Let's Brew Wednesday - 1867 Courage Double Stout

See? I wasn't joking about the summer Stout series. We continue with a little Courage number from the 1860's.

We're very lucky to have this beer. Because no 19th-century Courage brewing records exist. Well not the proper brewing books. But a pair of individual brewing records (presumably the brewer's private record) are still knocking about. They're not the most detailed. They're filled into a pocket diary. One that's shockingly similar to a modern one.

I guess it's contextualisation time now. The grist is a pretty typical London one: pale, brown and black malt. Some brewers threw in a bit of amber malt as well, but not all the time. A pretty bog standard beer, really, in terms of malts.

The hopping is a bit different. Most contemporary London Stouts had rather more hops. This beer has about 2.5 lbs per barrel, compared to over 5.5 lbs in Whitbread SS from the same year and 4.25 in Reid S (which had a lower OG). Truman Double Stout from 1870 also had more than 5 lbs of hops per barrel. Odd that. I wonder why Courage used so few?

What I'd really like to give you is a Guinness Foreign Extra Stout recipe from the 1800's. But, as they won't let me look at their brewing records, that's just a dream for the moment. Maybe I'll be able to persuade them to change their minds.






I've not a great deal to say this time. I'll leave Kristen to tell you all the detailed stuff . . . . .

Kristen’s Version:

Notes: This was is the easiest of the lot of Export stouts yet. 3 malts and a simple white sugar. You can choose just a single pale malt or you can choose 3 different ones. I prefer to go with 3 separate ones. Maris otter, Golden promise and a nice continental pale…went with Dingemann’s this time. Hops are all Goldings but do as you wish with this baby as there won’t be a ton of hop aroma but lots of bitterness. This is definitely in the dark and roasty export genre except this one has quite a bit of toast to it from the brown malt.