Do you remember this table I posted a couple of days ago?
Whitbread bottled beers in 1872 | ||||||
Specific gravity | Original gravity of wort | Amount of alcohol | Amount of extract | Acetic acid | App. Atten-uation | |
Strong Ale | 1013 | 1081.3 | 7.19 | 6.1 | 0.15 | 83.46% |
Pale Ale | 1010 | 1059.9 | 5.32 | 4.9 | - | 83.41% |
Family Ale | 1011 | 1057 | 4.82 | 5 | 0.14 | 79.94% |
Extra Stout | 1027 | 1076.7 | 5.26 | 8.9 | 0.13 | 65.04% |
1021 | 1067 | 4.88 | 7.2 | 0.15 | 68.92% | |
1016 | 1058.8 | 4.52 | 5.9 | 0.18 | 72.74% | |
Source: The British Medical Journal, March 9th, 1872, page 27. Note: Apparent attenuation my calculation. | ||||||
It's Whitbread's bottled beer range, analysed in 1872. I've also a Whitbread price list from just a couple of years later, 1874. Which confirms that Strong Ale, Pale Ale, Family Ale, Extra Stout, London Stout and Cooper made up that range:
Now it just so happens that I have photos of their brewing records for the same period. I couldn't resuist seeing how the beers matched up. It's thrown up more points of interest than I had expected. Here they are:
Whitbread beers in the 1870's | |||||||||||||||||
Date | Year | Beer | Style | OG | FG | ABV | App. Atten-uation | lbs hops/ qtr | hops lb/brl | boil time (hours) | boil time (hours) | boil time (hours) | Pitch temp | pale malt | brown malt | black malt | sugar |
15th Mar | 1871 | PA | Pale Ale | 1062.6 | 1020.5 | 5.57 | 67.26% | 17.47 | 5.67 | 2.5 | 58º | 82.23% | 17.77% | ||||
17th Mar | 1871 | KKK | Stock Ale | 1082.0 | 1028.3 | 7.11 | 65.54% | 14.23 | 6.05 | 1.5 | 2 | 58º | 84.51% | 15.49% | |||
6th Sep | 1875 | FA | Pale Ale | 1052.1 | 1011.4 | 5.39 | 78.19% | 12.37 | 2.93 | 2 | 58º | 85.08% | 14.92% | ||||
13th Jul | 1871 | SS | Stout | 1077.6 | 1027.7 | 6.60 | 64.29% | 15.26 | 5.04 | 1.5 | 2 | 2.5 | 63º | 80.00% | 15.00% | 5.00% | |
13th Jul | 1871 | SSS | Stout | 1092.0 | 1038.8 | 7.04 | 57.83% | 15.26 | 5.98 | 1.5 | 2 | 2.5 | 62º | 80.00% | 15.00% | 5.00% | |
16th Jul | 1873 | P | Porter | 1059.3 | 1022.7 | 4.84 | 61.68% | 11.64 | 2.65 | 1.5 | 2 | 64º | 92.75% | 0.00% | 7.25% | ||
Sources: Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives. | |||||||||||||||||
One thing immediately stands out: the differences in attenuation. The FG’s of the bottles analysed are much lower than those in the brewing records. Which makes a lot of sense. The final gravities given in the logs are the gravities when “started”. In old brewing terminology, than means the start of secondary conditioning. Whitbread’s bottled beers were, at the time, all naturally conditioned. They would have undergone a secondary fermentation in casks or tanks before being bottled. Hence the difference in gravities.
The OG’s all pretty much tally with those from the brewing records. Except for
I think we’ve all learnt something today. Maybe nothing useful, but still something.
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4 comments:
"Except for London Stout. Whitbread didn’t brew a Stout with a gravity of 1067. But you know what? A 50-50 mix of Porter and SS would have given a gravity of 1068.45. Which is funny, because Cooper is supposed to be a mix of Porter and Stout. Whereas here it’s clearly just the standard Porter bottled.
Ha! That's very funny! Looks like they felt they couldn't sell a bottled beer with the name porter. so it had to be rebranded.
Mrs Beeton recomended a mixture of porter and stout for nursing mothers …
Martyn, I'd noticed that after about the 1860's or 1870's you don't really see bottled Porter. Or bottled X Ales, for that matter. The boom in bottled beer at the end of the 19th century seems to have mostly been about Light Pale Ales and Stouts.
Mrs Beeton did not recommend a mixture of porter and stout, but that nursing mothers should:
" take a quart of stout at breakfast; a quart of porter at midday, and a further quart of stout in the evening."
Three-quarters of a gallon of beer into the 1070 region. It seems certain that Victorian little beggars did not keep their parents awake all night, and the mums would not have heard them anyway.
Graham Wheeler said... "Mrs Beeton did not recommend a mixture of porter and stout".
She most certainly did. And at length, too.
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, by Isabella Beeton, 1861 - Chapter 42 - The Rearing, Management and Diseases of Infancy and Childhood:
"The nine or twelve months a woman usually suckles must be, to some extent, to most mothers, a period of privation and penance, and unless she is deaf to the cries of her baby, and insensible to its kicks and plunges, and will not see in such muscular evidences the griping pains that rack her child, she will avoid every article that can remotely affect the little being who draws its sustenance from her … As the best tonic, then, and the most efficacious indirect stimulant that a mother can take at such times, there is no potation equal to porter and stout, or, what is better still, an equal part of porter and stout. Ale, except for a few constitutions, is too subtle and too sweet, generally causing acidity or heartburn, and stout alone is too potent to admit of a full draught, from its proneness to affect the head; and quantity, as well as moderate strength, is required to make the draught effectual; the equal mixture, therefore, of stout and porter yields all the properties desired or desirable as a medicinal agent for this purpose."
Googgle books link here.
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