How Porter faded away

There are many reasons I like the Whitbread brewing logs. At least the ones that aren't handwritten. But one feature is really handy for me. The totals at the back. Broken down by beer per week, month and year. It makes seeing how much they brewed of any particular beer in a given year a piece of piss.

Pinning down an exact date British Porter died is proving tricky. I've seen various guesses. Mine was sometime during WW II. My trip to London last week kicked that one into touch. Fuller's were still brewing theirs in 1955. But did find some evidence of how Whitbread's Porter just faded away in the early 1940's.


Let's start in 1871, when Porter sales were already in decline. In the brewing year ending July 1872, Whitbread just short of 150,000 barrels of Porter and Stout, of which 127,641, or 85%, were Porter. The average batch size was 600-700 barrels. It was clearly a big seller for the brewery and an important product.

In the brewing year ending July 1923, around 170,000 barrels of Porter and Stout were brewed. But just 14,165, or 8.33%, were Porter. By July 1929, Porter production was down to 5,558 out of 85,000 barrels, or 6,5%. Ten years later, in 1939, just 3,810 barrels of Porter were brewed, or 3%.

The writing was on the wall. If you see the tiny amounts being produced, you wonder why they bothered so long. In 1928, Whitbread brewed around 200 barrels a week of Porter. So my guess would be that around 100 pubs were still stocking it. In the early months of 1939, it was down to around 100 barrels a week. By September 1939, it was a mere 40 barrels a week. There must have been no more than a couple of dozen outlets for Whitbread Porter left. It struggled on at that level for another year, until the final brew on September 9th 1940.

Undoubtedly, if Whitbread hadn't party-gyled everything, their Porter would have been discontinued earlier. There was a cull of the Stouts in 1940, the number being reduced from 5 to 2. SSS was dropped in March 1940 and ES (Extra Stout) in May 1940. Interestingly, production of ES never dropped as low as Porter, always remaining over 100 barels a week. My guess is that there was a sentimental attachment to Porter that kept it hanging on long after it made any commercial sense.

It's sad to see. Especially when I compare it to one of my own favourites, Dark Mild, which is slowly slipping beneath the sea in a similar style.