A rather natty black and gold label adorned the Prince of Ales from Theakston's Brewery in Masham, North Yorkshire, brewed for the 1981 royal wedding. 275ml or 9.68 fluid ounces in a brown bottle but the point of difference for this beer was the stubby bottle design and the ring pull cap.
Alas after thirty years of being stored in poor conditions and its initial pasteurisation mean the beer is undrinkable.
Theakston's has had an interesting thirty years and has survived despite several set-backs. In 1981 the company had only eight pubs but the name of Old Peculier was already big in the free-trade.
In 1984 the company was taken over by Blackburn brewer, Matthew Brown, which was in turn gobbled up by Scottish and Newcastle in 1987. In 2004 the company returned to private hands when four Theakston brothers bought the company from S&N.
Hopefully we will see a 2011 version of the beer later in the spring.
4 comments:
Very odd looking bottle indeed! Wonder if the milk man dropped of a couple in the mornings.
I think we were getting Greene King brewed Ruddles out here in something similar for a while.
I think also, more recently, Shepherd Neame's Spitfire was available in small stubby bottles with a screw cap.
Those bottles are a sight for sore eyes!
They were the norm for me when I was a yougster starting my drinking career in my local Theakston's pub (Fleece in Northallerton) - and you didn't need a bottle opener.
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