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| Industry | Brewing |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1777; 248 years ago (1777) |
| Founder | William Bass |
| Fate | Brewing operations sold toMolson Coors. Hospitality operations renamedSix Continents |
| Successor | AB InBev (brand rights),InterContinental Hotels Group (hotels),Mitchells & Butlers (pubs and restaurants),Molson Coors (brewing in Burton) |
| Headquarters | Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire (brewery);Luton, Bedfordshire (Bass brand) ,England |
| Products | Beer |
Production output | 365,000hectolitres (311,000 US bbl) in 2011[1] |
| Website | www |
Bass Brewery (/ˈbæs/) was founded in 1777 byWilliam Bass inBurton-upon-Trent,Staffordshire, England.[2] The main brand was BassPale Ale, once the highest-selling beer in the UK.[3] By 1877, Bass had become the largest brewery in the world, with an annual output of one million barrels.[4] Its pale ale was exported throughout theBritish Empire, and the company's red triangle became the UK's first registeredtrade mark.[5]
Bass took control of a number of other large breweries in the early 20th century. In the 1960s it merged withCharrington United Breweries to become the largest UK brewing company, Bass Charrington.[2] The brewing operations of the company were bought byInterbrew (nowAnheuser-Busch InBev) in 2000, while the retail side (hotels and pubs) was renamedSix Continents plc. Because at the time Interbrew controlled a large portion of the UK beer market, theCompetition Commission instructed Interbrew to sell the Bass brewery along with certain brands toCoors (nowMolson Coors), while retaining the rights to the Bass brand.[6] In 2010, it was widely reported thatAB-InBev was attempting to sell the rights to the Bass brand in the UK for around £10 million to £15 million.[3]
In the UK,draught Bass (4.4%ABV) has been brewed under contract in Burton byMarston's (formerly a relatively minor competitor) for AB-InBev since 2005,[7][8][9] while bottled products are brewed at AB-InBev's own brewery inSamlesbury, Lancashire, for export.[10] Bass is also brewed locally in the United States and Belgium.[11] Bass Ale is a top ten premium canned ale in the UK, with 16,080hectolitres sold in 2010.[12]
Before establishing a brewery,William Bass transported ale for brewer Benjamin Printon. Bass sold thiscarrier business to thePickford family, using the funds to establish Bass & Co Brewery in 1777 as one of the firstbreweries in Burton-upon-Trent.[13]
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Early in the company's history, Bass was exporting bottled beer around the world, serving theBaltic region through the port ofHull. Growing demand led his sonMichael Thomas Bass (1760–1827), to build a second brewery in Burton in 1799 in partnership with John Ratcliff. The water from local boreholes became popular with brewers, with 30 operating there by the mid-19th century. His son,Michael Thomas Bass (1799–1884), succeeded on his father's death in 1827, renewed the Ratcliff partnership, brought in John Gretton, and created 'Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton'.
The opening of a railway through Burton in 1839[14] redoubled Burton's pre-eminence as a brewing town. In the mid-1870s, Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton accounted for one-third of Burton's output. A strong export business allowed Bass to boast that their product was available "in every country in the globe".[15][16] By 1877, Bass was the largest brewery in the world, with an annual output of one million barrels. In the 1880s the brewery received unwanted publicity through the lifestyle of Frederick Gretton, son of John Gretton. Having worked for the company when a young man, he drifted away and developed a stable of racehorses. His 'Sterling' and 'Isonomy' were stars of the Turf. But Fred, as he was known, was also a heavy drinker and took a mistress, the teenage Fanny Lucy Radmall. In later life she would become a household name asLucy, Lady Houston. When Fred died of drink in 1883 he left her £6,000 a year, much to the disgust of his family.[17]
Following the death of the second Michael Thomas Bass in 1884, his son Michael Arthur Bass, later the1st Baron Burton, took the reins. Both Michael Thomas Bass and his son Lord Burton were philanthropically inclined, making extensive charitable donations to the towns of Burton andDerby. The annualBass excursions, laid on by the firm for its employees, were the largest operation of its type in the world by a private company. The brewer became a public limited company in 1888.[18]
Bass' No. 1 Ale was the first beer to be marketed asbarley wine, around 1870.[19]
Early in the 20th century, a declining market closed many Burton breweries, 20 in 1900 falling to eight in 1928. Bass took over Walkers in 1923, andWorthington in 1927. Also in 1927, they acquired, for over £1,000,000,Thomas Salt, which was founded in 1774 as the Clay Brewery by Joseph Clay, who sold it to Salt, his maltster, just before the introduction byNapoleon of theContinental System that stopped all trade between Britain and Europe.
Bass was one of the original London Stock ExchangeFT 30 companies when the listing was established in 1935.[20] Over the next half-century, Bass maintained its UK dominance by acquiring such brewers asMitchells & Butlers (1961),Charringtons (1967), Bents-Gartsides (1967), John Joule & Sons (1968),William Stones Ltd (1968), andGrimsby's Hewitt Brothers Ltd (1969), being variously known asBass, Mitchells and Butlers orBass Charrington. Draught Bass ale and Worthingon "E" were merged to become the same product until Bass became preferred as the name of the cask beer and Worthington for keg, although some pubs resisted this distinction.
Bass had been reliant on railways to distribute its beer from Burton, and owned the country's largest private rail network within the town linking its various premises. From the 1970s it followed the trend to abandon the use of rail freight, which had become notoriously unreliable. The switch to road haulage required local transport depots, and in many places small independent breweries were bought and repurposed as such. At that time, along with the other major brewers which now dominated the industry, Bass were moving away from the production of traditional ales in favour of keg beer and particularly Carling lager at Warrington, ignoring opposition fromCAMRA.
In 1988, Bass acquired the rights to franchise theHoliday Inn name outside of North and South America and in 1989 went on purchase the Holiday Inn hotel chain fromHoliday Corporation.[21]
During the prime ministership ofMargaret Thatcher, beer production, distribution and retailing were vertically integrated, with the "Big Six" brewers (Bass among them) accounting for a large portion of UK beer production and sales. Most pubs were "tied houses", owned by one of the brewers, and mostly selling its products.[22]
On the advice of theDirector-General of Fair Trading, theMonopolies and Mergers Commission (later the Competition Commission) released a report entitled "The Supply of Beer: A Report on the Supply of Beer for Retail Sale in the United Kingdom", investigating the nature of the beer industry.[23] The report made recommendations to break up a "complexmonopoly" among beer brewing and sales between the UK's "Big Six" (Allied, Bass,Courage,Grand Metropolitan,Scottish & Newcastle, andWhitbread), which at that time accounted for "75% of beer production, 74% of the brewer-owned retail estate, and 86% of loanties."[22] Recommendations to limit the number of pubs a brewing company could own were enacted in legislation in 1989, commonly called "the Beer Orders", with three years for brewers to dispose of excess pubs. Bass went from owning approximately 7,190 pubs in 1989 to about 2,077 in 2014 (by its successor companyMitchells & Butlers).[23]
Following decades of closures, consolidation, and the effects of the Beer Orders, Bass was left by the end of the 20th century as one of only two large remaining breweries in Burton. The Bass company decided to focus onhospitality rather than brewing[22] and Bass' brewing business was sold to the Belgian brewerInterbrew (laterAnheuser-Busch InBev) in June 2000. The UK government'sCompetition Commission again raised concerns about the monopoly implications arising from the deal[24] and instructed Interbrew to dispose of the Bass brewery facility in Burton along with theCarling andWorthington brands, which were all sold toCoors (laterMolson Coors).[6] However, Interbrew was to retain the rights to the Bass Pale Ale brand.[25]
With only hotel and pub holdings left in the Bass company's portfolio, the company renamed itselfSix Continents plc,[26] which itself split intoMitchells & Butlers andInterContinental Hotels Group in 2003.[27][28]
Bottled and keg Bass formerly exported to the US with a higher alcohol content are now[when?] produced there domestically byAnheuser-Busch at aBaldwinsville, New York, facility.[29][30]
From 2000 to 2005, Bass was produced under licence by Molson Coors in Burton, in the original Bass brewery. When Coors' licence to brew draught Bass came to an end in 2005, a new licence was awarded toWolverhampton & Dudley Breweries plc (laterMarston's plc), which transferred production of Bass to its own brewery, also in Burton.[9] The former Bass brewery in Burton, under Molson Coors ownership, underwent renovations in the early 21st century,[31] and as of 2021 brewsCarling and other beers for the UK and European market.[32] In 2020, the historic Bass brewery site, adjacent to the contemporary brewery, was put on the market for redevelopment.[33]
Sited next to the brewery, the Bass Museum of Brewing (later renamed the Coors Visitor Centre & The Museum of Brewing), was Burton-upon-Trent's largest tourist attraction until closed by Coors in June 2008. A steering group was established to investigate re-opening,[34][35] and the museum was relaunched in May 2010 as the National Brewery Centre.[36] It closed in 2022.[37]
Bass was a pioneer in internationalbrand marketing. "Many years before 1855"[38] Bass applied a red triangle to casks of its Pale Ale. After 1855 the triangles were red, white or blue depending on which of three breweries it came from, but all bottles of Pale Ale had the red triangle from that date.[38] The blue triangle was briefly revived after World War II for Pale Ale that was not bottle conditioned. The Bass Red Triangle was the firsttrade mark to be registered under the UK'sTrade Marks Registration Act 1875.[39] The Act came into effect on 1 January 1876 and legend has it that a Bass employee queued overnight outside the registrar's office on New Year's Eve in order to be the first in line to register a trade mark the next morning. As a result, Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton Limited received the first six registrations, the Bass Red Triangle for their pale ale and the Bass Red Diamond next for their strong ale (Numbers 3 to 6 have been abandoned).[40] The trade marks are now owned by Brandbrew SA, an InBev subsidiary based inLuxembourg.[41] In June 2013 InBev renamed Bass Pale Ale as Bass Trademark No.1.[42]
Bottles of Bass with the Red Triangle logo have occasionally appeared in art and literature, includingÉdouard Manet's 1882 paintingA Bar at the Folies-Bergère[43] and in over 40 paintings byPicasso, mostly at the height of hisCubist period around 1914.[44][45][46] In the "Oxen of the Sun" episode ofJames Joyce'sUlysses, Bloom observes the Bass logo.[47]
Draught Bass is a 4.4%ABVcask conditioned beer. Most prevalent near itsBurton upon Trent andDerbyshire heartlands,[1] it is brewed byMarston's in Burton inYorkshire Squares using English hops anddry hopping[52] and is described as "a classic ale with a malty, fruity, nutty aroma and a complex, satisfying flavour".[53]
Bottled Bass is not bottle conditioned, and is brewed atSamlesbury, Lancashire, by AB InBev.
Anale brewed for export, usually to around 5% ABV.
A 1.2% (later 0.5% ABV)shandy made with Bass beer and lemonade. A Pilsner variant in a white can was also available.[57] Introduced in 1972, it was made byBritvic. It was discontinued in 2018.
Bass Pale Ale has been brewed under licence in Belgium since the Interbrew takeover. It is typically sold in 25cl bottles at 5.2% ABV.
Draught Bass has been exported to America since at least 1966.[58] In 2001, 66,500,000 litres of Bass were sold in theUnited States.[59] However Bass suffered under the custodianship ofInBev and laterAnheuser-Busch InBev as it is undergoing heavy decline in American consumption, with 24,200,000 litres sold in the country in 2010.[59]Molson Coors pledged funding to support the Bass brand in America, and since June 2012, Bass has been brewed inMerrimack, New Hampshire, at 5% ABV for the American market.[citation needed]
In 1860, Bass was the first foreign beer to be sold in Japan.[60]
