It's been a while since I last published a table. Or is that just my imagination? Probably.I've returned to my very first archive research project: Porter grists. It's a topic that never fails to fascinate. To fascinate me, I suppose I should say. I'm assembling another of my giant tables, stuffed with information from multiple breweries. That's what it will contain. At the moment I've only partially completed Truman.
1821 to 1871. A reasonable spread of years. As I've said before, Porter grists were very dynamic. They never stayed the same for long. The little table below shows the move away from brown malt and the introduction of sugar to the equation.
If you're wondering what "Runner" means, let me explain. Truman had "running" and "keeping" versions of its Porter and Stout. The running versiosn were sold young, the keeping versions were aged in vats.
There will most likely be many more such tables in the near future. That's a threat.
Posts
21 comments:
Forgive my ignorance but why did they start shovelling sugar in to it?
Pawelkwak, 1860's I think it was when sugar was allowed again. I remember posting a table of malt and sugar usage in British breweries.
Sugar has played an important role in British beers for more than a century. You can find some of my earlier posts on the topice here:
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/
search/label/sugar
and here:
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/
search/label/sugar%20week
Ron, I know you have answered this question previously but what are the units in the gravities and how are they converted to either brix or grams/cc? I'll try to pay attention a bit better in the future.
So will all those Americans who say porter doesn't have black (or roast) malt in it now stfu?
1840 is an interesting year in comparison to the others.
The sugar must have been a emergency measure; it is one hell of commercial risk to suddenly go from zero to 25% within the same year, and 25% is an enourmous amount, even for today. The customers must have noticed the change for the worse. In those days sugar was almost unheard of in beer. Even in the 20th century, porter was the one drink that rarely had sugar in it, presumably because it had already become such a weak and coloured imitation of its former self that putting sugar in it would have been really taking the pee.
It is significant that in 1871 there seems to be the first step in reducing the sugar again. Pity the chart stopped there.
My guess is that there was either a malt shortage or Truman did not pay their maltsters bill in time.
zythophile said...
'So will all those Americans who say porter doesn't have black (or roast) malt in it now stfu?'
As black malt is merely a colourant, it could be argued that the best porters do not have black malt in them.
Extend that table another few years, until the brown malt has gone completley, and it will become no more than a coloured pale ale. At that point it becomes a fake. It is as good as a fake by 1871 anyway.
It is the same thing as dying white sugar and calling it brown sugar, a practice which a certain manufacturer got into trouble with trading standards over, a good few years back. Pity trading standards were not about in the days of porter.
Good job that they haven't got round to colouring margarine with black malt and calling Marmite.
I have decided I don't like the taste of roasted barley - as opposed to any form of dark-coloured malt - in stout and porter. I find it can lend a harsh, non-beery note. I can't say as much for the flaked form of barley, but possibly it would arouse the same dislike.
I don't notice it so much in Guinness. However, I think I can taste it in the 250th edition (an export-only bottled beer, I believe) and find it off-putting there.
I think beer tastes best with malt only and maybe a little brewing sugar.
Incidentally I recently had a bottle of Lion stout from Sri Lanka, called Sinha Stout in some markets. What a fine beer! It reminded me so much of so many descriptions of 1800's porter I've read here - not sour but lightly tart, not sweet, with a good roasted malt quality and reasonable bitterness (it could take more in fact).
I wonder if some of the beer is aged and blended with young beer, or perhaps some kind of lactic addition is made. It doesn't taste of brett to me but has the Worcester sauce nose and taste of a classic stout.
This version is just shy of 9% ABV and might have qualified as an Imperial stout in the 1800's. Of course, terminology varied and I won't get hung up on that. Where some modern Imperial stouts go wrong in my view is their excessive weight and sweetness. Lion/Sinha avoids that but delivers plenty of taste and complexity.
It is this kind of beer, elegant, winy, that surely resulted in the term "Parson's Champagne" in the 1700's.
Gary
Graham, London Porters contained brown malt up until their demise around 1940.
To call late 19th century Porters fake fails to understand the intrinsically dynamic character of beer stylwes.
First Stater, I usually quote specific gravity. By brix I guess you mean Plato. That conversion is a complicated formula. If you want it precise. Just divide oth last two digits of SG by 4 and you get a fair approximatio0n.
Ron Pattinson said...
'Graham, London Porters contained brown malt up until their demise around 1940.
To call late 19th century Porters fake fails to understand the intrinsically dynamic character of beer stylwes.'
Not at all - what you are seeing is a succession of completely different beers with the same name slapped on them for marketing or profiteering purposes. There is no resemblance whatsoever between that porter of 1871 and what London porter was when it acquired its moniker.
When a brewer's grists merge together into a standard grist, such that a brewer's whole range of beers only differ by slight variations in gravity and the amount of caramel added, it becomes fakery on a grand scale. By the 1940s we were well and truly there. Many brewer's, brown, mild, porter and stout were virtually the same beer, with different names slapped on them, and no different to their pale ale except for the added caramel.
It seems that, of the London brewers, only Whitbread tried to maintain an individual character to porter for as long as they could. By your own research Whitbread were still using about 14% coloured malts in 1933, and they were still staling until 1915. As French & Jupp supplied Whitbread with brown malt up until the 1950s, we can assume that the brown was 'true' brown and not drum brown (although the last batch of 'true' brown malt supplied to Whitbread, which was the last batch ever made by French & Jupp, went into Mackeson).
You might be guilty of what the BJCP often do, and that is because it says porter on the label, assume that that is what it really is.
The Truman porter of 1821 had about 30 EBC of colour (translucent brown), but by 1871 it had a colour of 140 EBC, (jet black). That may have been to give porter a distinct identity against the up-and-coming pale ales, but it could also have been done to hide the inherent cloudiness in London-brewed beers, again in response to crystal-clear pale ales. However, behind that cloak of darkness they can get away with murder. That is exactly what they did - they murdered porter.
If we assume that Entire was aged and staled, mild was fresh, and the blend of the two was porter, then what is the point of shoving the moniker 'porter' on a beer that is not a blend and is not staled? It is, in fact, a mild. We already have a beer called mild, and long before the turn of the twentieth century, with most breweries, there was not ha'p'orth of difference between a mild and a porter apart from, possibly, a few degrees in gravity and the label shoved on it.
Porter is such an abstract term that it has been easy to abuse over the last 100 years, but unless a beer has strong flavour characteristics that clearly distinguish it from any other run of the mill beer, I will not except that it deserves the label 'Porter'. A coloured light ale is not a porter.
Graham, I totally disagree that there was one of Porter's many variations that was "authentic" and anything else was "fake".
The early 19th century Truman and Whitbread's beers were very similar to each other.
Porter wasn't necessarily staled. You had young and old Porter. People's tastes changed and aged beer went out of fashion. That's why it was later all sold young.
Porter was always in a state of flux. That's what makes it so interesting. Picking one as the "right" version is hopelessly subjective and obscures the devlopments and change that took place. I totally disagree with that view.
I've looked at a lot more brewing records than you and I haven't seen what you describe: a move from many very differnt beers to just a couple of basic recipes.
"You might be guilty of what the BJCP often do, and that is because it says porter on the label, assume that that is what it really is."
It seems to me that this is the opposite of what the BJCP do. They are more likely to deny that it is what it says it is on the label because it doesn't conform to a set of arbitrary guidelines.
Many authorities insisted on the differences in palate between the porters of the great London breweries. One even doubted (I think it was Black) if there was even a "London" style so various were the current examples (mid-1800's). I'd have to think the same was true a century earlier.
In the absence of knowing what the typical palate was and how precisely it was attained, I think it is difficult to peg what porter was and how it changed at any given period.
I am pretty sure it was Ure who speculated that the typical palate was achieved using old wooden vessels that were constantly re-used. (He mentions this, not brown or blown malt). That is a clue that lactic and perhaps brettanomyces factors were at work to mainly characterize the palate. But again, it's very difficult to know at this juncture.
This can cut both ways: either the best porters available today are very similar to the classic aged types of the 1700's or they are radically different or somewhat different. I happen to believe the first is true. I just re-tasted that Lion Stout, in this case at cool room temperature, not cold as before. In that form, it is very bitter, bitter-tart is the first hit on the palate, there is a lot of hops in there. It is smoky and roasty, not admittedly like a beech or oak fire, but again I don't think all porter always (originally) had that taste.
A friend just brought me a couple of bottles of Trinidad-brewed Guinness FES and I'll put some taste notes here later.
Gary
From circa-1780, George Watkins informs us in his Complete English Brewer that:
``Nothing has occasioned more dispute or more diversity of opinion, than the affair of porter``.
They were arguing about it 230 years ago! And we`re still at it.
Watkins`comments on porter are some of the best I have read, both as to how it was made, and (as important to me) its taste.
His recipe is simple: use all ``high-dried`` malt or any ``brown malt``, and any good hops (2 lbs to the bushel of malt). The malt is dried with culm, he says (waste anthracite).
Mash it, brew it. Drink young in the 15 days and it will have the keynote taste of porter. Should you want to emulate the up to 2 years age the big brewers give it, add ... elderberry juice.
It is clear why: this sharp fruity juice will lend a tart and fruity note such as maturity can bring. That Lion Stout has a fruity tartness, not really a fruity quality, but it is pasteurized. Guinness Extra Stout, the old bottle-conditioned variety, used to have blackberry-like tang. I know what Watkins means.
He says big brewers have an advantage: they can blend inconsistent butts; they can add a butt of over-stale beer to one too mild (thus one can see the start of the move away from long vatted aging); and they can age very large quantities which by a slow secondary fermentation brings the beer to perfection, to a melding (he says) of the malt and hops.
Read closely, this chapter tells you almost everything you want to know about porter, including (by implication but a rather clear one) that entire butt meant not from one butt but a brew made from combining up to 4 mashes. Entire meant entire grist, in other words, which is the true 1700`s meaning of the term in my view.
I don`t claim that roasted malt added to pale or a mixture of grist can equal 100% all-brown malt dried on culm but I do believe that the 1800`s palate of porter, and today`s, are within the range of what Watkins knew. A very roasty malt can compensate for the lack of roast in the pale malt component, maybe not exactly, but close enough.
In fact, Watkins didn`t even consider a wood-smoky taste ideal, in his porter there would have been a light scent of coal smoke. High dried could have meant dark amber or brown. I agree that the colour probably changed somewhat but I don`t think the taste did in any essential way - either of mild porter or aged or a mix - all of which were available to him as they can be today.
George Watkins made and was commenting on porters (I am convinced) such as we would easily know today.
Here is the link, it starts at pg. 122.
http://books.google.com/books?id=elBHAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA167&dq=mild+ale&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=1&as_miny_is=1740&as_maxm_is=1&as_maxy_is=1800&as_brr=0#v=onepage&q=mild%20ale&f=false
Gary
I'm not sure if anyone is still reading this thread. I'd like to mention another early 1800's statement. It is by George Wigney in this case.
Wigney said, don't replace brown malt with pale malt and patent malt only. If you do, it won't taste like the old porter. (I am not prepared unreservedly to agree. But let's grant the point). He said, use some amber and brown malt with the pale. That will attain the old taste. He offers approving commentary on differing combinations of these.
He offers, too, a striking simile. He says using only pale malt + patent malt will make the beer taste as coffee would using raw coffee beans with some burned. (I.e., it's not coffee!).
But, as Ron has shown, brown malt and often amber continued in use in the 1800's. A way was found, I would infer, for porter to rival its old palate.
Where does that leave the pale malt + patent malt combination? It is the architecture of the modern porter, some craft examples aside. I would think Lion Stout is made that way, for example.
I would say a variant porter finally emerged. One as good as the original, even if Wigney would not agree. I will discount the effect of colour change. Wigney said that colour is less important than palate. I agree with him in this regard.
Trinidad-brewed Guinness FES has a good tart character. How it is imparted, I do not know. It has some good roasty quality. It's not really Worcester sauce-like, and without any Brettanomyces I can detect. But it has nice bitterness.
Let's compare it to, say, Alaskan Smoked Porter. The latter is made with malt dried over alder wood. Or to Lion Stout. I'd say all are excellent. All are different, yet all are porters. Something in the palate really does unite them.
Gary
Gary, I'm pretty sure the taste of Porter would have changed in the early 19th century. Though not necessarily all of a sudden. The changes in malt proportions was a gradual process.
And a Porter brewed with just pale and black malt must have been pretty different from one with brown included.
The big London breweries differed in their use of black malt. Truman's used it a couple of decades earlier than Whitbread.
If Trinidadian Guinness FES is made the same as Nigerian, it's done with "Guinness Flavour Extract" unbelievably concentrated and bitter and mostly made in Waterford these days, I believe, and sent out from Ireland to the 50 or so breweries around the world that brew FES, where it is added at the rate of two per cent GFE to 98 per cent pale locally brewed beer.
They probably (in Trinidad, Carib brew it) use the extract mentioned. Having had the Irish-brewed original a number of times, I'd say it is best. Still, this Islands-brewed one is a good version. It reminds me of the Canadian-brewed Guinness Extra Stout, the one sold in hard glass (not the bottled widget import, which we get too), but of course is bigger all-round.
I'd like to know more about the technology of the extract.
Gary
The Guinness extract has always seemed to me to be a product purely of late 20th century science.
In fact, I now realize (kind of a eureka moment) the technique is much older than that.
Numerous writers from the early-to-later 1800's spoke of a way to colour porter using, not burned sugar (caramel), but a concentrated beer wort. See this explanation:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=LyZKmI89eB8C&pg=PA474&dq=concentrated+wort+%2B+porter&lr=&cd=23#v=onepage&q=concentrated%20wort%20%2B%20porter&f=false
As for many things that seem new, the extracts seems to me to have a rather lengthy lineage... It still is a short-cut to be sure, but one that was devised early on to approximate the old taste of porter, rather successfully judging by what Thomson & Stewart and many other writers of the period said.
Gary
Seems similar to the German Röstmalzbier (trade name Sinamar), used as a colouring agent, and according to that book, for the same reasons, to comply with the desire for 100% malt beer.
Post a Comment