Saturday 18 August 2012

Tetley's Porter in 1868

I warned you this would be a long and tediously-detailed series of posts. And we're barely started yet. This time the focus is on Porter.

Straight up I'll say that Porter was noticeably in decline by 1868. Especially outside London. By the end of the century, many provincial brewers would have abandonned it completely, though all continued to brew Stout. A sign of the style's decline - even in London - is demonstrated by the disappearance of Keeping Porter in the 1860's. Whitbread brewed their last Keeping Porter in 1870.  

Tetley weren't brewing huge quantities of Porter and Stout. Just occasional brews, unlike the Mild Ales, Strong Ales and Pale Ales in their portfolio. And the brew lengths were pretty short, often not the full capacity of the equipment. The brew lengths of the two Porters in the table below were just 58 and 29 barrels. A far cry from the 1,000 plus barrel batches of the big London brewers. (The average brew length of the London Porters in the table was 924 barrels.)

There are many similarities between Tetley's Porter and the London ones. The gravities are much the same, the low 1050's. The pitching temperatures are all around the mid 60's Fahrenheit.

But there are also differences. The hopping rate, for a start. the London Porters average about 40% more hops per barrel.

But there's one area with a much, much more significant difference: FG. The London Porters all have an FG of around 1016º, while Tetley's have ones over 1020º. Consequently the rate of attenuation and the ABV are much lower. The difference must have been pretty obvious in the finished beer. Tetley's Porter would have been much thicker and sweeter than those from London.

Why the difference? As many old texts mention, brewers brewed beers to suit the tastes of the region they were in. Brewers in one location tended to brew generally similar beers because that's what drinkers expected.

We're almost done with Tetley's 1868 beers. Just Stout to go. Then we can move on to 1878. Or 1858. I've not quite decided yet.


Tetley Porter 1868
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
max. Fermen-tation temp
length of fermen-tation (days)
comments
7th Nov
1868
X1 P
Porter
1053.7
1027.7
3.44
48.45%
7.47
1.75
2
2

66º
66º
6
Bavarian hops
10th Oct
1868
X1 P
Porter
1055.4
1023.5
4.21
57.50%
8.00
1.75
1.5
2
2
65º
67º
6
Bohemian hops
Source:
Tetley brewing record held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service Leeds, document number WYL756/16/ACC1903



London Porters 1867 - 1870
Date
Year
Brewer
Beer
Style
OG
FG
ABV
App. Atten-uation
lbs hops/ qtr
hops lb/brl
boil time (hours)
boil time (hours)
boil time (hours)
boil time (hours)
Pitch temp
max. Fermen-tation temp
length of fermen-tation (days)
comments
24th Apr
1867
Barclay Perkins
TT
Porter
1054.8
1016.6
5.06
69.70%
9.41
2.43
1.25
1.5
2.5

65º
78.5º
3 + 1

5th Feb
1867
Reid
Rg
Porter
1055.4
1016.6
5.13
70.00%
9.155
1.92
2
1.5
3
3
63º



12th Feb
1867
Reid
Crs
Porter
1055.4
1015.5
5.28
72.00%
11
2.50
2
2
2.25
2.5
63.5º



5th Jul
1870
Truman
Runner
Porter
1056.8
1016.6
5.31
70.73%
10.3
2.64




62º
º

Alsace hops
14th Aug
1868
Whitbread
P
Porter
1051.5
1016.3
4.65
68.28%
12.38
2.94
1.5
2
2

64º



Average




1054.8
1016.3
5.1
70.1%
10.5
2.5
1.7
1.8
2.4
2.8




Sources:
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/09/062
Reid brewing record held at the City of Westminster Archives, document number 789/275
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/1/572
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/C/072










7 comments:

Tom said...

What's the difference between stout and porter? Isn't stout just strong porter traditionally?

Oblivious said...

And higher hopping rates to

Ron Pattinson said...

Tom, yes.

Ron Pattinson said...

Oblivious, that depends. On whether you're talking about hopping rate epr barrel or per quarter. When Porter and Stout were parti-gyled, the hopping rate per quarter would be the same.

Anonymous said...

It's dangerous to infer too much from such a small sample of records, but I have a suspicion that Tetley's high FG and poor attenuation are not due to brewing to public taste (this was, after all, a beer brewed only sporadically due to declining public taste) but possibly an issue with their yeast and/or process issues. Note the nearly 20% difference in attenuation rates between the two batches in the log. That's a rather extreme variation for a commercial brewery.

Anonymous said...

Anyone else find it interesting that in all cases where the hops were listed, that imported hops were used (Bavarian and Bohemian hops for Tetley's porter, and Alsace (strisselspalt, perhaps) for Truman? One would expect that cheaper domestic hops would be used, particular at this point in time when porter consumption was in decline.

Ron Pattinson said...

Anonymous, Britain was very dependent on imported hops by the 1860's. A very high proprtion of British beers contained some foreign hops.

Foreign hops were cheap compared to British ones. Even top-quality hops like Saaz.