Saturday 13 September 2014

Truman Stout quality 1922 - 1925

Just the three W's to go after today. It's been an endurance test, I know. But finally the shore of the shit stream is in sight.

I try to vary the stuff i put in this preliminary preamble. Sometimes financial results, others random newspaper articles. Occasionally more detail about the beers themselves. This time it's the latter.

Sadly, though there's pretty much a complete set of 19th-century records, there's nothing after 1914 for Brick Lane. Pretty annoying. I wonder where all the brewing books went. Derek Prentice knows someone who has one of the 1920's ones. Presumably any that still exist are in private hands.

But there are various other records from Truman which tell us quite a lot about their beers. Mostly documents to do with costs. Using them I've been able to piece together quite a lot about the recipes. It's yet more information I've not had time to fully extract yet. This seemed like a good excuse to make a start. And to provide you with lots more lovely tables.

As I'm sure you know, Truman had been one of the big Porter brewers back in the 18th century. No surprise then that they not only brewed Stout, but made several of them. It's another indication of how little, despite the assertionsof some, Guinness dominated the British Stout market.

Here's an overview of the different Stouts Truman brewed between 1925 and 1933:

Truman Stouts 1925 - 1933
1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933
Stock IDS 1083.7 1083.6 1095.4
BS 1058.4 1058.5 1058.3 1058.4 1058.7 1058.8 1059.0 1053.7 1053.7
St. 1050.1 1050.2 1050.2 1050.2 1050.3 1050.1 1050.5
St. 8d 1047.8 1047.8
St. 7d 1040.9 1040.9
CS Town 1044.8 1047.1 1046.7 1046.3 1048.5 1049.1 1049.0
CS Country 1044.3 1045.4 1045.3 1045.3
CS B 1038.9 1038.9
R 1037.4 1037.5 1037.5 1037.4 1037.2 1037.2 1037.1 1035.3 1035.3
SS 1054.5 1054.7 1054.6 1054.4 1054.5 1054.8 1054.8 1050.3 1050.3
RDS 1044.5
Source:
Document B/THB/C/256c held at the London Metropolitan Archives

You can see that the range varied, but they always had at least five, and sometimes as many as seven, Stouts. Counting Porter in amongst the Stouts, because that's what R is: Running Porter. St. 8d and St. 7d are clearly beers introduced after Snowden's 1931 emergency budget, beers with reduced gravities so they could be sold at the same retail price after the tax increase. BS, presumably standing for Brown Stout or Best Stout looks like Truman's standard Stout. IDS must be Imperial Stout. I see that didn't last long after WW I.

Despite brewing several Stouts, the type's importance for Truman was falling during the 1920's and 1930's. Both in real and relative terms, their output of Stout was falling:

Truman Brick Lane Ale and Stout output 1924 - 1940
Ale Stout Total Brick Lane
year barrels % barrels % barrels
1924 188,026 70.91% 77,134.5 29.09% 265,160.5
1925 217,775 71.56% 86,531 28.44% 304,306
1926 224,057 72.39% 85,475 27.61% 309,532
1927 231,040 73.91% 81,574 26.09% 312,613.5
1928 232,685 73.26% 84,910 26.74% 317,595
1929 227,432 74.45% 78,060.5 25.55% 305,492
1930 258,659 77.14% 76,666 22.86% 335,325
1931 256,063.5 79.43% 66,306 20.57% 322,369
1932 274,183 83.11% 55,732.5 16.89% 329,915.5
1933 240,208 84.58% 43,804 15.42% 284,011.5
1934 280,984 85.87% 46,241 14.13% 327,225
1935 300,169 86.77% 45,775 13.23% 345,943.5
1936 319,721.5 88.05% 43,383.5 11.95% 363,105
1937 324,352 88.69% 41,358 11.31% 365,710
1938 342,062 89.80% 38,868 10.20% 380,930
1939 344,291 90.69% 35,342 9.31% 379,633
1940 344,475.5 91.17% 33,373.5 8.83% 377,849
Source:
Document B/THB/C/256c held at the London Metropolitan Archives

The proportion of Stout fell from almost 30% in 1924 to less than 10% in 1940. In terms of volume, the decrease was from 86,000 barrels in 1925 to just 33,000 barrels in 1940.

Here's that information in the form of a graph:


Now let's take a look at the grists of Truman's Stouts. This is all taken from a single parti-gyle of 8th April 1929:

Truman Stout grists 1929
Beer OG lbs hops/ qtr hops lb/brl pale malt brown malt crystal malt roast barley black sugar cane sugar hops
BS 1055.7 6.7 1.44 81.38% 3.08% 3.08% 4.84% 4.47% 3.15% Pacific and Worcester
St 1046.8 6.7 1.21 78.78% 2.98% 2.98% 4.68% 7.52% 3.05% Pacific and Worcester
CS. T. 1046.8 6.7 1.21 78.78% 2.98% 2.98% 4.68% 7.52% 3.05% Pacific and Worcester
CS. T. 1045.7 6.7 1.18 78.78% 2.98% 2.98% 4.68% 7.52% 3.05% Pacific and Worcester
CS. C 1046.8 6.7 1.21 78.78% 2.98% 2.98% 4.68% 7.52% 3.05% Pacific and Worcester
CS. C 1042.7 6.7 1.10 78.78% 2.98% 2.98% 4.68% 7.52% 3.05% Pacific and Worcester
R 1033.8 6.7 0.87 78.78% 2.98% 2.98% 4.68% 7.52% 3.05% Pacific and Worcester
Source:
Document B/THB/C/256c held at the London Metropolitan Archives

There's nothing too surprising in the combination of pale, brown and crystal malt plus roast barley and sugar. Though the proportion of dark malts is quite low. It looks like a lot of colour is coming from the black sugar. Interesting that there's no flaked maize in the grist. Especially as Truman did use it their Brick Lane Ales and the beers they brewed in Burton.

Now on to the their draught Stout. I think it's clear that there are two types in the table. The first is a weaker 8d (7d after 1923) Stout It's probably the beer called St. The others are the 9d/8d type. And they're doubtless either BS or SS. In terms of specs, the stronger samples are very close to the overall averages, except the attenuation and ABV are lower.

What about the scores?

Truman Stout quality 1922 - 1925
Year Beer FG OG ABV App. Atten-uation Flavour score Price
1922 Stout 1014.2 1048.2 4.41 70.54% good for the price 2 8
1924 Stout 1018.8 1051.1 4.17 63.21% fair 1 8
1924 Stout 1020 1056.5 4.72 64.60% poor -1 8
1925 Stout 1017.2 1058.2 5.32 70.45% good 2 8
Average  1017.6 1053.5 4.66 67.20% 1.00
Average last 3 1018.7 1055.3 4.74 66.09%
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001

It hasn't done badly at all, though the sample size is pretty small. Three of four got positive scores, two of which were twos. The single negative score was only a -1.

When I'm back in London for the Wall Street Crash long weekend, I'll be happy to take my chances with Truman's draught Stout.

2 comments:

J. Karanka said...

I love the flavour "good for the price", it's classic JDW. Has BS ever stood for bottling stout?

Ron Pattinson said...

J. Karanka,

I don't think I've ever seen BS standing for Bottling Stout.