Whitbread Double Stout 1880 - 1914

I've just finished my book on London Stout. This was the last section I wrote. I just couldn't resist putting in one last table.

The last couple of decades of the 19th century were happy times for brewers, as can be seen in the increase in Whitbread’s output, which more than trebled between 1880 and 1910.

What were the trends in grists in this period? Well, let’s take a look at what was happening at Whitbread again.

The obvious trend is a decline in the content of pale and brown malt and an increase in that of sugar and black malt. Then there’s the sudden appearance of quite a considerable quantity of amber malt in 1895. I wonder why that was?

Caution should be taken with the colour and bitterness numbers as they have been calculated with brewing software. Though I think that there was a clear decline in the bitterness, even allowing for possible errors in the calculations.

It’s not so clear with the colour. Especially as the 1900 colour was in large part dependent on a sugar I’m not 100% sure about. Perhaps getting a touch darker. 

Whitbread Double Stout 1880 - 1914
	OG	IBU	SRM	pale malt	brown malt	black malt	amber malt	sugar
1880	1080.3	103	35	67.19%	19.20%	3.84%		9.77%
1885	1081.4	88	36	64.44%	22.22%	4.44%		8.89%
1890	1083.1	89	34	68.18%	20.20%	3.54%		8.08%
1895	1085.3	74	37	54.05%	15.32%	4.20%	18.02%	8.40%
1900	1086.7	69	45	51.25%	13.75%	5.00%	20.00%	10.00%
1905	1086	71	39	52.27%	12.73%	5.00%	17.73%	12.27%
1910	1080.4	60	39	51.91%	12.84%	5.74%	16.94%	12.57%
1914	1079.7	61	39	51.44%	13.00%	5.42%	16.79%	13.36%
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/09/075, LMA/4453/D/09/080, LMA/4453/D/09/084, LMA/4453/D/09/090, LMA/4453/D/09/094, LMA/4453/D/09/099 and LMA/4453/D/09/104.