London Stout boiling 1800 - 1821

With the worts from each of the mashes being hopped and boiled separately, it means there were three different boil times. Apart from at Reid, where they only employed two mashes for their Stouts.

It was typical for each successive boil to be longer, the final one often crazily wrong. There were a couple of reasons for this. One was to concentrate the weaker last wort. The other was to increase the colour. Something very important for Porter brewers.

Here a couple of examples from Whitbread, showing a very short boil of the first wort of just 1 hour. Then a massive four hours for the final wort.

London Stout boiling 1805 - 1811
Year	Brewer	Beer	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)
1807	Whitbread	Sea DS	1	2	4
1807	Whitbread	Sea S	1	2	4
Sources:
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/002.

From later in the period, I’ve got a bit more data.

London Stout boiling 1820 - 1821
Year	Brewer	Beer	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)
1820	Whitbread	Stout	1	2	4
1821	Reid	S	3	6
1820	Reid	SS	3	6
1820	Reid	SSS	3	7
	Average		2.5	5.3	4
Sources:
Barclay Perkins brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers ACC/2305/1/547 and ACC/2305/1/531.
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/014.
Truman brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number B/THB/C/021.
Reid brewing record in private ownership.

Quite a contrast between boiling times at Whitbread and Reid. The latter’s boils were ridiculously long, especially that of the second wort. It seems rather impractical to me, as it would drastically extend the brewing process. I assume the aim was to concentrate the wort.

The process was quite different for Reid’s running Porter. There the first two worts were boiled for 1.5 hours and the third wort 4.5 hours. I assume that, having a lower OG, the worts didn’t need to be concentrated as much.