Make Mine A Mackeson

Have you had a Mackeson recently? The answer is probably no, as it's a beer that is hard to find these days. A trawl of my local supermarkets failed to discover the beer until I came across a few cans in Budgen's.

I was keen to include the beer in a book I am writing but, with all the changes in the brewing industry in recent years, I wasn't certain who owned the brand. I finally tracked it down to Interbrew but a pleasant woman in the group's press office in Luton at first denied all knowledge of it. "It's listed on your website," I pointed out. "So it is," she said after a pause and the sound of keyboard clicking down the phone. "I'll have to get back to you."

A few days later another helpful woman phoned to say that Mackeson was indeed an Interbrew brand but it was brewed for the group by Young's in London. So Mackeson is alive, well and in good hands in Wandsworth. But what a fall from grace for what was once one of the biggest beer brands in the country.

The Mackeson Brewery was founded in Hythe in Kent in 1669. Over the centuries it brewed many conventional beers, including India Pale Ale, but it found greater success and fortune from 1910 when it launched Milk Stout. The recipe was devised by a dietician and the label of the beer proclaimed that "Each pint contains the energising carbohydrates of 10 ounces of pure dairy milk'.

A booklet said the stout would give drinkers energy, stopped distention, fullness, indigestion and headache, prevented rheumatism and was ideal for nursing mothers and invalids. At a time when most people's diets were dreadful and such illnesses as rickets were widespread, a glass or two of Mackeson was clearly beneficial. But the claims about the beer containing milk were not strictly true. The essential ingredient that made Mackeson different from other stouts was that the recipe includes lactose, also known as milk sugar. A component of milk, it is a type of sugar that cannot be turned into alcohol by brewer's yeast, so it gives a creamy character to the beer.

The Labour government that came to power following World War Two took a dim view of Mackeson claiming it contained pure milk. So Mackeson became simply Stout and for a time the milk churn on the label was dropped, though it has since reappeared. By this time the beer had become a cult Whitbread brand, especially among those who found Guinness too daunting and bitter. Astonishingly, by the 1960s, Mackeson accounted for more than half of Whitbread's annual production. Times changed. Guinness did not suffer, but in general dark beers went out of fashion and Mackeson at just 3% alcohol was seen as an old man's drink. As sales declined, the beer was shunted round the Whitbread empire, ending up at the Samlesbury plant in Lancashire before being handed over to Young's.

I wonder if Interbrew realises it is sitting on a classic beer. I believe Farson's Brewery in Malta still produces a milk stout and there are a couple of similar brews in the United States. But Mackeson has the British market to itself.

It's time for a revival. In common with all dark beers, it can stand being chilled down and it would make a splendid refresher in warm weather as well as warming drink in winter.

Suitably promoted, Mackeson could have a new lease of life. To start with, we must drop the thought that it is a sweet beer. It has a respectable 26 units of bitterness delivered by the hops. It is certainly creamy and chocolaty with a powerful hint of that old-fashioned confectionery known as milk drops. But sweet it is not.

There is also an export version of the beer. It is 4.2% and has a higher level of bitterness. I once tasted this beer when it was brewed for Whitbread by Eldridge Pope. At present it is only available in Japan but I think, like some versions of Export Guinness, we should be allowed to drink it, too.

I must have a word with the milk man...