The Porters come from a variety of London brewers. The big traditional Porter breweries like Barclay Perkins, Truman and Whitbread. Smaller Porter breweries like Hoare and others whose reputation was built on Ale, such as Mann and Courage.
Damn. Looks like I'll need to update "Brown Beer" yet again. Can't leave any Porter details out.
Seems as if the brewers had a post war gentleman's agreement to drop OG on the porter to differentiate them from the stouts. Looking at the porter OG's from your previous blogs it is rare or unknown to see an original gravity below 1.050. Similar to the mild in that sense, what was a proper bodied beer is weakened until the consumer moved to a new style.
ReplyDeleteFirst Stater, I don't think there was a gentleman's agreement. They were just brewing a beer they afford to for the selling price. Porter was 6d a pint, as was Mild. Bitter was 7d or 8d and Stout 8d or 9d.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think Whitbread and Truman had their Gravity Books in the first place? To check up on what their competitors were doing. I suspect the other brewers did the same. That's why the gravities for the same type of beer are generally similar.
Also the entries in both Gravity Books are very unevenly distributed across time. There are loads of entries for 1922 and 1923, then none until 1928. Why is that? Because 1922 is when brewing was emerging from wartime restrictions.
Hi there!
ReplyDeleteWith regards to the previous days comments: my local, today, had on draught mild, two bitters and a porter. OK there was no Burton or weak London IPA but I do know I'm a lucky bastard. I live in NW England by the way.
ReplyDelete