You've probably guessed that this is material which will make its way into "Keg!", the book I'm writing on 1970s brewing. It's coming along rather nicely. The manuscript is currently about 200 pages. But I haven't put in many of the personal recollections yet. My guess is about 400 pages when I'm done.
On with the excerpt.
What next? All we have left are the hops. And there were plenty of those.
Every beer except the Export Pale Ale includes hop extract. Which was the equivalent of 25%-30% of hops.
Other than a few Styrian hops, they were all English. Most from Kent and Worcester, with one example from Hampshire. With the English hop industry still reasonably healthy, there was little need to import hops.
And why let those samples go to waste? It makes sense to throw them into a brew. There weren’t enough to make much difference. Just a couple of dozen pounds out of several hundred. Not enough to make any difference in flavour. Especially when there were already a couple of different kinds of hops.
| Whitbread hops in 1973 | |||||||
| Beer | Style | hop 1 | hop 2 | hop 3 | hop 4 | hop 5 | hop 6 |
| Best Mild | Mild | Worcs (1971) | Worcs (1972) | hop extract | |||
| Trophy | Pale Ale | Kent (1972) | Kent (1972) | Worcs (1972) | hop extract | ||
| Tankard | Pale Ale | Kent (1972) | Kent (1972) | Worcs (1972) | hop extract | ||
| Export Pale Ale | Pale Ale | Styrian (1970) | EK (1970) | Hants (1970) | |||
| Mackeson | Stout | Worcs (1972) | Worcs (1972) | samples (1972) | hop extract | ||
| Extra Stout | Stout | Worcs (1972) | Worcs (1972) | samples (1972) | hop extract | ||
| Final Selection | Strong Ale | EK hops (1972) | EK hops (1972) | hop extract | |||
| Gold Label | Barley Wine | Styrian (1971) | Styrian (1971) | MK (1972) | EK (1971) | Worcs (1972) | hop extract |
| Source: | |||||||
| Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/09/141. | |||||||
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1 comment:
Ron these posts are very interesting.
Oscar
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