Let's Brew Wednesday - 1837 Reid P

Reid was one of the largest Porter breweries in the 19th century. Never the largest, but sometimes second behind Truman or Barclay Perkins. In the early 19th century, they were briefly the largest in 1907 and 1808, but their production remained fairly stable while others expanded.

Here’s how the London Porter brewers ranked in the 1830’s:

Largest London Porter breweries 1830 - 1839
Brewery	1830	1831	1832	1833	1834	1835	1836	1837	1838	1839
Barclay Perkins	262,306	330,528	343,328	315,784	343,569	382,063	378,109	354,360	375,466	405,819
Whitbread	144,104	191,040	209,672	187,070	184,100	186,206	190,005	180,512	179,975	183,468
Truman	167,542	199,486	234,665	226,924	254,650	280,075	329,333	303,590	310,193	320,675
Reid	127,220	154,631	165,515	150,865	169,246	181,187	194,656	162,840	178,919	171,650
Sources:
Whitbread brewing log held at the London Metroploitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/023.
“The British Brewing Industry 1830-1980”. T R Gourvish & R G Wilson, 1994, pages 610-612

This is a pretty typical Porter of the time. With the familiar combination of pale, brown and black malts. All pretty locally sourced. The pale was from Sussex, the brown from Hertfordshire. The hops were all pretty local, too: Mid Kents from the 1835 and 1836 crop.

As a third of the hops were over two years old, I’ve knocked the total hops down from 4.62 ozs. to 3.75 ozs. It still leaves a calculated 44 IBUs.

The mashing scheme was quite complicated: three mashes and no sparge. There was a fourth mash for a return wort.

action	water (barrels)	water temp.	tap temp.	time
mash	207	162º F	145º F	90
mash	150	180º F	164º F	50
mash	179	151º F	153º F	40

This was a beer that wasn’t vatted and would have been drunk young. Or perhaps blended with Keeping porter at racking time. As with all Porter and Stout, the fermentation was quite hot, hitting a maximum temperature of 78.5º F.

1837 Reid P
pale malt	11.75 lb	79.66%
brown malt	2.25 lb	15.25%
black malt	0.75 lb	5.08%
Goldings 90 mins	1.25 oz
Goldings 60 mins	1.25 oz
Goldings 30 mins	1.25 oz
OG	1061.2
FG	1018
ABV	5.72
Apparent attenuation	70.59%
IBU	44
SRM	30
Mash at	150º F
Sparge at	165º F
Boil time	75 minutes
pitching temp	66º F
Yeast	Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale