Truman Stout quality 1922 - 1925

Just the three W's to go after today. It's been an endurance test, I know. But finally the shore of the shit stream is in sight.

I try to vary the stuff i put in this preliminary preamble. Sometimes financial results, others random newspaper articles. Occasionally more detail about the beers themselves. This time it's the latter.

Sadly, though there's pretty much a complete set of 19th-century records, there's nothing after 1914 for Brick Lane. Pretty annoying. I wonder where all the brewing books went. Derek Prentice knows someone who has one of the 1920's ones. Presumably any that still exist are in private hands.

But there are various other records from Truman which tell us quite a lot about their beers. Mostly documents to do with costs. Using them I've been able to piece together quite a lot about the recipes. It's yet more information I've not had time to fully extract yet. This seemed like a good excuse to make a start. And to provide you with lots more lovely tables.

As I'm sure you know, Truman had been one of the big Porter brewers back in the 18th century. No surprise then that they not only brewed Stout, but made several of them. It's another indication of how little, despite the assertionsof some, Guinness dominated the British Stout market.

Here's an overview of the different Stouts Truman brewed between 1925 and 1933:

Truman Stouts 1925 - 1933
	1925	1926	1927	1928	1929	1930	1931	1932	1933
Stock IDS	1083.7	1083.6	1095.4
BS	1058.4	1058.5	1058.3	1058.4	1058.7	1058.8	1059.0	1053.7	1053.7
St.	1050.1	1050.2	1050.2	1050.2	1050.3	1050.1	1050.5
St. 8d								1047.8	1047.8
St. 7d								1040.9	1040.9
CS Town	1044.8	1047.1	1046.7	1046.3	1048.5	1049.1	1049.0
CS Country		1044.3			1045.4	1045.3	1045.3
CS B								1038.9	1038.9
R	1037.4	1037.5	1037.5	1037.4	1037.2	1037.2	1037.1	1035.3	1035.3
SS	1054.5	1054.7	1054.6	1054.4	1054.5	1054.8	1054.8	1050.3	1050.3
RDS									1044.5
Source:
Document B/THB/C/256c held at the London Metropolitan Archives

You can see that the range varied, but they always had at least five, and sometimes as many as seven, Stouts. Counting Porter in amongst the Stouts, because that's what R is: Running Porter. St. 8d and St. 7d are clearly beers introduced after Snowden's 1931 emergency budget, beers with reduced gravities so they could be sold at the same retail price after the tax increase. BS, presumably standing for Brown Stout or Best Stout looks like Truman's standard Stout. IDS must be Imperial Stout. I see that didn't last long after WW I.

Despite brewing several Stouts, the type's importance for Truman was falling during the 1920's and 1930's. Both in real and relative terms, their output of Stout was falling:

Truman Brick Lane Ale and Stout output 1924 - 1940
	Ale		Stout		Total Brick Lane
year	barrels	%	barrels	%	barrels
1924	188,026	70.91%	77,134.5	29.09%	265,160.5
1925	217,775	71.56%	86,531	28.44%	304,306
1926	224,057	72.39%	85,475	27.61%	309,532
1927	231,040	73.91%	81,574	26.09%	312,613.5
1928	232,685	73.26%	84,910	26.74%	317,595
1929	227,432	74.45%	78,060.5	25.55%	305,492
1930	258,659	77.14%	76,666	22.86%	335,325
1931	256,063.5	79.43%	66,306	20.57%	322,369
1932	274,183	83.11%	55,732.5	16.89%	329,915.5
1933	240,208	84.58%	43,804	15.42%	284,011.5
1934	280,984	85.87%	46,241	14.13%	327,225
1935	300,169	86.77%	45,775	13.23%	345,943.5
1936	319,721.5	88.05%	43,383.5	11.95%	363,105
1937	324,352	88.69%	41,358	11.31%	365,710
1938	342,062	89.80%	38,868	10.20%	380,930
1939	344,291	90.69%	35,342	9.31%	379,633
1940	344,475.5	91.17%	33,373.5	8.83%	377,849
Source:
Document B/THB/C/256c held at the London Metropolitan Archives

The proportion of Stout fell from almost 30% in 1924 to less than 10% in 1940. In terms of volume, the decrease was from 86,000 barrels in 1925 to just 33,000 barrels in 1940.

Here's that information in the form of a graph:

Now let's take a look at the grists of Truman's Stouts. This is all taken from a single parti-gyle of 8th April 1929:

Truman Stout grists 1929
Beer	OG	lbs hops/ qtr	hops lb/brl	pale malt	brown malt	crystal malt	roast barley	black sugar	cane sugar	hops
BS	1055.7	6.7	1.44	81.38%	3.08%	3.08%	4.84%	4.47%	3.15%	Pacific and Worcester
St	1046.8	6.7	1.21	78.78%	2.98%	2.98%	4.68%	7.52%	3.05%	Pacific and Worcester
CS. T.	1046.8	6.7	1.21	78.78%	2.98%	2.98%	4.68%	7.52%	3.05%	Pacific and Worcester
CS. T.	1045.7	6.7	1.18	78.78%	2.98%	2.98%	4.68%	7.52%	3.05%	Pacific and Worcester
CS. C	1046.8	6.7	1.21	78.78%	2.98%	2.98%	4.68%	7.52%	3.05%	Pacific and Worcester
CS. C	1042.7	6.7	1.10	78.78%	2.98%	2.98%	4.68%	7.52%	3.05%	Pacific and Worcester
R	1033.8	6.7	0.87	78.78%	2.98%	2.98%	4.68%	7.52%	3.05%	Pacific and Worcester
Source:
Document B/THB/C/256c held at the London Metropolitan Archives

There's nothing too surprising in the combination of pale, brown and crystal malt plus roast barley and sugar. Though the proportion of dark malts is quite low. It looks like a lot of colour is coming from the black sugar. Interesting that there's no flaked maize in the grist. Especially as Truman did use it their Brick Lane Ales and the beers they brewed in Burton.

Now on to the their draught Stout. I think it's clear that there are two types in the table. The first is a weaker 8d (7d after 1923) Stout It's probably the beer called St. The others are the 9d/8d type. And they're doubtless either BS or SS. In terms of specs, the stronger samples are very close to the overall averages, except the attenuation and ABV are lower.

What about the scores?

Truman Stout quality 1922 - 1925
Year	Beer	FG	OG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	Flavour	score	Price
1922	Stout	1014.2	1048.2	4.41	70.54%	good for the price	2	8
1924	Stout	1018.8	1051.1	4.17	63.21%	fair	1	8
1924	Stout	1020	1056.5	4.72	64.60%	poor	-1	8
1925	Stout	1017.2	1058.2	5.32	70.45%	good	2	8
Average		1017.6	1053.5	4.66	67.20%		1.00
Average last 3		1018.7	1055.3	4.74	66.09%
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001

It hasn't done badly at all, though the sample size is pretty small. Three of four got positive scores, two of which were twos. The single negative score was only a -1.

When I'm back in London for the Wall Street Crash long weekend, I'll be happy to take my chances with Truman's draught Stout.