Wednesday 30 July 2014

Hoare Porter quality 1922 - 1923

You may have noticed that I'm rattling through the Porter much more quickly than the Pale Ales. Not sure why. It certainly isn't because of the high quality of the beers.

Because, to be honest, most of the Porter samples were crap. Of the whole set, only one got the maximum score of three.

If you can remember back as far as the earlier posts in this series, Hoare gambled on expansion in the 1920's. A gamble which failed when they were saddled with too much debt. It ultimately led to their takeover by Charrington in 1933, bringing to an end several hundred years of brewing on the site.

This is the bit where I look at how their other beers performed. Starting with Mild Ale, which cam eighth of seventeen, averaging 0.30. Middling, is all I can say. Their Burton Ale only came 10th of fourteen, but because the standard of Burton Ales was high, it still averaged 0.67. Their Pale Ale came joint eleventh of fifteen with an average score of zero. Overall, not that great.

Let's see how their Porter did:

Hoare Porter quality 1922 - 1923
Year Beer FG OG ABV App. Atten-uation Flavour score Price
1922 Porter 1010.8 1033.8 2.98 68.05% poor -1 6d
1922 Porter 1011 1037.3 3.41 70.51% poor going off -2 6d
1922 Porter 1010.5 1035 3.17 70.00% quite sour -2 6d
1922 Porter 1009.7 1033.7 3.11 71.22% v sour -3 6d
1923 Porter 1011.6 1032.6 2.71 64.42% fair 1 6d
1923 Porter 1008.4 1031.9 3.05 73.67% going off -2 6d
1923 Porter 1011.7 1033.2 2.78 64.76% moderate 1 6d
1923 Porter 1009.8 1034.5 3.20 71.59% sour -3 6d
1923 Porter 1010.2 1034.2 3.11 70.18% thin - unpleasant -3 6d
Average  1010.4 1034.0 3.06 69.38%
-1.56
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001

That's very disappointing for a brewery that had been one of the big boys in the early days of London Porter. Once again, there are lots of really poor examples. By the number of "sour" or "going off" comments it sounds like the beer had been sitting around too long in the pub cellar. Less than a quarter of the samples - just two - got positive scores. The overall average is a very poor -1.56.

Stay away from the Porter in a Hoare's pub, is my advice for the time traveller.

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