It was almost inevitable that I became an alcoholic

It took me a long time to accept that I was an alcoholic, but it was only looking back after years of  drink-free life  that I realised I was an alcoholic and I had a drink problem - they were two separate things.

Laboratories in breweries are equipped to determine if a beer conforms to a set of physical and chemical standards so they are - by definition almost - unable to deal with the unexpected. And no laboratory is able to tell make judgements in the incredibly complex field of acceptable taste; when an instant decision is required, as to whether a beer is good enough to be packaged, only a person can do that.

For most people, being faced with half a dozen bottles of beer to taste at 6 am, is not something they look forward to. What is more, this tasting could not be any less like tasting wine in a restaurant before it is poured; this is not about show, a great deal is at stake. If a beer is passed as being good enough to package and has reached the drinking public before a problem is found, then it is expensive in terms of product recall and a PR nightmare. However if a taster fails a beer only to be overruled later, obviously damage their reputation.


Most people want a quiet life - brewers are no exception - and if they can avoid making a difficult decision where the consequences can be so directly attributed to them, they will. 
I was never troubled with self doubt about my abilities as a brewer and would always sample beers when asked to do so. Whenever I was in the brewery operatives seeking approval for taste samples made a point of coming to me because I would always oblige and give them a quick decision.

I was only allowed to sign that beer was fit-for-packaging after I had attended the daily taste panel and given scores and made comments that proved my judgement was consistently sound for months on end. Each day at 11 am. six beers in blue glasses (so you could not see the colour) were lined up in each of a dozen booths, the tasters had to complete flavour assessment of each of the beers having no idea what the beers were or where they had come from. The beers could include the beer that you had passed yourself earlier in the day, one about which there had been a complaint, one to which an off-flavour had been deliberately introduced, and one from a product development trial.

When everyone had been finished, each taster was asked in turn to read out their scores and comments then the taste panel manager would tell everyone the beer's history. There was nowhere to hide if you were not up to the job.  The more taste panels a taster attends and the more beers he tastes, the better he becomes.

Whilst the amount of beer ingested at each tasting is small, as they happened throughout the day the overall amount was significant.

Breweries are generally huge sparsely populated places and often difficult to catch people in their offices, so it was usual for half and hour before lunch and the same in the evening to meet in the sample room to have a beer and discuss events; it was accepted practice that all visitors and sales reps who were on site ended there visits in the sample room too

When I started brewing everyone who worked in the brewery had a daily beer allowance, which because it was duty free, had to be consumed on site; those who did not want to drink their allowance usually still drew it but gave it to others. When it was proving difficult to get people to work overtime it was usual to offer additional beer allowance. Even without stealing beer it was possible for an individual to drink considerably in excess of the 2 pints per day allowance

A distillery formed part of the first brewery in which I worked; the workers there had a daily whisky allowance but such was the level of alcoholism amongst them that the pundy room (the room where the allowance was served) opened at 04:00 so that the workers could drink their allowance before starting work at 06:00.

As well as drinking beer in the brewery we had an allowance delivered home, when my wife to be (who worked in the same brewery as me) and I had a party, we started off with a generous amount of beer but as most of the guests worked in breweries too, and each of them brought a large number of cans with them, we had more beer after the party than we started with!

With the coming of the Health and Safety at Work Act Etc 1974 the daily on-site beer allowance disappeared and the home allowance was increased accordingly. The actual allowance varied greatly from brewery to brewery but the most generous I had was 4 dozen 600ml bottles of lager (5.2% ABV) per week that is the equivalent of more 65.45  large cans of Stella Artois.

I went for years when my body was never free of alcohol and it is not surprising that I became and alcoholic.