The Bass Brewery () was founded in 1777 by William Bass in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England. The main brand was Bass Pale Ale, once the highest-selling beer in the UK. By 1877, Bass had become the largest brewery in the world, with an annual output of one million barrels. Its pale ale was exported throughout the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

, and the company's iconic red triangle became the UK's first registered trade mark. Bass took control of a number of other large breweries in the early 20th century, and in the 1960s merged with Charrington United Breweries to become the largest UK brewing company, Bass Charrington. The brewing operations of the company were bought by Interbrew (now Anheuser-Busch InBev) in 2000, while the retail side (hotels and pubs) were renamed Six Continents plc. Because at the time Interbrew controlled a large portion of the UK beer market, the

Competition Commission The Competition Commission was a non-departmental public body responsible for investigating mergers, markets and other enquiries related to regulated industries under competition law in the United Kingdom. It was a competition regulator under t ...

instructed Interbrew to sell the Bass brewery along with certain brands to Coors (now

Molson Coors The Molson Coors Beverage Company is an American-Canadian multinational drink and brewing company incorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law and headquartered in Golden, Colorado and Montreal, Quebec. Molson Coors was formed in 2005 ...

), while retaining the rights to the Bass brand. In 2010, it was widely reported that AB-InBev was attempting to sell the rights to the Bass brand in the UK for around £10 million to £15 million. In the UK, draught Bass (4.4%

ABV Alcohol by volume (abbreviated as ABV, abv, or alc/vol) is a standard measure of how much alcohol (ethanol) is contained in a given volume of an alcoholic beverage (expressed as a volume percent). It is defined as the number of millilitres (mL) o ...

) has been brewed under contract in Burton by Marston's (formerly a relatively minor competitor) for

AB-InBev Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, commonly known as AB InBev, is an American-Belgian multinational drink and brewing company based in Leuven, Belgium. AB InBev has a global functional management office in New York City, and regional headquarters in ...

since 2005, while bottled products are brewed at AB-InBev's own brewery in Samlesbury, Lancashire, for export. Bass is also brewed locally in the United States and Belgium. Bass Ale is a top ten premium canned ale in the UK, with 16,080 hectolitres sold in 2010.

History

18th century

Prior to establishing a brewery, William Bass transported ale for brewer Benjamin Printon. Bass sold this carrier business to the Pickford family, using the funds to establish Bass & Co Brewery in 1777 as one of the first breweries in Burton-upon-Trent.

19th century

Early in the company's history, Bass was exporting bottled beer around the world, serving the Baltic region through the port of Hull. Growing demand led his son Michael Thomas Bass (1760–1827), to build a second brewery in Burton in 1799 in partnership with John Ratcliff. The water produced 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 redoubled Burton's preeminence 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 their product was available "in every country in the globe". 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 as Lucy, Lady Houston. When Fred died of drink in 1883 he left her £6,000 a year, much to the disgust of his family. Following the death of the second Michael Bass in 1884, his son Michael Arthur Bass, later the 1st 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 and

Derby Derby ( ) is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby g ...

. The annual Bass 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. Bass' No. 1 Ale was the first beer to be marketed as

barley wine Barley wine is a strong ale between 6–12% alcohol by volume."Barley wine"

Worthington in 1927. They also acquired Thomas Salt in 1927, which was founded in 1774 by Joseph Clay, for over £1,000,000. Bass was one of the original London Stock Exchange FT 30 companies when the listing was established in 1935. Over the next half-century, Bass maintained its UK dominance through acquiring such brewers as Mitchells & Butlers (1961),

Charringtons Charrington Brewery was founded in Bethnal Green, London, in the early 18th century by Robert Westfield. In 1766, John Charrington joined the company, which then traded as Westfield, Moss & Charrington from the Anchor Brewery in Stepney. It merg ...

(1967), Bents-Gartsides (1967), John Joule & Sons (1968), William Stones Ltd (1968), and Grimsby's Hewitt Brothers Ltd (1969), being variously known as ''Bass, Mitchells and Butlers'' or ''Bass 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 this 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 from

CAMRA The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is an independent voluntary consumer organisation headquartered in St Albans, England, which promotes real ale, cider and perry and traditional British pubs and clubs. With just under 155,000 members, it is ...

. In 1988, Bass acquired the rights to franchise the

Holiday Inn Holiday Inn is an American chain of hotels based in Atlanta, Georgia. and a brand of IHG Hotels & Resorts. The chain was founded in 1952 by Kemmons Wilson, who opened the first location in Memphis, Tennessee that year. The chain was a division ...

name outside of North and South America and in 1989 went on purchase the Holiday Inn hotel chain from Holiday Corporation.

1989 "Beer Orders"

During the prime ministership of

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...

, 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 house In the United Kingdom, a tied house is a public house required to buy at least some of its beer from a particular brewery or pub company. That is in contrast to a free house, which is able to choose the beers it stocks freely. A report for th ...

s", owned by one of the brewers, and mostly selling its products. On the advice of the

Director General of Fair Trading The Fair Trading Act 1973 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It mee ...

, the Monopolies 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. The report made recommendations to break up a "complex

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a speci ...

" among beer brewing and sales between the UK's "Big Six" ( Allied, Bass, Courage,

Grand Metropolitan Grand Metropolitan plc was a leisure, manufacturing and property conglomerate headquartered in England. The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index until it merged with Guinness plc to for ...

Scottish & Newcastle Scottish & Newcastle plc was a brewing company headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, which expanded from its home base to become an international business with beer volumes growing almost tenfold. The company was listed on the London Stock Exc ...

, and

Whitbread Whitbread plc is a multinational British hotel and restaurant company headquartered in Houghton Regis, England. The business was founded as a brewery in 1742, and had become the largest brewery in the world by the 1780s. Its largest division ...

), which at that time accounted for "75% of beer production, 74% of the brewer-owned retail estate, and 86% of loan

ties TIES may refer to: * TIES, Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science * TIES, The Interactive Encyclopedia System * TIES, Time Independent Escape Sequence * Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science The ''Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science' ...

." 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 company Mitchells & Butlers).

21st century

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 on hospitality rather than brewing and Bass' brewing business was sold to the Belgian brewer Interbrew (later Anhauser-Busch InBev) in June 2000. The UK government's

again raised concerns about the monopoly implications arising from the deal and instructed Interbrew to dispose of the Bass brewery facility in Burton along with the Carling and Worthington brands, which were all sold to Coors (later

). However, Interbrew was to retain the rights to the Bass Pale Ale brand. With only hotel and pub holdings left in the Bass company's portfolio, the company renamed itself Six Continents plc, which itself split into Mitchells & Butlers and InterContinental Hotels Group in 2003. Bottled and keg Bass formerly exported to the US with a higher alcohol content are now produced there domestically by Anheuser-Busch at a Baldwinsville, New York, facility.

Fate of the original Bass brewery in Burton upon Trent

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 to Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries plc (later Marston's plc), which transferred production of Bass to its own brewery, also in Burton. The former Bass brewery in Burton, under Molson Coors ownership, underwent renovations in the early 21st century, and as of 2021 brews Carling and other beers for the UK and European market. In 2020, the historic Bass brewery site, adjacent to the contemporary brewery, was put on the market for redevelopment.

Brewery museum

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, and the museum was relaunched in May 2010 as the National Brewery Centre.

Branding

Bass was a pioneer in international brand marketing. "Many years before 1855" 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. The blue triangle was briefly revived after World War II for Pale Ale that wasn't bottle conditioned. The Bass Red Triangle was the first trade mark to be registered under the UK's Trade Marks Registration Act 1875. 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 two registrations, the Bass Red Triangle for their pale ale and the Bass Red Diamond next for their strong ale. The trade marks are now owned by Brandbrew SA, an InBev subsidiary based in

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

. In June 2013 InBev renamed Bass Pale Ale as Bass Trademark No.1. Bottles of Bass with the Red Triangle logo have occasionally appeared in art and literature, including

Édouard Manet Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Bo ...

's 1882 painting '' A Bar at the Folies-Bergère'' and in over 40 paintings by Picasso, mostly at the height of his

Cubist Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

period around 1914. In the "Oxen of the Sun" episode of

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

's '' Ulysses'', Bloom observes the Bass logo.

Sponsorship

* Bass sponsored Derby County Football Club from 1984 to 1986. * Bass sponsored Crewe Alexandra Football Club from 1986 to 1989. * Bass sponsored Blackpool Football Club from 1988 to 1990. *Bass sponsored Bohemian Football Club from 1993 to 1994. * Bass was the main sponsor of Bristol Rugby for 2006–07. * Bass was a major sponsor of

Pontypridd RFC Pontypridd Rugby Football Club ( cy, Clwb Rygbi Pontypridd) are a rugby union team from Pontypridd, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. They compete in the Indigo Group Premiership, which they won for four consecutive seasons between 2012 and 2015, and ...

during the 2009–2011 seasons.

Versions of Bass

Draught Bass

Draught Bass is a 4.4% ABV cask conditioned beer. Most prevalent near its Burton upon Trent and

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

heartlands, it is brewed by Marston's in Burton in Yorkshire Squares using English hops and

dry hopping Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant ''Humulus lupulus'', a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants. They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to w ...

and is described as "a classic ale with a malty, fruity, nutty aroma and a complex, satisfying flavour". Bottled Bass is not bottle conditioned, and is brewed at Samlesbury, Lancs by AB InBev.

Bass Ale

This is the exported version of Bass, usually brewed to around 5% ABV.

UK keg ales

*Bass Extra Smooth - A 3.6% ABV pasteurised keg version of Bass, brewed to the same recipe, and most popular in the South West of England. *Bass Mild XXXX - A 3.1% ABV keg mild.One Stop Shop
/ref> *Bass Best Scotch - A 3.4% ABV keg beer in the

North East of England North East England is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. The region has three current administrative levels below the region level in the region; combined authority, unitary authority ...

Scotch ale style. It was formerly brewed to 3.8% following its launch in 1986.

Shandy Bass

Shandy Bass was a 0.5%

shandy made with Bass beer and lemonade. Introduced in 1972, it was made by Britvic. It was discontinued in 2018.

Bass overseas

Belgium

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.

United States

Draught Bass has been exported to America since at least 1966. In 2001, 66,500,000 litres of Bass were sold in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

.Euromonitor, 2011 However Bass suffered under the custodianship of

InBev InBev () is a brewing company that resulted from the merger between Belgium-based company Interbrew and Brazilian brewer AmBev which took place in 2004. It existed independently until the acquisition of Anheuser-Busch in 2008, which formed Anheus ...

and later Anheuser-Busch InBev as it is undergoing heavy decline in American consumption, with 24,200,000 litres sold in the country in 2010.

have pledged funding to support the Bass brand in America, and since June 2012, Bass has been brewed in Merrimack, New Hampshire, at 5% ABV for the American market.

Elsewhere

In 1860, Bass was the first foreign beer to be sold in Japan."Double Bass." Financial Times ondon, England3 November 1995: 15. Financial Times. Web. 21 August 2011.

References

External links

Official website (defunct, redirects to Anheuser-Busch)

Bass Logo- Design and History
* {{Authority control 1777 establishments in England Breweries in England Companies based in Burton upon Trent Food and drink companies established in 1777 Companies formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange Mitchells & Butlers InBev brands British companies established in 1777