Whitbread grists in 1973

Time for a deeper dive into Whitbread's beers. Let’s take a look at the grists. That’ll be fun, won’t it? Kicking off with the malts.

Five malts were employed in total. Including two base malts, pale and lager. The latter was used for beers they wanted to keep really pale: Export Pale Ale and Gold Label. Logically enough, neither of those included crystal malt. Nor did Final Selection. All the other beers did.

Brown malt, as you expect, is limited to the two Stouts. Whitbread, as a London brewer was very faithful to brown malt. Not so with black malt, which they replaced with chocolate malt in the 1920s. Which also showed up in the other two dark beers, Best Mild and Final Selection.

For most of the beers the malt content was fairly high, averaging about 85%. The exception being Gold Label, where it was just a shade under 70%.

Whitbread grists in 1973
Beer	Style	pale malt	brown malt	choc. Malt	crystal malt	lager malt	total malt
Best Mild	Mild	70.55%		3.27%	8.73%		82.55%
Trophy	Pale Ale	78.54%			6.37%		84.91%
Tankard	Pale Ale	78.54%			6.37%		84.91%
Export Pale Ale	Pale Ale					89.74%	89.74%
Mackeson	Stout	70.18%	4.70%	8.40%	3.71%		86.99%
Extra Stout	Stout	70.18%	4.70%	8.40%	3.71%		86.99%
Final Selection	Strong Ale	87.44%		3.26%			90.70%
Gold Label	Barley Wine					69.28%	69.28%
Source:
Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/141.