London Strong Burton Ale malts 1880 - 1899

Time to take a look at the ingredients. Starting with the malts.

There aren’t a great number of them. Just three, two of them base malts.

All but one have a base of standard pale malt. The exception being the 1881 Whitbread example, which uses SA malt. Which is a type of malt which produces a wort with a higher proportion of less readily-fermentable sugars. Something desirable in a beer which would undergo a long secondary fermentation. Note that it is one of the beers with the lowest degree of attenuation.

The only coloured malt is a small quantity of brown malt in the 1891 Whitbread beer. That is significant. As it’s around the time when Mild Ale and Burton Ale started to darken in colour. By the time WW I rolled around, they would fairly dark brown.

Only the 1897 Truman beer is 100% malt. Though the malt content is pretty high in all but Barclay Perkins KKK., averaging 87%. 

London Strong Burton Ale malts 1880 - 1899
Year	Brewer	Beer	pale malt	SA malt	brown malt	total malt
1881	Whitbread	KKK		84.75%		84.75%
1891	Whitbread	KKK	84.92%		1.68%	86.59%
1886	Barclay Perkins	KKK	74.40%			74.40%
1887	Truman (Burton)	S3	90.70%			90.70%
1897	Truman (Burton)	CS 3	100.00%			100.00%
	Average					87.29%
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers LMA/4453/D/01/047 and LMA/4453/D/01/057.
Barclay Perkins brewing record held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number ACC/2305/1/583.
Truman brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document numbers B/THB/BUR/11 and B/THB/C/327.