Sunday 5 February 2023

Whitbread Export Stout grists 1860 - 1880

The last set of charts went down so well, I've decided to do some more. Let's face it: they fill up the space nicely and remove the need to write so many words.

I’m using Whitbread as an example to show the trends in grists during this period. 

Whitbread Export Stout grists 1860 - 1880
year OG IBU SRM pale malt brown malt black malt sugar
1860 1072.9 163 32 67.35% 26.53% 6.12%  
1865 1069.5 145 34 74.47% 21.28% 4.26%  
1870 1074.2 124 33 70.56% 15.05% 4.52% 9.88%
1875 1067.9 123 32 61.55% 17.84% 4.28% 16.33%
1880 1078.7 105 38 67.72% 16.05% 6.02% 10.21%
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/09/054, LMA/4453/D/09/059, LMA/4453/D/09/064, LMA/4453/D/09/070 and LMA/4453/D/09/074.

Not sure I can pick much out of that. The bitterness and colour numbers are from brewing software calculations and should not be taken as gospel. There does, however, seem to be a trend of declining bitterness. And also, to a lesser degree, of the brown malt content.

And, of course, there’s the arrival of sugar in 1870. No idea what type of sugar it might have been. But it was there.

Note that none of Whitbread’s grists matches any of those suggested by Loftus. A demonstration of how varied and dynamic recipes were. 

Here's that data in chart form:

Combining the data with the last set, I've a chart that spans a large chunk of the 19th century.

Not totally sure what that tells us. But it is a pretty chart. I suppose it does show the slow rise of black malt. And the ups and downs of brown malt.

It does show how dynamic grists were, even at Whitbread. Where the grists were pretty standardised.


3 comments:

Pierce said...

Why no amber malt?

Anonymous said...

Great stuff Ron. That second chart would look great as a stacked bar chart, which would show each element as a proportion of 100% - Excel does the calcs for you if you select that chart type.

Ron Pattinson said...

Pierce,

most London brewers didn't use amber malt in their Stouts. Other than Barclay Perkins.