and it is this on which excise duty is charged) for all beer in 1952 was 1037.07. In 1972 it was 1036.88. But in this period the sales of mild beer fell from nearly a half off all sales to less than a quarter. So, as mild is generally weaker than bitter, it follows that if the average for all beer has stayed the same then the strength of bitter must have declined. I owe these thought to Richard Boston's splendid book Beer and Skittles (Collins £3.50). He says the strongest beer brewed anywhere — at Dorchester is Eldridge Pope's Thomas Hardy Ale at 1120; its best kept 10 years before drinking.
Beer and Skittles relates that Bass & Co was "founded in 1777 by a carrier called William Bass, who sold his business to another firm of carriers called Pickfords and took to brewing instead, greatly to the benefit of mankind."