Cracking the Codes of Centuries-old Brewing Recipes

All About Beer Magazine - Volume 35, Issue 4
August 1, 2014 By

Shepherd Neame is not the only British brewery that once engaged in subterfuge. At Brakspear in Oxfordshire, the brewer invented his own form of shorthand to stop rivals copying his recipes. Brakspear dates from 1779 and was based in Henley, a town alongside the River Thames, which flows down to London and on to the sea. Before the arrival of trains and motorized transport, the river was a vital lifeline for sending beer to the capital and bringing malt and hops to the brewery.

Henley was a small town, but by the late 18th century it had two breweries, Brakspear’s and a new, aggressive one run by Appleton and Shaw. In 1785 a large brewery, Simonds, opened in the nearby town of Reading while the mighty London porter brewers were able to export their beers to Oxfordshire and surrounding counties via the Thames.

Brewers shorthand
A brewer at Brakspear created this shorthand to guard recipes.

The official history of the Brakspear brewery by Francis Sheppard (1985) says there were some 150 inns and public houses in the area around Henley in the late 18th century. “Almost all of the publicans (or licensed victuallers as they were then described) either owned their house freehold, or more usually rented it, generally from a local farmer or landowner. So they were free either to brew their own beer or buy it direct from a brewer of their own choice; and the wooing of publicans for custom was therefore a vital part of a brewer’s work.”

If customers liked a particular brewer’s beer, it stayed on the bar. If it didn’t find favor, then it was rapidly replaced by a competitor’s ales. Quality was the key to success, and Brakspear’s invested in such vital equipment as thermometers, hydrometers and cooling devices to ensure its beers were always in tip-top condition.

Brakspear-Brewery
Brakspear was based in Henley, a town alongside the River Thames.

In the bigger town of Faversham, Shepherd Neame faced especially tough competition when Edward Rigden’s brewery opened in the early 18th century. It stood on the opposite side of the street to Shepherd Neame to make use of the same high-quality spring water in the area. Rigden went toe-to-toe with its rival in pursuit of trade in local pubs packed with townspeople, farm laborers and sailors working the ships that used the local harbor.

Why did brewers of that era take such extraordinary steps as using codes to protect their recipes? Brewing historian Martyn Cornell believes the answer is a simple one: to prevent employees selling the recipes to rivals. This is borne out by the activities of an energetic London brewer called Nathaniel Chivers, who had gone to Dublin in the 1790s to teach Arthur Guinness how to brew porter and stout. Chivers then sold his skills to brewers in Scotland who were also keen to cash in on the craze for porter. The Anderston Brewery in Glasgow paid Chivers the considerable sum of £300 plus £25 expenses to unlock the secrets of porter brewing. Chivers made sure his visit to Scotland was profitable by giving identical information to Anderston’s rival, John Struthers of Gallowgate.

Charlie the dray horse
Shepherd Neame is the oldest brewery in Great Britain.

Where Shepherd Neame was concerned, it would have been a simple matter for one of its workers to cross the street and hand recipes to Rigden’s. Rivalry was intense. John Owen at Shepherd Neame says there was no social contact between the Neames and the Rigdens “apart from riding to hounds”—a euphemism for fox hunting. Owen believes the codes used at Shepherd Neame were also introduced to protect recipes from the prying eyes of excise officers, who were present in the brewery on a daily basis, checking the strength of beers in order to levy duty. It would have been easy for the tax men to write down recipes from the log books.