Truman's log from 1800

Barnard's "Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland" is a remarkable work. And dead handy for me, as it describes pretty much all of the breweries I've got brewing records for.

What came as a surprise, as I browsed the Truman's chapters today was an illustration. It's of a brewing log from 1800. Do you want to see it? Yeah, course you do.


Barnard remarks on it being "unusual". At first sight, it does look a bit weird. But I've looked at hundreds of Truman's brewing records. I can work out what a fair bit of it means. Because 100 years later, just after Barnard's visit, they hadn't changed much:


The leftmost columns has the ingredients. First the malt, then the hops. To the right of that are the mashing details with the number of barrels of water, strike heat and tap heat. Next are details of the worts before they went into the copper. Then volumes before and after the boil and the boil time. At the bottom of the boil time column is the pitching temperature. Usually to it s right is the cleansing temperature. For some reason it isn't filled in here. Next the gyles which were blended before fermentation (quantity and gravity) with the resultant blend on the bottom line, along with the total gravity points and the extract per quarter of malt. Piece of piss, eh?

You can find just about all those elements in the same place in the old log. In fact, in some ways it's easier to read because the columns have headings. If you can read them.

About 1055. The OG of the 1800 beer. No, it doesn't actually list the gravity. But I've some Truman's logs from 1812 that do. And, taking the yield in those (72 pounds of extract per quarter) the 1800 beer comes to about 20 pounds per barrel, or 1055 in new money.

The fermentation temperature of the 1800 beer is very high. Pitched at 67º F and cleansed at 78º F. The 1900 beer (coincidentally also about 1050) was pitched at 61º F.