Tuesday 20 December 2016

Reid beers 1837 - 1839

Now I've mentioned Reid's beers we may as well have a look at some of them.

In the late 1830's Reid brewed a wide range of both Porter and Ale. Nothing really odd about that. Three other big Porter brewers: Whitbread, Truman and Barclay Perkins all started brewing Ale in the 1830's having previously been exclusively beer brewers. It was all to do with the 1830 Beer Act.

In the new Beer Houses Ale was very popular and the Porter brewers wanted to get their share of this new market. But where Reid differed from the other three brewers was that later in the 19th century they went back to being exclusively a Porter brewery. No idea why.

What's dead handy is that not only did they brew Mild and Stock Ales, but also Pale Ales. In particular, IPA. The other London brewers I've records from didn't introduce Pale Ales until the 1860's.

Talking of the IPA, it's insanely heavily hopped for what is a beer of quite modest gravity. Which gives me a great chance to bang on about how IPA wasn't a strong beer. Note that its gravity is considerably lower than X Ale, the weakest Mild Ale. And even has a lower gravity than standard Porter, the everyman drink of the day.

Note that the corresponding X and K Ales have identical gravities. And also that, if you look at the hopping rate per quarter, there's a clear difference between the Ales and Beers (Porter and Stout). The Ales are hopped at 7-11 lbs per barrel, the Beers 10-17 lbs. The simple Running Porter was hopped at the same rate as the strongest Stock Ale.

Obviously I'm not including the Pale Aless in this comparison, because that's a totally different class of beer.

Reid beers 1837 - 1839
Date Year Beer Style OG FG ABV App. Attenuation lbs hops/ qtr hops lb/brl
4th Feb 1839 IPA IPA 1056.8 1007.0 6.59 87.67% 26.6 5.88
16th Feb 1839 BPA Pale Ale 1056.0 1007.0 6.48 87.49% 22.7 5.61
30th May 1839 IPA IPA 1056.2 1007.0 6.51 87.55% 28.6 6.53
22nd Dec 1837 P Porter 1061.2 1018 5.72 70.60% 10.2 2.09
23rd Dec 1837 BS Stout 1074.0 1023 6.74 68.90% 14.0 4.61
15th Dec 1838 EBSt Stout 1071.2 1020.0 6.77 71.91% 17.2 5.32
20th Mar 1838 KBSt Stout 1072.0 1020.0 6.88 72.23% 16.2 5.15
29th Dec 1837 DBSt Stout 1084.2 1026.0 7.70 69.12% 11.2 4.86
18th Mar 1839 XXX Mild 1105.3 8.0 3.75
27th Dec 1838 XX Mild 1088.6 8.8 3.12
31st Dec 1838 X Mild 1073.4 6.8 2.06
13th Jan 1839 KKK Stock Ale 1105.3 1033.2 9.53 68.42% 10.7 5.12
11th Jan 1839 KK Stock Ale 1088.6 1028.3 7.99 68.13% 10.0 3.13
Source:
Reid brewing record held a the Westminster City Archives.

3 comments:

Gordon said...

Do you have a grist for the double brown stout starting at 1084?

Ron Pattinson said...

Gordon,

of course I do. It'll cost you, though.

J. Karanka said...

Funny you mention the double brown stout. I was aiming for an IBSt yesterday but undershot the OG from 1.100 to... exactly 1.084. DBSt it is then!

Ron, the one thing that stands out of PA / IPA is again the attenuation. Was the high attenuation common to all IPAs? Well, and the post-beer level of hopping is quite something too given how heavily hopped those stouts were.