Tetley Porter 1858 - 1896

The vast majority of the beer Tetley brewed in the 19th century was Mild Ale. With a reasonable amount of Pale Ale being brewed alongside it. Porter and Stout were breed, but only occasionally and in modest quantities.

Most of the batches of Porter were only around 30 barrels*. Not a huge amount of beer, especially considering it might only be brewed once in several weeks. I think it's safe to infer that there wasn't a huge market for Porter in Tetley's trading area, which I assume was mostly Yorkshire.

I was surprised that their Porter stuck around until the 20th century. Porter started to disappear from the portfolio of provincial brewers in the second half of the 19th century. Everyone still brewed Stout, but plain old Porter was quickly falling out of favour. Not sure when Tetley's finally disappeared, as I haven't got past WW I yet in their records. But they were still brewing it in 1916.

I always like to go in for a bit of contextualisation, so I'm including a table of Whitbread Porter for the same years.

Look at that for a coincidence - the 1858 Porter from Tetley and Whitbread have identical OG's and near-identical FG's. There's not a great deal of difference in the gravity of the Porters from the two breweries, though towards the end of the period covered the Tetley one was starting to be a little weaker.

The attenuation of Tetley's Porters from 1868 and 1878 is quite poor. The others are quite similar to Whitbread's, at 65-70%.

With the exception of the 1858 versions, the hopping rate of Whitbread's is noticeably higher. Getting on for 50% higher. You can also see that the hopping rate of Tetley's Porter fell over time.

The boil times were a little longer at Tetley, but not by a huge amount. Just 15 or 30 minutes at most. I'm not sure we can draw any inferences from that.

Tetley Porter 1858 - 1896
Year	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp	max. fermen-tation temp	length of fermen-tation (days)
1858	X1P	Porter	1055.7	1018.3	4.95	67.16%	13.89	3.17	1.5	2		º	70º	7
1868	X1 P	Porter	1055.4	1023.5	4.21	57.50%	8.00	1.75	1.5	2	2	65º	67º	6
1868	X1 P	Porter	1053.7	1027.7	3.44	48.45%	7.47	1.75	2	2		66º	66º	6
1878	P	Porter	1052.6	1022.2	4.03	57.89%	7.43	1.64	2	2		71º	70º	6
1878	P	Porter	1053.2	1022.2	4.10	58.33%	7.43	1.69	2	2		71º	69º	6
1878	P	Porter	1048.2	1016.6	4.18	65.52%	6.86	1.50	2	2		69º	69.5º	6
1878	P	Porter	1052.1	1018.3	4.47	64.89%	6.86	1.62	2	2		69º	69.5º	6
1896	P	Porter	1052.1	1016.6	4.69	68.09%	5.74	1.17	2			61.5º	64.75º	6
1896	P	Porter	1047.1	1011.9	4.65	74.71%	5.62	1.12	2	2		61º	68.5º	6
Sources:
Tetley brewing records held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service document numbers WYL756/11/ACC1903, WYL756/16/ACC1903, WYL756/25/ACC1903 and WYL756/49/ACC1903.

Whitbread Porter 1858 - 1896
Year	Beer	Style	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	boil time (hours)	Pitch temp
1858	P	Porter	1055.7	1018.8	4.87	66.17%	12.93	2.78	1.5	1.5	2	64º
1868	P	Porter	1051.5	1016.3	4.65	68.28%	12.38	2.94	1.5	2	2	64º
1878	P	Porter	1054.8	1017.2	4.98	68.69%	8.71	2.12		2		62º
1888	P	Porter	1058.4				8.06	1.93	1.5	1.75		60º
1896	P	Porter	1061.5	1015.0	6.15	75.61%	7.49	1.85	1.75	1.75		60º
Sources:
Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives document numbers LMA/4453/D/09/052, LMA/4453/D/09/062, LMA/4453/D/09/073, LMA/4453/D/09/082 and LMA/4453/D/09/091.

Next time we'll be looking at the grist of Tetley's Porter.


* The Whitbread Porters in the table were in batches of between 400 and 1200 barrels.