This is part three in a series of posts on Truman's 19th century Porter and Stout grists. You've probably for gotten all about the first two. I know I nearly have. And I wrote the bloody things. Here are the tables again to refresh your memory:
The story it tells is very similar. The brown malt content falls as the century progresses. As with the Running Stout, the situation with black malt is more confusing, at first falling and then rising again.
That was exciting, eh? Probably not. Look, I've had a very busy week. Things may improve during the holidays.
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14 comments:
Ron the numbers in the third table, did something go wrong there?
Gary
Whoops. Little slip there. Fixed now.
Table looks good now Ron but the font of the posts is very small. The set-up looks different.
Gary
Yeah, I noticed that. Now fixed.
Once again I find myself stunned by the hop amounts. Even the runner porter has twice the hops approximately than appears to be used by, say, Fuller today for its pale ales. (This is based on a rough calculation I made of its hop usage from daily production data given on its website. From that I get about 1.5 lb hops per barrel. Even upwards of 2 lbs, which might apply perhaps to London Pride or ESB, is 2/3rds the average of the Truman 1800's runner porter rate).
Even allowing for yearlings and so forth it seems hard not think that Truman porter was much more bitter than any modern pale ale or almost any modern porters. Even mild ale earlier in the 1800's - I was looking at some figures you gave for Whitbread not ago over a 140 year period - was hopped in the range of a pound and a half or more per barrel. True the beers were relatively strong, but still.
I would think all modern pale is really mild ale by 1800's standards, in other words. True, not all modern pale ale uses 1.5-2 lbs hops per barrel. Some uses way less (and a tiny amount of craft production more, I assume). But a drinker from 1840, say, if tasting our best commercial pale ales would I think rate these as mild ale.
Which is fine: great beer is great beer, which Fuller's certainly is. I had some London Pride on stillage in Toronto last week, and it was excellent. Anyone such as I reading Michael Jackson with wide-open eyes in 1978 would have thought that possibility a day-dream then.
But where does that leave "real" 1800's porter and pale ale? Probably only a tiny amount is being made by craft breweries using very large amounts of hops.
Gary
Gary,
The hop rate in some of these beers is interesting and, I suspect, somewhat misleading.
I recently made some porter from one of Ron's recipes (1849 BP EI porter).
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_CHrKKDU9290/SapxMgRJEwI/AAAAAAAAD04/iSpGiEGUkyA/s1600-h/Barclay_Perkins_1849_EI_recipe.jpg
Ron's recipes as posted gives a hopping rate of 4.5 lbs/barr. After some allowances for age of hops, alpha etc I ended up using 4.4 lbs/barr.
When it had finished fermentation and dropped bright (as far as I could see!) it tasted unfinished. After 3 months maturing it was much better.
But here's the rub. At neither stage would I have called it hoppy, nor bitter (in a hop bitterness way). Yet a pale ale made with the same hop rate would have been a hop bomb I suspect.
Clearly the hops must have been expressing their flavour in some way, but it was not in a hoppy way as we would recognise it in a pale ale. I would imagine it was related to all those dark grains (brown, amber, and black in this case).
Oh and if you care: it tasted great!
Well, that is very interesting. Could some of the lupulin bitterness have been masked by roasted malts..?
Gary
Gary, I don't know but I will try and find some data. Once I have finished writing the Christmas cards and wrapping the presents. :-(
Gary,
I recently brewed a 19th century 'FES' based upon Ron's info and 'A Bottle of Guinness Please' by David Hughes. It was a hop soup (of course I used whole hops); it even had trouble boiling due to the amount.
I think its balanced well :)
Thanks Brian for that, that accords more with my expectation based on the data Ron is reporting.
I think perhaps some of the intense hop bitterness was moderated by staling. Or by blending some stale with mild beer. We know blending was done in the period when hop rates were very high. Long storage tended to diminish hop character somewhat.
In trying a number of current Imperial and similar stouts, I find most not hoppy enough. You taste, and there is a flatness in the finish, an "incomplete" finish.
There was a logic to the old approach I am sure: intense bitterness was a keynote of the porter style.
Gary
Mentaldental,
Your 1849 EI was very nice, but not particularly hoppy. What shone through was the brown malt.
I've had a couple of recreations of London Porters and Stouts and the signature flavour has always been brown malt.
I think some of the malty character, certainly for strong porter (e.g., double stout), plus the charred/roasted quality, off-set to a degree ("absorbed") high bitterness levels. Perhaps too the general use of yearlings or older hops knocked off some of the bitterness, along again with the effects of some aging/blending.
Some reports though of mid-1800's porter stress its lack of malty quality. Probably this was a description of common porter aged for a time or blended with stale porter. For this type of product (circa 5-6% ABV), hopping at around 5 pounds per barrel had to impart an assertive bitterness. Writers at the time (e.g., Thomson & Stewart) did state that porter should have good bitterness. Of course it is hard to know what degree of "acerb" (one of the 1800's terms) they were talking about. I infer from the various sources we discuss it was high.
Brian's report seems probably typical to me of many 1800's porters (I don't say all).
Gary
I do believe though that common porter ci
Speaking of Fuller and porter, I like Fuller's porter currently available. Within the last month I've had it in keg, cask, bottled and can forms. It tasted virtually the sme each way, rounded and roasty but particularly bitter. I doubt again that mid-1800's porter of the same gravity would have been so (relatively) mild.
Gary
My last message was disordered at the end. I meant to state that I found the particular forms of Fuller's London Porter not particularly bitter.
Gary
Speaking of Fuller's Porter, when did brewers start incorporating crystal malt in their Porter recipes? It seems that up until the middle of the 20th century the main differences between dark beers was that Porter used brown/chocolate/black malt and Brown/Burton used crystal malt. Both, of course, used sugar/caramel on occasions.
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