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.