Beer Question

[Seymour Upperthong]

I am working my way through the Seymour era. In 'The Kiss and Mavis Poskit', I got a glimpse of a red colored sign, on the bar, at The White Horse, that I think said "Black Label". Is any one familiar with that brand and can you tell me more about where it was made? The reason I ask is because we had a beer called Black Label here in the US. It originated in Canada and was made at several other satellite breweries, before it was swallowed up by a larger Canadian brewery. Locally, Black Label was was brewed by Carling Breweries on the shores of Lake Cochituate, about 20 miles from where I grew up in Worcester Massachusetts. This was an OK beer because it was brewed from Lake Cochituate water, which was a very clean natural watershed. The Lake now serves as one of the reservoirs to Boston. I can still remember the jingle "Mabel..........Black Label......... Carling Black Label Beer..........for people who are having more than one......etc! Ok, so it loses something without the background tune, but you get the gist.

There was a beer brewed in Worcester Massachusetts called Tadcaster. I understand that a British brewery (Samuel Smiths???) offers a similarly named product. I have been unable to ascertain how Tadcaster got started over here, whether someone brought the recipe over. The US Tadcaster came and went before my time. I used to listen to the old timers reminisce about it while flexing their trivial pursuit muscles. Tadcaster's demise was ensured because they chose to brew it from the then deeply polluted waters of the Blackstone River. Tadcaster paraphernalia, empty bar bottles, wooden cases, bottle caps, cardboard bottle coasters, bottle openers, etc. still draw sales from ebay, but only from collectors of such rubbish. There is now a microbrewery in Worcester called 'Wormtown Brewery' that is brewing a beer they call Tadcaster, affectionately shortened to 'Taddy'.

 

[Roger]

Carling Black Label has been around for a long time and is one of the most popular lagers in the UK. They dropped the Black Label name a while back, it's now just called Carling. I didn't know it had Canadian origins but in the UK I think it's brewed in Burton on Trent.

 

[Barrychuckle]

Yes Roger is correct, they Carling like to brand themselves as 'Englands Lager' and they normally like to sponsor events around the England Football team and the like.

 

[Seymour Upperthong]

The Carling brewery, on the shores of Lake Cochituate, closed up shop in 1975. The building became a white elephant. It was a good beer, not a great beer, but far better than the big name brand over here, IMHO.

I browsed the Wormtown Brewery webpage. They've come a long way in the past dozen years and added numerous new microbrews, but dropped Tadcaster. I saw it offered in restaurants in Worcester, in 2020. I wish I had had one, just 'cause.

 

[Seymour Upperthong]

I found out a bit more about the building. The segment of the building closest to the lake housed some executive offices as well as the executive lunchroom, which featured free cold beer on tap (guess what brand). It gives new meaning to a hydraulic lunch, and you didn't even have to go out to get it!! The tower section behind it housed the 4 1/2 story high beer vat, heat exchangers, piping and other process equipment. Because of these "unusable" contents and the floor space occupied by it, the building languished on the market until an enterprising individual bought it for a song, demolished the brick front of the tower and removed the vat, heat exchangers and other noble metal process equipment, which he redeemed for very lucrative scrap copper prices. Another individual bought the building, converted it into office space and re-sold it. I betcha the beer tap is gone, ah, the price of progress.