Draught Burton Ale - DBA

Just a quick post to report on the appearance of a classic beer that I thought had long vanished. I’m talking about Ind Coope’s Draught Burton Ale, or DBA for short. Those of us with long memories aka, those of a certain age, will remember this classic Burton beer, and the storm it caused within the beer world when it first launched in 1976 – 50 years ago to be precise! The appearance of this beer marked a turning point in what CAMRA had described as the “Real Ale Revolution.” It was certainly the moment in time when the large brewing conglomerates began to take “Real Ale” seriously.

If my memory is correct, and that’s not always a certainty after half a century, DBA was a beer based on the bottled version of Double Diamond, which was a completely different brew to the fizzy keg beer of the same name. Promoted under the slogan “A Double Diamond works wonders”, keg DD was weaker in strength than the bottled version and lacking in taste as well. Bottled DD was a successor of the true Burton pale ales of yesteryear, whilst the keg version was just that – a mass-produced, and heavily promoted keg bitter, designed to compete with other national keg beers, such as Courage Tavern Keg, Watney’s Red, Whitbread Tankard, and several others, of similar ilk.

It was a stroke of marketing genius though, to launch a cask beer with the strength and credentials of a genuine Burton Pale Ale, and for several decades Ind Coope DBA was a well-deserved success. However, further takeovers and mergers within the brewing industry, left the beer out on a limb. Other, equally characterful cask beers came along, with most of them brewed by independent brewers. Slowly, but surely sales of DBA began to slide, and eventually, Danish giant Carlsberg, who by then owned the brand, decided to put the beer out of its misery. This happened in January 2015, with the Danes claiming that demand for DBA had fallen to “an unsustainable level”. With virtually no promotion behind the brand, and the beer itself, almost impossible to find, this was hardly surprising.

And there, the DBA story might have ended, had it not been for the duo behind the small, Burton Bridge Brewery, who announced they planned to brew a batch of a beer called Draught Burton Ale for the local CAMRA beer festival the following month. It was fitting then that Geoff Mumford and Bruce Wilkinson, both of whom had worked for Ind Coope, and had been involved in devising the recipe for the original DBA, should brew the beer.

Fast forward to March 2020, and the period shortly before the first, national COVID emergency was declared. I was visiting Burton-on-Trent with a group of beer and pub enthusiasts, drawn for the ranks of the CAMRA Discourse, Beer & Pubs Forum, plus a number of beer bloggers and enthusiasts like me. We were on what might be described as a “curated tour” of some of Burton’s finest pubs. One of those pubs was the famous Burton Bridge Brewery, and the company’s version of DBA was on sale at the pub of the same name. We of course, had to try a pint, and you can read what I wrote about my experience of the beer, here.

A couple of weeks after that visit to Burton, the National COVID Lockdown came into force, and what with partial lifting, “firebreak” shutdowns, “Zones" and all the other nonsense we had to endure, it was the best part of two years before such “curated tours” were again possible, and things started getting back to normal.

In the meantime, I’d forgotten all about Draught Burton Ale, so imagine my surprise at seeing it on sale at the Nelson Arms, in Tonbridge. I’d popped in for a glass or two of Harvey’s XXXX Old Ale, a beer that you might recall I am quite fond of. Seeing the pump clip, brought back memories, so I just had to try a pint, and that provoked other memories, because the DBA tasted every bit as good as I recall. Checking with the Burton Bridge Brewery website, I’m pleased to confirm that this legendary beer is still available, at least in bottled form. Presumably, the beer must be packaged in cask form too, at least from time to time.