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:
What's the difference between stout and porter? Isn't stout just strong porter traditionally?
And higher hopping rates to
Tom, yes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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